another new year

I stand by my earlier contention that this is a crappy time to celebrate the new year and I refuse to go along with it.

It'll be the new year when the cloud cover isn't so thick that the whole world is a washed-out palate. It'll be the new year when I've felt the warmth of the sun on my face at least twice in a two-week period. It'll be the new year when the gray that hangs where the sky used to be rolls back enough for us to remember what the color blue is.

When these things happen, folks, I'll get off the sofa to make merry and feel optimistic about new beginnings. Until then, I am likely to be a little grumpy, punchy, sarcastic, snide and withdrawn. You'll have to just deal with it. I miss the sunlight and nothing you can say will make me less bitter about the gloom.

It all reminds me of a t-shirt I wanted to have printed my second year of college (the most sunless winter in Chicago history up to that point) in which the sun shone (not sunny days, days when the sun came out) 12 days total (or something like that) between the beginning of November and end of March.

On February 19, 1993, beginning at 1:37 p.m.,
the sun shone for 8 minutes on the campus of
the University of Chicago.

The idea came to me because it actually happened. We were all scurrying around campus between classes and the sun peeked through the clouds for a few minutes. Everyone stopped and looked up in bewilderment. No one moved for a while, trying to fathom what was going on. Then, slowly, we began to smile and look around us, taking in the wondrous transformation the light wrought on the gray quadrangles. Many of us stood resolute, resigned to being tardy to class, until the sun disappeared again behind the impenetrable cloud cover. Then we hunched our shoulders and brought our eyes back to the uneven sidewalks and, thus, in traditional Chicago style, turned our attention back to the life of the mind.

Don't blame me if you read the last sentence as the statement of a pompous ass. I may be a pompous ass but that sentence is intended to be snide and irreverent. It's not my fault if I'm too subtle for you.