A History of Snow

Was Curious George playing in it?  Didn't Burt and Ernie go skiing?  Larry and Balki did.

"There...if you look closely, you can see it on top of the mountain.  See there?  And those dark shapes there?  Those are elk or moose.  Yes, like Bullwinkle.  No, it's too hot back home."

"No, this is sleet."

"No, I'm telling you, it was a flurry!  I swear!"  I didn't believe her.  Plus, I was too worried about those high school exams to care.

"I never want to see the stuff.  Grew up in Florida and I'm going to Arizona State for college and then on to Hollywood."

1997 I arrive in Chicago, much different than Tempe.

He was blowing leaves as the cold wind gusted down Kenmore.  He smiled at me with his toothy, wicked grin.  "Here it comes, boy!"  A wave of fear and nausea rushed through me, starting at the mouth and exiting out of my ass.

Again on Kenmore.  "What is this?  Is someone burning something?  Is this ash?  Wait...is this?  Is this it?  Wow!"  I stood at the window in the lobby and stared at it like a fool, gaping in amazement.  The others rolled their eyes and lamented the end of autumn and the beginning of a long Chicago winter.  I doubt anyone thought I was adorable.

He laughed and pushed her in the yellow patches as she screamed.  In the summer, he would push her in the grass and she only giggled until he reminded her of winter's yellow.  "It's still there, you know."

She loved it, would kick a chunk of it and stomp it to oblivion.  That's how I knew I was in love with her.

She hated it and asked, "what is this?  I mean, I know what it is, but come on..."  That's how I knew I was in love with her.

We made a corpse out of it in a baseball field in Grant Park.  Later that day a beluga whale spit on me.  I held her hand but didn't kiss her, like we were children.  I was never in love with her.

I had to be there at five in the morning.  I shoveled the doorway and a path to the intersection.  Quitting felt so good.

I slipped and fell backwards.  I just stayed on the ground, feeling it lightly fall on my face.  It felt good to rest on the sidewalk like that.  Eventually a woman walked by and said, "oh my!  Are you alright?"  I assured her I was, but I wasn't quite ready to move yet.  "I thought you were a dog from back there."

"Hold my mitted fist!"  She made me laugh when she said that.  She moved so quickly in it.  Later, when it was ending, she told me we moved at different speeds.  I thought maybe she was referring to foot speed, but...no...probably not.  It's ok.  I was never in love with her.

It was the biggest blizzard in Chicago in years.  I can't remember, but I most likely drank through it.  I was alone, staring out of the window at it all, wishing it were worse.  Or better, depending on your point of view.

They said it would be the winter that would make us all want to move.  It was the most mild winter in years.  You couldn't ever get me to move anyway.

I was feeling better than I had in possibly years.  I loved the way the ice cracked under my feet.  I loved how untouched it was.  I loved the screaming geese and ducks that refused to leave Chicago in the winter...just like me.  I found warmth in the conservatory and smiled, smiled, smiled...

I came home grinning like some goofball.  I heard a bird chirping and asked her why in hell she was acting like it was spring.  She didn't have an answer.  I went upstairs and made dinner.  I looked out of my window and watched it come down, as it had been coming down all day, with such endurance.  I decided to write about my history with the stuff from as far back as I could remember.  And while it feels like it has lost its value over the years, I also understand there are memories with it that have not yet been made.  It will be valuable again, I'm sure.

Stay warm, stay dry, and thanks for reading.  I'll talk to you later.

The Canary Flaxseed Story

Say hello to your mother for me.

I'm sorry, I'm nervous.  And when I get nervous, I get mean.

Here's the story.

Her name was Canary Flaxseed.  Ok, obviously her name wasn't actually Canary Flaxseed, but I thought I'd use a fictional name that closely resembles her real name.  Now that I've got that established...

Her name was Canary Flaxseed.  She was 15.  So was I.  We were high school freshmen.  Everyone was in love with Canary Flaxseed.  The boys all wanted to be with Canary Flaxseed, and the girls...well the girls were glad they weren't Canary Flaxseed because 15 year old boys are gross and ridiculous.

Yes, we were all boys and girls.  All of us, that is, except Canary Flaxseed.  She was a woman.  With the body of a woman.  And she was a dancer.  I like dancers, always have.

