Winter has put an emphatic stamp on its official arrival

Happily, being distressed and aimless around the clock accelerates the passage of time

On the morning of January 16, 2009, I went for a run in Dover, New Hampshire shortly after listening to a weather report proclaiming the local temperature to be minus 12 degrees Fahrenheit. I was getting on a plane in Manchester at around noon, so waiting until it warmed up to maybe zero to go running wasn’t an option. It was either skip the jogging that day or do it in relatively extreme conditions. (There is a roving limit to how bad shit can get when it’s light out and you can see power wires.)

I wound up running for about 20 minutes. There was very little wind, or else I would have skipped the jogging and just played air guitar vigorously during the short flight to compensate for the earlier exercise lapse. I had a face covering, and every part of me was comfortable enough except for my nostrils. There was nothing I could do about the interior of my nose in air that cold. (Snorting a bunch of cocaine right before heading out the door would have probably served as both a reasonable anesthetic and a helpful distraction from the unkind elements, but by that point in what had proven a challenging winter, I was out of powder and down to a few sad and crumbling nuggets of crack.)

It may not have actually been -12 that morning, but if not, it was close. That’s probably the coldest temperature I’ve ever run in. I grew up in New Hampshire, which has suffered many strings of subzero nights and single-digit days since its 1788 inception. I have done probably dozens of runs when the air temperature was between 0 and 10 degrees, some of them over 20 miles long. But I don’t think I have been out there in subzero temperatures very often.

Yesterday, I went for a 22-minute run in the early afternoon, when it was -4. This may have been the second-coldest run of my life, although I highly doubt that. In fact, there is almost no chance it’s true. In fact, in the mid-1990s, I regularly did winter runs in the Toronto area, where physicists have resorted to using different temperature units to conceal how searingly cold it always is.

Whatever; I didn’t feel like waiting until 4 p.m. and the day’s predicted high temperature of 0. It was widely expected to be very cold last night, and it was.

We* had also gotten about a half a foot of snow on Wednesday night, all of which was sticking nicely to the neighborhood streets. There was almost no wind.

Air this cold assumes odd acoustic qualities: It seems like you can hear for miles for once, but for once, there is nothing to hear because normal people are sheltering in place. And a high-density neighborhood that is almost completely silent and still on a bright and sunny afternoon doesn’t quite add up in the brain, lending a touch of surrealism to the surroundings for whatever strange souls insist on trying to enjoy those surroundings window-free.

The main reason I did a run at all was to identify and berate anyone else dumb enough to be out there instead of on a treadmill or merely chilling in front of the CNN fire with a huge mug of rum-enriched cocoa in each hand. And if I didn’t see anyone else running, I was planning to take my complaint to any place of business ill-advised enough to still be operating.

I knew the schools and other government had closed for the day, but the 7-11 yonder was sure to be open. If so, I planned to have a word with the counter-folk about the wisdom of using the promise of warm coffee to lure people out of already warm cars and across a slippery parking lot and back. No one should have to live like that.

I did not see any other runners. And I was actually comfortable. I could have kept going for another ten minutes, I’m guessing, without my toes becoming an issue. I knew I wouldn’t be out there for very long, and was wearing a hoodie over two shirts (one “technical”…and I’m glad someone finally killed that term) and Sporthills (or the genetic equivalent) over tights. This was a half-assed protective ensemble at best.

I did not have Rosie with me, as I hope readers already gleaned—her paws are not equipped for being outside when it’s brutally cold, and she’s going to be limited to short outdoor trips into the back yard to do her business before dashing back toward the door with a quizzical and bemused expression (I’m sure of this).

I can’t believe winter is already here. And I don’t mean that in a “Oh for Chrissakes, it’s cold and dark again already” way, I mean that 2022 seems to have disappeared into a time-perception shredder.

Part of the sense that winter in particular barely ended is the fact that the Colorado I-25 corridor reliably gets snow nine months out of the year (recall that the state track and field championships in late May have been scuttled by snow twice in the past five years). But overall, the year just soared by. And I say that despite often looking back on my post archive and observing that posts I “remember” writing sometime in 2021 are in fact less than a year old, suggestion the reverse psychological phenomenon (i.e., that time is dragging).

I won’t be doing any sort of stand-alone “2022 in review” post because I really didn’t do anything this year. It’s almost comical how little I actually did despite being awake over 75 percent of the time, having a consistently high energy level, and not being sick once that I remember. I have become slower at completing what few tasks I have continued to take on, and by that I don’t mean my output is slower because I’m less proficient, I mean that I simply don’t get excited to do anything consciously aimed at and only at prolonging my earned existence on Earth. I hesitate to take on responsibilities because I respond to them slowly and am aware at all times that someone else could be doing a far better job.

I didn’t used to think that way. But it’s a great excuse for not working and for avoiding engaging in salient human affairs.

I’m at a point where I either need to delude myself into thinking I have a good reason to continue the cycle of eating, shitting, napping, and ruminating—which won’t be easy without mind-battering chemicals—or just abandon the circus. As it is, I’m primed to view life primarily as a series of intentional irritants, and I’m also at an age where people typically begin to acknowledge, or at least believe, that the plotlines of their lives are no longer subject to substantial edits, and that anything of substance does change, it will be for the worse. But the cold hard dirt floor of this for me is the conviction that the world is completely deranged and fraying in so many obvious, worsening, and irreversible ways that it’s unclear whether fury or barking laughter is the proper choice.

I may go running this afternoon, as the temperature has spiked to 5 above, with a high of 15 predicted. That’s actually a sweet spot; 15 is doable even with a hobo’s fitness wardrobe, and no one on electric-powered vehicles, or any kind of skateboard, will be out there. Not until it gets above freezing do most of the path-abusers emerge from their homes. And below zero, it’s nothing but a tiny smattering of idiots—almost all men. Men ironically committed to displaying traditional “macho” behavior, as in the eyes of anyone who judges such things, such fellows are just prancing around like traditional homos, especially because they’re usually in tights.

This shows how the world has changed for the worse. I long for the days of being snapped out of a trance by hearing a hail-fellow-well-met cry of “FAGGOT!” from the window of a passing pickup truck (also in New Hampshire, and in each of its four seasons) or late-model Cadillac Escalade (Florida) or rickshaw (Lancaster, Pennsylvania; just kidding). I guess people prefer to not be filmed having that kind of fun.

I also wonder why no motorists bother me to ask me for directions (before peeling away with a grateful cry of “THANKS, FAGGOT!”) these days. That all trickled off to nothing around 2005. I have consulted my smartphone to try to account for the sudden leap in geography knowledge within the otherwise blinkered American citizenry, but I’m stymied. By the time I solve the mystery, it’ll be December 2023, and that really can’t happen. No one should have to live that that either.