Snowball's Chance

Snowball’s Chance

Snow, what is it? Where does it come from? Who cares, right? I don’t because I don’t think you have to care. Snow is not asking to see your driver’s license of what your credit score is before allowing you to enjoy its benefits. Not all of what we conceive of snow is a benefit, initially. It becomes one, but again that comes later so who cares? Shoveling it is has its rewards don’t get me wrong. There is nothing like the look of a clean dry sidewalk when you are lying on its frozen surface waiting hopefully for a neighbor to see you and call 911. Having a heart attack can be considered a set back as far as benefits are concerned, but then again I think it has to do with perspective. We have become linear thinkers. We see things through the lens of immediacy. We expect everything to happen when we need them to happen, like snow.

Fifty degrees in December? What is happening? I’m not living in Los Angeles where winters are like fall. I live where the tundra is expected to freeze, where winter clothing is supposed to be worn indoors, and where your skin refuses to give into the icy blasts of air from the north, and become a pale reminder of the manakin at the store whose coat I’m wearing. There are a lot of things wrong with winter and its visible accomplice snow, but what would November, December, January, February, March, and April be without it?

If it were not for winter we would most likely become the comatose example of what everyone dreams about doing after retirement, until they retire. I met a man on an island in Lake Nicaragua. I was walking along the beach when this middle-aged man wearing a white sport coat and silk tie approached me. He looked like a retiree, but I’ve learned it is best not to judge unless it is necessary. He asked where I was from, and I responded from Canada, as all Americans do when confronted by a stranger in a foreign country. He responded by saying, “I thought you were American.”

It turned out that he was an Architect who was designing a building for the government. I asked if Nicaragua didn’t have any of their own Architects, and he replied, “I am amazed they’ve got paper and pens.” I thought that was a rather derogatory thing to say, but then I’d just met him and I knew he too was also not from there, and decided perhaps his sense of humor was one based on ridicule rather than sarcasm. It reminded me of home.

After several minutes of weather-related talk I discovered he was from Denmark. I had never known anyone Danish, but was surprised they had Architects as their climate seemed inconducive to building, given the cold and months of darkness. As if he’d read my mind we veered off from the exclusivity of weather by adding the amendment of cold weather related to the norther hemisphere. I asked him why that had any bearing on the price of tea in China. It was my attempt at humor, and often when I’m stuck for something to say, I add confusion by asking questions not germane to anything in particular. It was obvious from the way he rolled his eyes that he’d played the game before. It did not detour him from forging ahead explaining why the dark and cold was an essential element in productivity, as far as his professional opinion was concerned.

He went on to explain in rather explicit detail how he and his colleagues had come to the same conclusion. Not being a colleague or an Architect, I felt it necessary in order to defend other non-architects as well as myself, to listen to his prosecutorial dribble before responding with antidotes of my own. “It’s like this,” he says. “Before I begin to explain my reasoning, I must provide the background so as not to leave you out in the cold.” I assumed it was another one of the northern colloquial expressions everyone has heard, and it was.

“I have designed building around the world, and find the dividing line not so much the equator itself, which as you know is an imagined line drawn around the earth to further separate people, and I suppose that temperature is as good a way as any. I have to admit, when I come here it is uncomfortable at first but soon grows wearisome. But for the occasional rainstorm the temperature remains the same. I believe that is why the major difference occurs between the two hemispheres. I should give you an example so you can follow. I’ve met other Canadian imposters before and you all have a similar habit of jumping to a conclusion before the punchline. So I would ask in the name of consequential discussion to refrain from doing so until I have concluded my reasoning for you. ”His accent was quite catching. I believe I caught four out of five words.

I had nothing better to do, the beach was deserted, the sun was perched on the horizon, and I wanted to hear what sort of theory he developed based on the temperature differential of the people of the South, and those of the North. “Please continue. I haven’t jumped to a conclusion in years, so don’t worry about that.You just go ahead and let me have both barrels, as we say out west.”

He seemed to calm down a bit, at least he wasn’t as difficult to keep up with walking in the sand as he had been earlier. There is an art to walking on the beach and he hadn’t apparently mastered it. Walking In sugar sand is a kin to a fool’s errand. It is twice as difficult as walking on the damp sand exposed by a receding tide . Not wanting to seem to much like a Canadian, I refrained from pointing out the obvious to him. I’m not sure he would have believed me, anyway, knowing I’m not really Canadian.