So everyone loved Canary Flaxseed, everyone lusted after Canary Flaxseed...everyone, that is, except for me.  And do you know why?  It's because I'm an individual, it's because I'm an independent thinker, it's because I don't follow the crowd...

I was madly in love with Canary Flaxseed.

I went to great lengths to be Canary Flaxseed's best friend.  Best friend!  Friends, we were friends, yes, friends...we hung out all the time!  We were study partners, we played tennis together, tennis.

We were friends.

So even when Maxwell Boulevard (not a real name) pulled me aside and said, "so I hear Canary Flaxseed has a huge crush on you," I didn't let it bother me.  I didn't let it affect me.  I said, "nah...we're just friends."

I went to her house in Gobbler's Cove (not a real place) and there she made me cornbread.  She made me cornbread.  And she fed it to me...with her hand!  Into my mouth!  Do you understand?  Do you understand how sensual that is?  To feed somebody with your hand?  Into their mouth?  Cornbread?  It's the most sexual oven baked good there is!  She fed me cornbread with her hand into my mouth!

So I made up my mind...I had to ask Canary Flaxseed out on a date.  What are we going to do on this date?  I don't know, I'm 15, I don't have a car, I can't drive; I'll worry about that later...

We had a study group.  It was me, Canary Flaxseed, my friend Wolf Jones (not a real name), and Canary's friend Spuds Forest (nope).  Now, Spuds...she had these insane feet.  She could staple things with them, she could eat an apple with them...one time she was sitting behind Maxwell Boulevard in geometry class and Maxwell suddenly began to feel one of the most amazing neck massages he had ever received.  It was Spuds' feet!  She was giving him a neck massage, a solid one, with her damn feet!  They were just like hands, these feet.

So anyway, we were at the library, and Canary and Spuds were talking about some guy named Sploodge (it was actually Robbie).  I had heard the two of them mention this Sploodge guy before and it was never good.  Apparently, Sploodge had called Canary the night before around midnight and wouldn't get off the phone until two in the morning.  "What an idiot," says Canary.  "I know, right?  What a tool," says Spuds.

So I turn to the two of them and I say, "wow, this Sploodge sounds like a real douche bucket."

"That's Canary's boyfriend," said Spuds.  She actually signed it to me with her insane hands feet.

I was devastated.  Absolutely crushed.  My eyes welled up with tears.  You can't hide that shit; she noticed.  I tried to play it off..."oh, that's cool.  Yeah, far out...word...neato mosquito..."  I spanned three decades of general agreement slang.

As we were leaving the library, Canary pulled me aside and said, "hey, you look a little bummed."  Isn't that sad?  Isn't that pathetic?  I wanted her to say, "Sploodge means nothing to me, it's you!  It's always been you!  I'm in love with you!"

No.  "Hey, you look a little bummed.  Is everything alright?  Is there anything I can do for you?"

"Yeah, say hello to your mother for me!"

I didn't say that.  I told her I was tired.

Not too long after that, Canary Flaxseed moved.  She went to a different school.  We lost touch.

As coincidence would have it (or as magic would have it), Canary and I ended up both moving up to Chicago for college.  Well, I attended college, she joined a professional dance troop in Evanston.  We reconnected and I went up there to visit her.  I had dinner with her and her mother.  I had met her mother before...wonderful woman.  Always laughed at my jokes.  We hung out a few times in my freshman year.  By my sophomore year, we had lost touch again.

Then, halfway through that second year of college, I had an intense dream about Canary.  And the night after that, another vivid dream about her.  I wrote in my journal at the time that I felt I would be back in contact with Canary again soon and, wouldn't you know it, the guy who had my old dorm phone number from the year before came up to me and said, "some girl named Canary Flaxseed called for you.  I wrote her number down but I put it in my jeans and now those jeans are in the wash."

"You get me that number."

And so I got the number.  We spoke, Canary and I, over the phone for eight hours.  Eight...all night long.  She had been dating one of the Northwestern football coaches or something insane like that.  I was single.

Sadly, we fell out of touch once again after that.

Years later, when it became easy to stalk people on the internet, she found me.  She was married and living in Orlando.  She had her own dance company now.  She looked great, judging by the online pictures of her.  She wrote me a very sweet message, one filled with the stars of youth and the dreams we lose in the shadows like runaway ghosts...

