I’m becoming reacquainted with winters here. Reacquainted, I say, because I’ve high-tailed it out of town the previous two right before the landscape had its chance to transform into 90 days of frozen wasteland. Between the mud and ice, it leads one to surmise that maybe Campus Partners extends ownership beyond the Gateway – over the entire city – purging the soul and energy in exchange for the post-war silence of E. 11th and High.
Trudging across the Oval’s tundra amid dreary skies and impending snow-rain-sleet-hell is such a particular drain on mental stability that I intentionally ran to – of all places – the mountains of Montana.
Yeah, that’s right – the wilderness mountains of the northwest, where searing windchills and waist-deep snow accumulations can manage to strike up the band in your happy head and run circles around any Ohio-inflicted misery.
Granted, I was working at a ski resort, spending days on a snowboard and nights sneaking my white rear and a 40 ounce into the four-star hotel’s hot-tub, not completely different from a frosty night in Columbus, right?
What’s mind-blowing are the similarities between this winter and the last I spent here.
Both were engulfed in a presidential election process that all of a sudden became less interesting by the moment; the future in focus long before the end. The current race has had plenty of highlights, though, mostly attributable to the Doc – who I’m sure we’ll be hearing less and less from. In exchange for the idealist martyr, we get a cadaver impersonating a senator that I’m positive will rally the troops onward to victory. Just like the last presidential candidate from the same New England state did.
A little frosty Dukakis, anyone?
Again vanished are the variety of possibilities for unique entertainment. Movies, music, art exhibitions and the like appear to become frozen before they can reach us, forced to bide their time in limbo until the spring thaw. Though intermittent Wexner events could possibly stir an attempt to brave the elements, a brief glance at their normally tight schedule exposes plenty of space to squeeze in a coma or two – no offense guys.
So why not resign oneself to curling up next to the fire, glass of cabernet in hand, girl in the other?
Exactly my plan, though my chimney’s been choked with insulation – as are most in this area – and the girl took off after I insulted her “favorite” band in a show review.
“Why the gloom?” you may ask. “Just make fun of yourself, some other people, then yourself some more. That should do the trick.”
Well, I am an idiot, so I should be able to solve this problem once and for all … just as soon as someone tells me how to do it and I stop filling Traffic and Parking’s monthly quotas.
Until then I’ll continue to glean a chuckle or two from icy “alley rallys” in my ailing car, always “aiming” to steer clear of city trashcans and stray cats.
-Ian James
