Ray Pride

Ah, the wintry city. Flip-flops and open-toed shoes and bare arms were 2003's unlikely holiday gear. But the day after New Years was respite's end, untimely spring weather forgotten with the first flurry of increasingly rare snow, about six-and-a-half inches (is it less than macho to consider that an average in Chicago?).

Even while wishing for a mountaintop fireplace, darting from place to place for warmth, the first layering of woolens, drabbest down or brightest fleece begin to muffle forms and features. Even the street person who usually wears cast splints instead of shoes is boasting boots. The back of the closet comes to the front, here's the Siberian mufti, the Antarctic-suited yakwear. Fake fur crests featureless bulk.

With temps plunked down into the mid-nothings, the mid-to-high twos, wind-chill in the unspeakable substrata, city salt trucks have only just begun to smear the streets with contributions to Daley's permanent mayoral campaign. Shortly, shoes and pants legs and SUVs will be crusted in sludge and soot, but all is crystal cold today. More colors will flourish soon: imagine the January markdowns at the GAP, colors that will be more popular at $6.99 instead of $16.99. How soon will every admirable investment be frosted and bitten with the unforgiving alkaline of manufactured salt, leaving a wealth of burnt leather and rotted chassises? Polar bears scram past on bicycles, tempting chap and chafe.

Music halts at open doorways. Stops dead. Hangs there. When it's humid, sound seems to move like fresh-blossomed perfume. In the invisible crystal field of sub-freezing air, smells seem to shatter, drop like insincere promises. There's no alley stink, no gutter waft. Just ice investigating the scilla of the proboscis.

Everyone, no matter how bundled, walks in out of the cold all shivery like a shaggedy dog. In the coffee shop, customers strip down to as few layers as possible, grateful for the forced-air liberty. "Considering how cold it is, she has a lot of exposed tat," one woman notes, at once approving and disapproving of another. Through the window, a vista of fists-in-pocket optimists slacking down the street. Gloves already lost or yet unsought?

What do intricate piercings feel like under the subarctic blast? A man strides into the cafe, schnozzle punched through with a Hereford's body jewelry. I've never been curious enough to question the sensation: is there a shiver of silvery cool cutting through the flesh?

In morning light as hard and bright and cold as a fresh-minted G4 iBook, the oldest couple on the block, in their seventies, inch forward in the brilliance of the day while Morrissey's cover of "Moon River" plays. It must be like crossing the ice floes, struggling to the rescue station that is the Edmar grocery.

Look! There's a frosted cueball, vanity tempting hypothermic harm. In Yellowknife in the Yukon Territory, it's forty below and a bald man might go hatless. It's silly here. Images of watch caps dance in the mind like sugarplums. Is anyone out there long enough to turn diamond, it's too early in the unseemly season to tempt a crust of icicle at mouth corner and eye fold?

Trudging to the train, you wonder if the loudest of the crazies is out, if Lobo will be howling off the Blue Line platform, shedding to a few yip-yip-YIPS to protest the injustice of the sub-Celsius.

Trains thunder both toward the Loop and O'Hare as the light changes. A woman stands in front of the Damen stop like Mary Tyler Moore after she's tossed her tam-o'-shanter, sure she's going to make it after all. Look upward, she's lost her scarf, it's caught in the jetstream, the scarf flies, silken streak, dervishing aloft on the updraft of ice and traffic and subway wake, higher still, unfettered ribbon above that neck, beyond reach, a second or three from its saline fate mid-intersection.

"Vintage Fendi," she says, tugging and tidying her collar, smiling, shrugging, darting into a nearby cafe.

Nearby, a cop cruiser gets a jump.

(2004-01-06)

Also by Ray Pride

Uniform code
While I've read quibbles about the plot machinations of Vadim Perelman's debut feature, "House of Sand and Fog," no one's dared complain about the acting
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Tip of the Week
Kurosawa drew from work both Eastern and Western throughout his career, and this tale, finding Toshiro Mifune as a vagabond samurai who sells his services to both sides of a battle in a small town, is utterly indebted to Dashiell Hammett
(2003-12-23)

Wind done gone
"Cold Mountain" is epic yet intimate, strange and shell-shocked
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(2003-12-23)

Short Runs
(2003-12-23)

Salud
(2003-12-16)

Tip of the Week
(2003-12-16)

Sirkis people
(2003-12-16)

Holiday Movies
(2003-12-16)

Short Runs
(2003-12-16)

Tip of the Week
(2003-12-10)

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