February 22: Better Weather for Me, Snowstorm that Never Ends, Raging Outside

Santiago is humiliated by the limitations of his body . . .

"Light brisa," he said. "Better weather for me than for you, fish."

His left hand was still cramped, but he was unknotting it slowly.

I hate a cramp, he thought. It is a treachery of one's own body. It is humiliating before others to have a diarrhea from ptomaine poisoning or to vomit from it. But a cramp, he thought of it as a calambre, humiliates oneself especially when one is alone.

The body never gets a break.  Even a furnace in the dead of January in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan gets to sleep every once in a while.  Not so for these skin machines we all inhabit.  The lungs keep lunging.  The heart keeps hearting.  The brain keeps braining.  Until those machines begin to have little breakdowns.  That's what's happening to Santiago in the above passage.

I'm sore tonight because of this snowstorm that never ends.  It's still raging outside.  Another twelve to 15 inches tonight.  Schools are falling one-by-one to closure this evening.  If the university where I teach closes, it will be the last domino to fall, claimed some time early tomorrow morning before the sun washes darkness out of the sky.  

My soreness is the result of shoveling my car and house out this morning at 5:30.  My wife had to work at 7 a.m.  She was hired last month for a job at the front desk of a hotel on the shores of Lake Superior.  We are grateful for the paycheck, as our existence is often hand to mouth.  However, having to get on the highway at 6 a.m. in the middle of a blizzard is insanity.

My wife did text her boss last night, saying that, depending on the weather, she may not be able to make it to work in the morning.  Her boss's response:  "The absence will be unexcused and will go in your employee file."  Translation:  Get your ass to work!  Or else!

I don't understand bosses like this.  With rules chiseled in stone that have no relation to human need.  I have been lucky for most of my working life.  My bosses have all been homo sapiens with beating hearts and compassionate dispositions.  They didn't expect me to risk my life to get to the office on days of whiteouts and thirty-below-zero wind chills.  

However, my wife and I busted it out this morning--dug and shoveled and cleared.  We were on the road by 6:35, and my wife was exactly five minutes late for work this morning.  That's all.

And now, my arms are sore.  My neck is aching a little.  And I am bone tired.

Thank you, mindless, heartless capitalism.  The beat goes on.  Until it doesn't.

Saint Marty isn't looking forward to the drifts of tomorrow morning.