Not Walking on Sunshine

It was late at night and the roads were empty. Another snowstorm is coming. Most streets were already closed. And I was just one of those few who were insane enough to be driving in this kind of weather.

When I got to my car, it was already covered in white. The snow was four inches thick. I had no tool but an old CD to scrape away the smudge, clearing at least the part which I am going to need on my travel. The front and back windshield, the side mirrors, the windows.

It’s a good thing that most cars nowadays do not have carburetors anymore. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to start the engine with this freaking cold of a weather.

I got out of the parking safely. But as soon as I entered the main street, I knew I would have a problem. Having no tire chain installed, it would be unwise to drive the streets covered in inches of snow. For now it is just snow, but within the next hour, it would become ice. So I needed to go fast.

Except the signs on the sides, I could no longer see the roads. If someone from out of town unfortunately passes these streets that I am traversing right now, he’ll be in a lot of trouble. He wouldn’t know where the actual road is compared to the island in the middle and the ditches on the side.

When I first stalled, I almost got hit by a passing post office truck. Then the predicted snowstorm made landfall. Visibility is so low I had to stay on the middle of the road. I had to keep going. I realized that once you stop moving, you’ll be stuck. When I hit one intersection, I had no choice but to stop. It took me 20 minutes to have my tires pick up some traction. At least I was moving again.

I stopped at a local 7-Eleven store to buy some flu medicine and to kick out the sludge that had accumulated under my car. I am only a mile away from home, but it would be a steep climb.

I had the first climb when the tires can no longer pick up some traction. I was stuck. I went out to see what else could be done. The street is now covered in ice. I put the hazard lights on and just sat there, thinking of my other options. One black dude approached me and offered help. Luckily, and slowly my car was able to climb the hill. And another. And another.

I was on my last hill and about three blocks from my home, when it happened again. Only this time, I had nobody but me. I tried unsuccessfully to provide some more thrusts but it just wouldn’t budge. I had no choice but to leave my car in the road.

I picked up my gear and started to walk.

It was unreal. Every step I take put my feet inches deep. I tell you, it is definitely not a walk in the park. I thought I was walking on North Pole. The snow was starting to cover my entire face so I had to keep my head down, trying to keep up the pace. My body was getting numb.

Now I wish I was walking on sunshine.

It usually is a three-minute walk. But tonight it was a twenty minutes of slow, agonizing, and frostbiting cold walk. My fear of being stuck in the middle of the road on a snow storm is what made me endure the cold.

This one wouldn’t be one of my favorite nights for sure. Imagine having a flu, walking in the middle of a snowstorm. I shouldn’t have left. I should have stayed wherever I was.

But then again, there was no option of staying.

Bitten by the Cold

It was my first winter here in the Pacific Northwest.

Hailing from sunny California, I knew in advance that the weather would be quite different from what my body was accustomed to. So I was bracing for it. But it seems like my preparations fell a little short.

The snowstorm that blew this last weekend alone gave us three to four inches of snow. Enough to cover the whole city in white, and stranded thousands. It was unusual, the natives, assured me. Blame it on global warming.

The city is naturally cloudy and cold, but not this cold. One night it went down to 17 degrees Fahrenheit. That was -8 on the Celsius scale. Imagine that the freezing point is 0 degrees Celsius. Yeah, that cold. At least for me.

Driving is a lot more scary. So people tend to drive too slow or suffer the same fate as I had when I skid and almost drove to a cliff. There are a few accidents as well due to the weather.

Public buses are not running regularly, and most taxi companies just stopped operating at all. So most shops were closed and most employers understand if you get a little late going to work.

My gout starts to act up again, I would assume due to the cold. On top of that, I could feel a flu coming. So I have doubled my dose of Vitamin C and took some more painkillers for the gout and something for the flu.

In this weather, I don’t want to be stuck on the road with the cold and a limp.

Lost, Waiting To Be Found

When we lose something, we always try to find it back.

No matter how long, no matter how far, once it enters our life and consciousness, it will always stay there, imbedded within the recesses of our minds, stored in the faculty of our usually faulty tiny brain capsules.

I remember when I was a kid, my childish fear wouldn’t let me let go of my decaying tooth. I always thought at first that I would never get it back. But of course I found out that in time, I would. After a while, I have a brand new spankin’ tooth.

It was okay to lose something, I thought. Besides, there is nothing permanent in this world. Even stars collapse in and on itself.

So I have outgrown my fear of letting go of something. I know for a fact that over time, I will always get back whatever I had lost, be it the very same one or comparatively similar. Either I find it myself or it would eventually find its way back.

But like going to a dentist, it was the process of the whole thing of letting go and losing something that I will never get used to. That sudden needle prick, the slow chilling numbness that soon thereafter follows, and the feeling that you lost something that is essentially part of you is what is ridiculously awful.

It will also be so awkward that since you were used to having it, you would try to grab a bite and then suddenly realize you don’t have your front teeth anymore. Not where it used to be. And you just can’t do anything about it but wait for it to come back. Or if you ain’t young anymore to have new ones, have it replaced by false teeth.

After you actually lost what you have totally disregarded your whole life, then is the only time that you would realize... something is really missing. That would be the prick, the realization that something was lost. Then the numbing begins. What will follow then was the awkward part of having to endure a state of total inequilibrium.

I wouldn’t dare try to find my soul that was lost. I was afraid that even if I do find it, it would never want to come back. Darn, all I could do now is sit and wait for it to, hopefully, find its way back. I am sure it can. I hope. I just had to wait…. and wait…. and wait.

I curse myself, the most impatient one.

I Don't Feel Like Writing

I have the time to write. I just don’t feel like it.

Sometimes, somewhere, something would tickle my fancy and write. Might be something I found on someone else’s blog, or some comments somewhere that would make me think about it.

No I’m not running out of thoughts, however stupid or brilliant they can be. I am just running out of the will to write.

Like some bloggers out there, I don’t just want to write for the sake of putting something on my site. It would not only bore the handful readers I have, I would bore me. Not that I am interesting to start with.

It is not writer’s block. I simply call it “writer’s lack”.

Not the lack of ideas. Believe me, most great writers can write anything out of nothing. It is the lack of will, the absence of the drive to do something. That is what’s bugging me lately. I had no will.

My life had become that of a pendulum swinging on its sides. Yes, there is constant activity, but it had become a repetitive motion. I just swing back and forth, left and right, right to left, waiting, waiting. Waiting to do what? I just don’t know.

While the pendulum swinging of course has a purpose, it is but to keep moving until gravity can no longer support the swinging. Time would never stop. And it would never stop swinging. Until some outside force would prevent it from doing so.

I would be swinging back and forth, looking back at the same old clock over and over. Though I know for certain that it never would, I kept on waiting for the time to run out, anxious of the inevitable outcome.

For now, I just don’t feel like writing.