She looks out the window and spits out the word ‘melt,’ the worst curse she can think of against a layer of ice and snow that will not relent. In milder winters, it was that the mosquitoes didn’t die and the backyard mud carried in by the dogs. We have dug out of this mild inconvenience as best we can. I put my faith in her curses more than the snow plow that never touches our street. There are tales of an old International Harvester with a snow plow and an engine that does not die, but code enforcement actively silences these rumors. But waiting for spring is still considered a carnal act of rebellion.
“I’m betting he’s gonna swerve first.” – Phil Connors, Groundhog’s Day (1993)
Listening to my brother talk about major and minor keys in music, Seattle grunge, and the Beach Boys Death Cult (my term). What made the Beach Boys songs work wasn’t so much the song writing but the compositions around their voices. The actual songs, most of them, were dark, sad songs. What we’re living now is the decline of a Post-War Death Cult fueled by Beach Boys-style nostalgia. I was always fond of “Sloop John B,” a cute little ditty about a terrible boat ride. Then there’s the existential angst of “God Only Knows,” which, in a different key and composition, could sound like a Nirvana cover band. “I may not always love you / but as long as there are stars above you / you never need to doubt it” is a proclamation of love wrapped in the belief that there’s nothing after we die and if the speaker were to die in some war or a drag race or something, the beloved would then have to find some other starry-eyed lover who could write a different song in the same key about the temporary nature of love in the nuclear age.
Today, of course, is Groundhog Day, when the small cult that protects the inheritor rodent of Punxsutawney Phil gets all gussied up and prognosticates the entrance of Spring; I think of the movie, with Bill Murray and Andi McDowell and someone asks Phil Connor, Murray’s character about whether it will be six more weeks of winter and he says something about March 20… which is generally the Spring Equinox. People act like The Big Lebowski (1998) is a super zen movie, but if I had to think of a movie that might be an extended koan, it would be Groundhog’s Day.
When you wake up to the same day, day after day, written by the same death cult that gave us “Barbara Ann,” the only possible reaction is to eat as many pancakes as you can, kidnap a sacred rat, and drive headlong into the long light at the end of a tunnel. Embracing the fun may be the most zen moment you will ever have, over and over again.
re peat rep eat sew so show shovel snow go sail ing go leave go re peat
This is the time of seeds. Of waiting and taking nourishment. There is order to the seasons. The bones know spring is coming even if the view doesn’t quite reflect it. Winter sun on the thin ravaged skin of snow and ice, dug out and dug in, still blinds. We squint, each day a brand new rapture and begin again. And again. And. Again. The roots that grow tickle and ache, an impossible to ignore arthritis. Let us then celebrate the death and life and death, make snow cream, see the muddy tracks we leave through the yard, and live. Because there is no other option. Must.
must must must these aches must must must sing sing sing sing sing sing must must must again and again and again must again and sing
