Synchronicity?

Another gray, cold day, except that we're getting some snow. It's colder than it's been, so I don't think the snow will turn to rain, or even sleet, any time soon.

Most people would rather be touched by snow than struck by sleet. I feel that way, too. But either way, it's cold.

Maybe the estrogen and my age are changing my body chemistry. I never used to feel, or at least notice, the cold as much as I do now. At least, I didn't admit that I did. I suppose I could blame my body chemistry for that, too, except that back then I was full of testosterone (and sometimes substances my body didn't produce!). Oh, no, I'm not cold, and I know where I'm going. Of course!

But back to the weather: It really seems like a B-movie come true. I mean, how many scenes depict hard times against a backdrop of winter weather. I guess they're the negatives, if you will, of all those paintings and lithographs that depict prosperity and the glories of an empire unfolding under clear Hapsburg skies. Of course, as the skies grayed, empires and fortunes waned.

So I guess it's supposed to be cold and gray, what with the economic times. I may have already mentioned all of those Depression-era photographs in which everything always looks overcast. And, of course, as the skies darken, it means that the nation is going to war.

I hope that's not the case. I'm against war in general, but I can think of very few military actions that rival this country's invasion of Iraq for the sheer mendacity that led up to it. Bush lied, they died: It may not be the greatest rhyme, but it sums up the situation.

And the pretext for it was something that wasn't in the script, unless it had been written by Albert Camus and based on The Plague. I am talking, of course, about September 11th, a day when le mort en pleurait du ciel claire: Death rained from the clear blue sky. You could live all of your life in New York and never see a morning as clear as that one was, before the planes crashed into the towers. I was reminded of yet another literary work:

On the day the world ends
Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.

And those who expected lightning and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels' trumpets
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and the moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now.

That's part of "A Song On The End of The World" by Czeslaw Milsoz. (Did I spell his name right? Everyone I know pronounces it to rhyme with "cole slaw-meat loaf.") No one believed what was happening on September 11th; it just didn't fit with the cloudless sky and the sort of warmth that either radiates from the last flickerings of summer or hides the fact that autumn is about to begin, depending on your point of view.

And now it's cold and snowing and the world's going to hell in a handbasket, at least according to the pundits. I hope that all the things I'm looking forward to aren't swept away by these winds or buried in the snow (or worse yet, dissipated when the snow melts.).

Sometimes synchronicity is a good, or even logical, thing. Only sometimes.