Last night, being bored, even despite having read some rather interesting, exciting chapters in "The Guns of August," I decided to boot up and suit up and go outside, despite what I thought were chilly temperatures and steady precipitation. I guess my original quest was to clear off my car and then shovel the walkways and driveway of my residence.....but as it was raining, and warm upon my first entrance outside, and as the crap that blanketed my driveway was more slush than snow and as that shit is especially heavy, I decided against the second half of my self-imposed list of tasks and set about opening my trunk, getting out my ice-scrapper/snow-brusher thing and set about clearing off my car.
Yet, some of the portions of it, primarily the hood and the trunk, were especially stubborn, with the snow clinging steadfastly and indomitably to the steel of either portion, so especially as it grew cold and I grew wet and tired, I chose instead to enter my car, with it's lovely, plush maroon velour interior and start it, and use the heat of the engine to melt the last remnants of stubborn snow off.
So, I sat down, extricated my key from amongst the grand, clanking panoply of other keys I had on my keychain/carbiner and turned on the engine. Then, I listened to the radio, switching at intervals between four or five different stations programmed into my radio. Mostly, I listened to classic rock or music of the 1960's-1980's, but there were occasional, momentary sidetrips to other genres of music, but mostly just different subgenres of rock.
So, ensconced comfortably but not yet warmly in the plush cabin of my car, I sat there, listening to music and gazing out of the window and listening to the tapering patter of the rain. Eventually, I turned the heater on and was rewarded with continuous blasts of anhydrous, almost equatorial heat....yet the heat of that ilk did not arrive for quite some time.
I looked out at the whitish expanse, broken here and there by mass accretions of grey slush, that was my snow-covered driveway and dooryard and front yard. The sky was some odd shade of bluish-grey and black, and some very slight orangish tints languished just along the horizon line.
Through various revolving momentary sentiments and sensations borne along by and occasioned by whatever I was listening to, I gazed at all this and wondered, thinking my thoughts, which at times turned to the past and the good times/bad times and regrets I had of that time.
It was an introspective time-not so much when I grew up and the period I was thinking about, but rather last night, out in the car, waiting the storm out.
So, as I sat there, listening to various music, I toyed at whiles with the various lights and features of my car, and in the course of my idle playing about and tinkering with things, I came across the lights flanking either side of the vanity mirrors set into the driver's and passenger's visors, and furthermore discovered, and in doing so nearly blinded myself, that you could greatly increase-or decrease-the potency and brightness of these vanity lights.
It was not long after that that I concluded I was bored anew with the things therein and resolved to venture back outside. This I did, but should probably not have, given the moisture that suffused and engulfed my boots, as I trudged along the curved, snowbound, slushy river that was our driveway, soaking up more and more nival moisture with each plodding, heavy step.
I ventured out onto the street, which was a vast, moist ribbon of black in the twilight. Eventually, as the wind increased and became ever more buffeting and gelid, I tired of the outdoors, though there was an indescribable, adventurously romantic beauty to them, and there was great pulchritude and sentiment and power even in the lonely, steady harsh whistling of the buffeting winds that tossed the treetops like corks in a turbulent sea. At times, I suppose I even imagined the sea, or at least the more oceanic aspects of littoral Kittery and Kittery Point, and wondered about them, and the picturesque sight that they must have made amid all that wintry, potent wonder.
Regardless, I adjourned, repairing inside and eventually, after unwinding by watching some movie, I went to sleep, only to wake up to quite a different scene than the one I saw last night.
But such is ever-changing nature of days, I suppose.
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