Areas of Fog #42 by Will Dowd
Outro
Dear Loyal Readers,
This is the final area of fog. It’s been a joy to wrestle each week with the god of New England weather, that artful trickster, but I’m tired now.
I think I’ll buy one of those dilapidated lighthouses crumbling on the coastline of Maine and stay up all night sending Morse messages to the lonely and storm-tossed.
In the meantime, I have one more weather report in me.
It’s January 1st and it’s absurdly cold—the bitter wind on my face is like novocaine wearing off.
I’m not the only one who’s brought their hangover to the ocean, that church for the churchless, that substitute for pistol and ball. There are plenty of joggers making the first and last strides of their New Year’s resolutions. I think about running, but my hip is an unsalvageable shipwreck and anyway I feel a cold coming on.
Instead I walk along water, staring down at the sea-wrack Rorschach. I spot a shattered shell (severed ear), a strand of seaweed (mermaid bra), a washed-up horseshoe crab (death mask of a great poet).
Maybe that’s what New England weather is—an inkblot of sun and clouds. Shadows on snow. Stars on a pond. A pile of bright leaves.
Maybe that’s why we talk about it, perennially, inanely—for the simple pleasure of feeling our inner worlds, however briefly and superficially, overlap.
There’s a seam of what looks like snow running the length of the beach. When I scoop some up, I find it’s frozen sea foam.
Sophocles said that love is like ice in the hands of children.
I have no idea what he meant.
“We are full of ghosts and spirits…” Melville wrote. “Every thought’s a soul of some past poet…”
Melville daydreamed that one day he and Shakespeare would run into each other on the street and get drunk together on rum punch, but it never happened.
It’s entirely possible that one day you and I will run into each other on the street and get drunk together on rum punch.
For now, all I can say is thank you.
Thank you for being my reader, my Third Man.
I only wish I had something to give you on this New Year’s Day. Something besides the cold in my head.
I think I’ll leave you with this—a haiku by Issa to carry in the pocket of your winter coat along with your lozenges and your lighter.
New Year’s Day.
Spring is coming!
I feel about average.
_______
Will Dowd (episode 91, episode 104) is a freelance writer based outside Boston. He received an MFA from New York University and an MS from MIT. His writing has appeared in Barrow Street, Post Road, Skeptic Magazine, and NPR.org.
