Feeling My Way Through Without an Answer in My Mind

White Blindness, originally uploaded by skitbraviking.

Should I go?

The answer to this question may normally appear in one's mind, but tonight I just don't know. I don't know a thing.

The streets are white, the sideways and front lawns and parkways all white, the sky is an illumiated dirty white, the trees are embedded in whiteness and my feet feel bogged down in whiteness. It has been a long week of sickness, end-of-the-semester blues, job interview jitters and lots and lots of grading and I am dead tired and my head aches and I am supposed to see The Soundtrack of Our Lives tonight, a band I have been trying to see for the last couple of years. They have played Chicago many times in the last few years but because of scheduling and my being a teacher, I have never ventured out on the school nights to see them. For the past few weeks have been the floodgates to build up the anticipation of seeing them tonight. I climb the stairs to my apartment and shut the snow out. The couch is sooo comfortable and it provides a comforting place for my aching sinuses. After a fish-fry dinner, the couch gets the best of me for a good hour. Bernie Mac entertains me for a bit and in the warm California light of his show's setting, I find snow legs and out of some ancient depths, my blue cool Swedish soul ignites with the idea of facing the five or six inches that have already fallen and the five or six still on the way down. With iPod, book and all the warmth that my spirit can muster, I cacoon myself in a parka and boots and walk the eight blocks to the bus, where I find two others waiting and hoping that the bus will knife through the white blaze. Only five minutes later, we're saved! My body lurches up the bus's stairs in excitement. I'll read for an hour with coffee first, then I'll rock alone in a crowd for two hours, and all the while the only thing I could have done was let the whiteness lead me blindly.