Advice For Freezing

Cabin Fever.

It’s led men to murder each other over a bag of sugar. Led fathers to take an ax to their families in the halls of the Overlook hotel. Led Stanley Kubrick to cleverly admit that he faked the moon landing while simultaneously acknowledging the genocide of Native peoples in a film about those fathers. It hounds us in the north till we slip into tanning beds and sit beneath the ultraviolet hum of tweaked florescent lights. It’s not the cold so much as the snow and way the world begins to close in around you, limiting your options until there’s no external escape. Till it feels like the gravitational pull has altered, the mass increased and the slog is an ever present struggle.

The internal escape isn’t as much relief as you’d hope either, it’s more a bi-polar dance between healthy and unhealthy outlets. Paint, read, write, meditate, smoke, drink, snort, punch holes in the drywall. All work and no play make Homer something, something. Personally, I’m about hollow at the moment. Running on impulses, cravings and deep reserves of anger/ a desire to finish the Sopranos. You hit walls and then you build walls; and if you build your walls high enough eventually you have a pit.

Welcome to mid February in the North. You make a valiant effort but eventually you end up drinking cheap Trader Joe’s wine ($4 a bottle!) and watching motorcycle shows on the high numbered channels until you pass out. We should keep Christmas lights up until at least late March, we should really lean into that shit. I make a valiant effort to embrace it, sit in neutrality with it as it passes over me. Appreciate the aesthetic, then ultimately freeze to death in the back yard.

Similarly I had this aspiration to keep things going on here in a rapid succession whether they be big writing projects or just funny little things that tickle my fancy. Taking it all too seriously was never the point, this is basically my morning pages. So here we go my winter darlings, your brief survival guide:

PRO-TIPS FOR SURVIVING EXISTENTIAL CRISIS SEASON or HELP! EVERYTHING FEELS LIKE A SMITHS SONG!

The Revenant:

 This movie is required viewing mid to late February. There’s just something about watching people suffer incredible death and violence amidst the setting of the winter  tundra that makes it all feel more bearable (pun intended). Watching that grizzly emerge from the ice age and violently thrash poor Hugh Glass into oblivion before depositing him like so much sexy garbage into the stark ravine of the cold forest, is kinda cathartic.

I also envy that single minded motivation to crawl back from a place where death has to be more preferable than living and keep moving forward. That feels very relevant.

So I’ve created this little visualization ritual to help with these days that I’d like to share with you. Light a stick of incense, tap your singing bowl, sit comfortably before the flickering of a single candle and remember those who have wronged you.

Ask, who would you pursue across a frozen hellscape of misery just so you could stab them to death on the banks of a river? Now use that energy to carry you into spring. 

Parties At Vicki’s:

Vicki was my friend and coworker from the bakery back in the day. She rented this little cabin deep in the woods of Lincoln and used to have great winter parties there all the time. The restrictive tribal boundaries of small town life were set aside for the greater good of seeing through the other side of the Solstice. Hippy, Punk, Hick, Artist and Asshole all mingled freely and (mostly) congenially together under the common bonds of strong liquor, Canadian weed and Black Sabbath (it was basically like Snow Job). All around the unifying flames of a good bonfire. On the few occasions there were any aggressive altercations it was mostly my fault (though rumors that I tried to urinate on someone mid argument are greatly exaggerated).

I do remember there was this random dude with a thin mustache and properly curved bill of a baseball cap who’d just wonder around offering everyone “buttery nipples” relentlessly, throughout the evening. Like a redneck John Waters.
That time period tastes like spilled jaeger on snow.

Skateboarding:

I mean you knew I was gonna say it. As long  as there’s swaths of dry concrete I’ll skate regardless of the temperature. Shit, I might be skating right now while I write this for all you know. A coping skill is a coping skill. There were nights last winter where it would just be Fat Ram and me, temperatures in the teens, under the lights of high rises across the river. Secure in the knowledge that if you just keep moving you’ll stay warm. Falling becomes this fun game where you’re not really sure how hurt you are until you start to thaw later on. One pro-tip I’ll offer is: gloves, can’t be overstated. The other week I saw some kids actually build a fire beneath a quarter pipe to warm their hands. They were city kids so it was a shitty fire but still a very 12 Monkeys moment. Props to the psychos out for evening runs along the Charles, we’re a rare and emotionally stunted breed. Skate or die. 

Winter Sports:

If you’re big on winter sports then I honestly can’t believe you’ve read this far. You’re fine, you love this shit. Go. Be free.

Key Parties:

Remember that movie the Ice Storm? That seems like a fun option. This one is kinda similar to Parties At Vicki’s because I guarantee the “Buttery Nipple” guy will show up. It’s not “pandemic safe” but then again neither is America.

Black Metal:

This is a tricky one. I have friends whose love of the classical, Satan worshiping, Nordic musical canon helped them embrace the dark, soul-suck of the endless winter nights and cold, cemetery winds of soulless days.  If not for the rage of the beast they’d have never risen to stomp combat boots through frozen sludge to make their shifts at the bougie California style burrito place (why are there portobella mushrooms in this?!). Not for everyone though. Worst case scenario you burn several ancient churches and stab a former friend to death. 

Sun Lamps:

I used to work with this dude who built cheap sun lamps and ran an online gay porn website out of his home in Huntington (this is America bro, you gotta hustle). You sit beneath one of these puppies for twenty minutes a day and it can allegedly greatly improve your mood through a neurochemical reaction. If that fails there’s always the website. 

Summer Tunes:

For those not so Metal(y) inclined, Ramones, Beach Boys, Bob Marley, Paul Simon. You gotta tether yourself to the sounds of a light and optimistic existence. The possibility of magic and joy. Just looking forward to Valentine's or St. Patrick’s day ain’t gonna cut it. Lately my streaming service has been suggesting a personally curated Playlist called “Isolation” leading me to suspect Spotify wants me dead. Careful though, you slip to far into the sun zone and the 3rd wave ska could have the opposite effect of making you want to live. *this play list (to the right or above if you’re on your phone) was made quickly and is collaborative, feel free to add more summer jams.

Expand Your Quarantine Bubble To Include Sex Workers:

Self Explanatory.

Engage A Discount Therapy Service:

In the event there are no sex workers in your region.

Cold Cases:

Is there an unsolved murder you can get involved with trying to solve? There are multiple websites with databases of unsolved homicides by region. An extra bonus is the opportunity to start a podcast this presents, get that Stamps.com money.

Start A Band: 

So many bands are first put to seed in the waning light of late November, once the wisps of impending freeze kisses the air. You huddle with your scumbag friends on the stoops and back porches, shivering, smoking and plotting the creative direction of “The band”. If creating an entirely made up mythology and Marvel comics style universe counts as being in a band then I was in at least 35; but if the true criteria is actually playing music and then at least “a show” then I was in two. A gangsta rap duo that was banned from Vermont’s premiere all ages punk club for being too offensive and a cover/metal band called Dragon’s Winter. Dragon’s Winter was something to do for six people that all worked nights and wanted to make it to the other side of the season. I wrote the lyrics and to entertain myself made every song about Indiana Jones. 

Dragon’s Winter’s one and only show was coincidentally at Vicki’s. I accidentally bashed my head on the ceiling fan while jumping during War Pigs and then may or may not have tried to pee on an old high school bully. Luckily our lead guitarist was ex-military. 

The 4th of July Scene from The Sandlot:

Seriously. In case of emergency, put this thing on loop like a technological Buddhist prayer wheel. Spring will come.

It will come.

comic by Way Bad