“As I was saying, the dichotomy between the North and South isn’t just the temperature differences, but what occurs because of them. In a climate that stays relatively the same, tomorrow is like yesterday, yesterday is like today, and today is what it is. As you see there is no need to yearn for Summer when that is your only choice. So if today is like tomorrow, what difference does it make if what I need to do today, I do tomorrow, or the day after or next week? Manana Is as much today as it is yesterday or tomorrow. It is a mind set that creeps from generation to generation, moving so slowly change is imperceptible, and therefore not frightening because there are no consequences. Everyone agrees, so when you arrange a meeting for a Monday, don’t be surprised if Monday for them is actually a Wednesday, or Friday. In their minds it is all the same; the weather has taught them that. If it doesn’t get done today you might get a sunburn in response to your excuse, but you will not die.

Now in the North, we have learned a very different lesson from the weather. Time and death share a common interest. Of course that is true all over the world, it is just more pronounced in the North. Where those in the South have the concept of a tomorrow, whether they actually believe it is, is another story. But in the North, a tomorrow can mean the difference between having to shoot a horse like that Russian author Solzhenitsyn, and crawl inside in order to keep from freezing to death. Our yesterdays, no matter how many you have, are going to do you no good when the temperature is 30 degrees below freezing today, and the outlook for a tomorrow don’t look promising either. Our future is difficult to see because darkness grows with each steamy breath.The reason I’m telling you this is because of what occurs from a mental health standpoint when you are from the North, and come to the South to work.

Architects believe in schedules, especially those from the north, which translated means time sensitive limits. Our building season, unlike the Souths is about 7 to 8 months. So our schedule must fall within that time frame if what we have planned is to be executed. Here in the South I may set up an appointment for Monday, let’s say 10 am, and I am there at 9:50 am just to make sure I’m on time. I wait until noon and those who are to look over the drawings do not show up. No calls, no messages, no texts, emails, nothing. I wait until 2 pm, and then leave. On my way out of the building I run in Jose Fernando, the chair of the building committee.I ask about the appointment and he immediately apologizes. “Oh, 10 am?I thought It was this evening, and I forgot I have an event to attend, so I can’t make it then either. How about Wednesday? I’d skip tonight, but it’s supposed to be the soccer match of the century.I couldn’t miss that. Tomorrow then?” And before I can answer he’s gone.

So, that is why I’m on the beach at sunset hoping to be devoured by a whale. Do you happen to see what I mean by the differential between the South and North? I would expect you having to pretend you’re from Canada you would understand. I’ve never been there, but anyplace the rivers and your eye lids freeze, is like home to me…and… do you have any idea where we are?” I hadn’t thought about getting lost as we were on an island, but then an island on a lake gives pause for reflection.

We followed our footsteps in the sand back to the motel hoping they were our footprints. We said our goodbyes, and I wished him luck on Wednesday or Friday or next week, whatever worked out for him. I sat in my room having seen the re-run of Naked and Afraid from the previous evening, and began to think about what he’d told me; nude architects chopping their way through the jungle in search of the ancient city of Nowhere.

The first thing I remembered was that I didn’t get his name. He had an accent that I could cope with, so I believed he was from Denmark. I could see no reason he’d lie about where he was from. I do believe he was right about time having a different meaning in different places, not only southern and northern hemispheres, but in varied latitudes as well. I’ve been in the east in the winter and although it is not as cold, does have a yesterday and a tomorrow. The pace at which time is administered is faster in the east. There seems to be in the southeast a definite hint of time slipping closer to that of South America as the climate warms. A Monday may not be a Wednesday, but the difference between 9 am and noon are strikingly similar.

Regardless of times changing, snow does appreciably impact a good part of the world, and I know I can’t be the only one that finds the claim that no two snowflakes are alike, not only understandable, but encouraging. Kind of like fingerprints, they are a genetic indicator that recognizes only you. The reasons I assume are the same. Conditions are never identical, and therefore the results are never the same. The concept of snow, what it is, how it happens, and the impact it has on people and their lives, caused me to realize something I’ve known subconsciously all along, snow is an accumulation of individuals who share common traits, but are singularly different. I guess it’s why getting hit in the head with a snowball doesn’t hurt as much as if it were a pool ball.