Jeffrey Rubard
2022-03-29 20:30:38 UTC
I haven’t left my house in almost a month.
It’s either Tuesday or Wednesday — most likely Wednesday — and three days ago a foot of snow fell on Pollard, Illinois, and its surrounding farmlands: storybook snow as soft as sifted cake mix. Although an old municipal plow has scraped down the street exactly twice—the driver’s head enshrouded in wool — clearly it’s been an effort in futility as the snow continues to fall at a dizzying rate.
I’m in the attic. I’ve been spending the last few hours counting the number of people laboring down the middle of my street on cross-country skis. . Laboring, not gliding, as one might expect from a sport that uses a pair of long, preternatural runners. There have been seven skiers so far. Velocity-challenged and hunched over, the cross-country skier fights the snow, driving his poles into the frozen crust, desperate for purchase. The snow doesn’t welcome his pursuit the way it coaxes the downhill skier with its powdery, virginal shimmer. It bewilders rather than bewitches.
The cross-country skier exists as if trapped in a purgatorial silent movie.
It’s strange how full-body winterwear makes gender difficult to identify. Each goggled cross-country skier seems androgynous, machine-like, somehow pneumatic. It appears that the sport is a solitary pursuit, as I have yet to witness duos or trios. Perhaps there is something about the threat of being snowbound in a small town that inspires the lone adventurer? Where are they going, one by one? Are they skiing away from lives of ill repute? Or to a lover? Or simply to the library to return overdue books because the car won’t start?
Whatever the case, those lone skiers, as they probably already know, are not going to find much in Pollard. Pollard aside from Our Lady of Snows shrine, an embarrassing, miniaturized counterfeit of the shrine at Lourdes, France (ours looks more like an interstate rest stop for science-fiction enthusiasts than a place of pilgrimage dedicated to Christ’s mother), and an enormous bookbindery on the outskirts of town.
What snow does to a small town like Pollard is vastly different from what it does to a mountainside. Whereas it beautifies the mountainside, beckoning photography and sporting life and teams of people in expensive, pastel-colored, waterproof Gortex to gather on outdoor lodge decks and drink mulled wine and hot toddies, it shuts the small town down, rendering it municipally constipated.
Mountain snow has the power to be painted. Small-town snow just gets dirty.
Architecturally speaking, the houses on my street are sort of interesting in that they are mostly mid-nineteenth-century, three- to four-story Victorians in various states of structural and aesthetic decline. The less compelling houses are a pair of low, flat Tudors and something four lots down that looks unfortunately log-cabinish. From my vantage point (the attic), the neighborhood has been suddenly blessed with an innocent gingerbread-house quality, featuring meringue-like gables, sugar-glazed finials, and frosted yards. Things look downright Alpine. But Pollard is no mountainside. Soon it will be dirty.
It’s warm and dry here in my attic room and the portable humidifier beside my writing desk issues a calming, attendant hiss and the occasional gurgle. It smells cedarn up here today. I’m dressed in two pairs of slightly yellowing, old-school, waffle-patterned long johns (long johns on long johns, if you will), a moth-bitten, Brillo-pad-gray cardigan sweater, a pilling wool winter hat the color of kelp that mostly hides my asinine hair, merino Ingenius camping socks, and a light-blue terry-cloth bathrobe that has become a low-grade monastic cloak. It is definitely the outfit of the nonattendant. The uniform of a Life in Default.
I am also now sporting a beard, and have developed a very real anxiety about it smelling gamy, like wet squirrel or coon. Beard pong can be an acute social/hygienic problem and when I encounter my tenants at the front porch mailboxes or in the basement laundry room I make an effort to keep at least an arm’s length between us. Though I twiddle and stroke the beard compulsively, I don’t know what it looks like, as I’ve been doing my best to avoid mirrors and reflective surfaces of any kind out of fear of what I’m liable to see staring back at me. I’m starting to imagine the beleaguered Civil War soldier. Or the banished indie record store warlock. Or a derelict from the northwest United States. Like one of those Olympia, Washington, societal dropouts who eats only frosted Pop-Tarts, living out a nineties grunge fantasy. The beard is mangy and random, with riptides and lots of wiry rogue strands.
The word wayward comes to mind.
But I’m a musician, so doesn’t that make my current state okay? Musicians have beards. And many musicians live outside of time. There’s Time and then there’s Musician’s Time.
This morning the molten plates of my personal history took a tectonic shift when I realized it’s been nine days since I’ve removed the bathrobe. Yes, attired in ancient terry cloth, I’ve slept, eaten, landlorded, gone to the bathroom, washed dishes, and guitar-noodled for some unfathomable number of hours.
One of the strange symptoms of even the mildest form of agoraphobia is that it gets progressively difficult to distinguish between personal and household odors. Beyond my beard, which I really can’t smell, as I’ve no doubt grown immune, the rest of my person stinks of the attic’s aged cedar, fiberglass insulation, and the faint aroma of dead mice. Mold memory. A skosh of Lysol-covered bird death. At least I’m still brushing and flossing. My mother used to say that when you give up on your teeth you might as well lie down in a ditch and wait for the dirt. I guess I’m still keeping that proverbial ditch at bay.
© Excerpted from the book Know Your Beholder. Copyright © 2015 by Adam Rapp. Reprinted with permission of Little, Brown and Company. All rights reserved.