"OMG, lol!  How r u?!  How's Chicago?  Cold enough for you?!  lmao!  You look great!  KIT."

I wrote her back.

"So good to hear from you.  Hey, you're married!  Chicago is great, I'm doing well.  You know, I had the biggest crush on you back in high school.  I miss you.  Your husband's a real lucky guy.  You probably make him real happy.  Take care.  I wish you all the best.  And say hello to your mother for me."

Thanks everyone.  Have a great weekend, I'll talk to you later.

In The Brown Bag

The hope was to find a bag of money.  Some children dream of becoming astronauts, some of firemen, some of ballerinas.  Often, the jobs available to us as children are limited to the jobs we are introduced to on Sesame Street.  Some kids branch out from the options of police officer, teacher, and mailman to more fantastical occupations such as monster, princess, or wizard.

I bought into the more conservative path of future possibilities and wanted to be an astronaut for a bit.  Then I wanted to be a professional baseball player.  Then, a teacher of American history who also coached the basketball team.  Then, an actor.  And that's what I earned a degree in.  Acting.

After college, when the luster of acting wore off (and the reality of the business set in), I wanted to be a musician.  Then a writer.  An artist.  Maybe all of the above.  Currently, I'd like to just be able to pay rent.

But stronger than my desire to make a living off of any of these options was my desire to find a bag of money.

I've always loved treasure.  The idea of finding treasure is incredibly appealing to me and I'm not quite sure why.  The height of this desire was reached between 2008 and 2010 when I would go on change hunts through the streets of Chicago.  I would record how much change I would find, how many pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, dollar coins, dollar bills, and those wonderful rare times I would find five, ten, and twenty dollar bills.  Each time I found a penny or a twenty, it was like some wonderful discovery in the greatest Easter Egg Hunt of all time.  I would check the parking meters and would frequently find ten to twenty quarters at once inside of the change dispenser.  There was a stretch where I found five twenty dollar bills, one each in March, April, May, June, and July.  When my change hunts came to an abrupt ending in August of 2010, I was finding between $80 and $100 a month.  It was incredible.

But I still never found that one brown paper sack filled with money.  The one with rolls and rolls, or stacks and stacks, of $100 bills.  My attention would perk up in an alley when I saw an old brown bag leaning against a dumpster.  Could this be it?  Nope...greasy paper towels and banana peels.  Here, on the sidewalk?  Nope...left over and forgotten Chinese food.

Once, when walking through Graceland Cemetery, I saw a brown paper bag packed with some sort of mystery.  This must be it!  My bag of money!  I walked towards the bag carefully, knelt down, and cautiously opened it up.  I found cloth...ribbons of cloth, scarves, perhaps.  And candles.  And then something that looked a little bit like meat.

Being careful not to touch it and now assuming the worst, I was able, with the aid of a stick that had fallen from a nearby winter tree, to see that what I was looking at was a dead, plucked chicken.  Head, wings, feet, everything intact.

I closed up the paper sack and brought it to the front building.  I went inside and said, "excuse me, but I found this brown paper bag out there with scarves, candles, and a dead chicken in it."

I expected the reaction to be shock or surprise, but without even looking at me, a man behind a counter said, "oh it's those Voodoo people again...just leave it on the table."

What is it about an anonymous paper bag that I love so much?  I acknowledge that a big part of it is the mystery of what could be inside...by why does my treasure lie within such a plain and common container?  My vision isn't of a treasure chest or an old tin box with valuables inside, though those are appealing visions in their own right.  My ideal transportation for my treasure is an old, greasy, forgotten brown paper bag.  Probably in the woods or in the park or cemetery someplace.

So while I continue to search for my disgusting bag treasure in the literal world, I'll attempt to fill up this literary brown bag with stories of treasure, of magic, and of discovery.  Strange things seem to happen to me and it's time I started writing them down and sharing them with the world.

And perhaps you too are searching for an old sack of treasure.  If I may be so bold, and if it doesn't sound too incredibly corny, maybe you've got my treasure sack and I've got yours.

On second thought, that doesn't sound corny.  It sounds dirty.

Thanks for reading.  Have a great day and I'll talk to you later.