It’s either Tuesday or Wednesday — most likely Wednesday — and three days ago a foot of snow fell on Pollard, Illinois, and its surrounding farmlands: storybook snow as soft as sifted cake mix. Although an old municipal plow has scraped down the street exactly twice—the driver’s head enshrouded in wool — clearly it’s been an effort in futility as the snow continues to fall at a dizzying rate.
I’m in the attic. I’ve been spending the last few hours counting the number of people laboring down the middle of my street on cross-country skis. . Laboring, not gliding, as one might expect from a sport that uses a pair of long, preternatural runners. There have been seven skiers so far. Velocity-challenged and hunched over, the cross-country skier fights the snow, driving his poles into the frozen crust, desperate for purchase. The snow doesn’t welcome his pursuit the way it coaxes the downhill skier with its powdery, virginal shimmer. It bewilders rather than bewitches.
The cross-country skier exists as if trapped in a purgatorial silent movie.
It’s strange how full-body winterwear makes gender difficult to identify. Each goggled cross-country skier seems androgynous, machine-like, somehow pneumatic. It appears that the sport is a solitary pursuit, as I have yet to witness duos or trios. Perhaps there is something about the threat of being snowbound in a small town that inspires the lone adventurer? Where are they going, one by one? Are they skiing away from lives of ill repute? Or to a lover? Or simply to the library to return overdue books because the car won’t start?
Whatever the case, those lone skiers, as they probably already know, are not going to find much in Pollard. Pollard aside from Our Lady of Snows shrine, an embarrassing, miniaturized counterfeit of the shrine at Lourdes, France (ours looks more like an interstate rest stop for science-fiction enthusiasts than a place of pilgrimage dedicated to Christ’s mother), and an enormous bookbindery on the outskirts of town.
What snow does to a small town like Pollard is vastly different from what it does to a mountainside. Whereas it beautifies the mountainside, beckoning photography and sporting life and teams of people in expensive, pastel-colored, waterproof Gortex to gather on outdoor lodge decks and drink mulled wine and hot toddies, it shuts the small town down, rendering it municipally constipated.
Mountain snow has the power to be painted. Small-town snow just gets dirty.
Architecturally speaking, the houses on my street are sort of interesting in that they are mostly mid-nineteenth-century, three- to four-story Victorians in various states of structural and aesthetic decline. The less compelling houses are a pair of low, flat Tudors and something four lots down that looks unfortunately log-cabinish. From my vantage point (the attic), the neighborhood has been suddenly blessed with an innocent gingerbread-house quality, featuring meringue-like gables, sugar-glazed finials, and frosted yards. Things look downright Alpine. But Pollard is no mountainside. Soon it will be dirty.
It’s warm and dry here in my attic room and the portable humidifier beside my writing desk issues a calming, attendant hiss and the occasional gurgle. It smells cedarn up here today. I’m dressed in two pairs of slightly yellowing, old-school, waffle-patterned long johns (long johns on long johns, if you will), a moth-bitten, Brillo-pad-gray cardigan sweater, a pilling wool winter hat the color of kelp that mostly hides my asinine hair, merino Ingenius camping socks, and a light-blue terry-cloth bathrobe that has become a low-grade monastic cloak. It is definitely the outfit of the nonattendant. The uniform of a Life in Default.
I am also now sporting a beard, and have developed a very real anxiety about it smelling gamy, like wet squirrel or coon. Beard pong can be an acute social/hygienic problem and when I encounter my tenants at the front porch mailboxes or in the basement laundry room I make an effort to keep at least an arm’s length between us. Though I twiddle and stroke the beard compulsively, I don’t know what it looks like, as I’ve been doing my best to avoid mirrors and reflective surfaces of any kind out of fear of what I’m liable to see staring back at me. I’m starting to imagine the beleaguered Civil War soldier. Or the banished indie record store warlock. Or a derelict from the northwest United States. Like one of those Olympia, Washington, societal dropouts who eats only frosted Pop-Tarts, living out a nineties grunge fantasy. The beard is mangy and random, with riptides and lots of wiry rogue strands.
The word wayward comes to mind.
But I’m a musician, so doesn’t that make my current state okay? Musicians have beards. And many musicians live outside of time. There’s Time and then there’s Musician’s Time.
This morning the molten plates of my personal history took a tectonic shift when I realized it’s been nine days since I’ve removed the bathrobe. Yes, attired in ancient terry cloth, I’ve slept, eaten, landlorded, gone to the bathroom, washed dishes, and guitar-noodled for some unfathomable number of hours.
One of the strange symptoms of even the mildest form of agoraphobia is that it gets progressively difficult to distinguish between personal and household odors. Beyond my beard, which I really can’t smell, as I’ve no doubt grown immune, the rest of my person stinks of the attic’s aged cedar, fiberglass insulation, and the faint aroma of dead mice. Mold memory. A skosh of Lysol-covered bird death. At least I’m still brushing and flossing. My mother used to say that when you give up on your teeth you might as well lie down in a ditch and wait for the dirt. I guess I’m still keeping that proverbial ditch at bay.
© Excerpted from the book Know Your Beholder. Copyright © 2015 by Adam Rapp. Reprinted with permission of Little, Brown and Company. All rights reserved.