GrubHubMike

Come Inside... its Cold

"This is Merchandise Mart"

I'm really happy that I had this meeting downtown this morning. I don't get to walk downtown in the cold as much as I used to. I can't believe that Jake wrote about crossing that bridge last week. I totally get what he means. This is gonna be awesome, its about 10 blocks to my meeeting. I love getting off the train early to walk outside.

Man, Its cold out here. I'm gonna shift over to La Salle so I can see the board of trade as I'm walking downtown. Here it is, come on in. Sit there, just there, behind my eyeballs. Do you feel that, the frost crystalyzing inside your nose. Don't pull up the scarf. Ok, relax the shoulders, and all the muscles, stop fighting the cold. Feel it. Really feel it. let is get right into your chest. Ok, now take a deep breath. really deep. use my nose and my mouth, YEAH! feel all the snot and moisture in your nose freeze right up.

Oh man, Steve, I wish you could feel this. You're down there in Georgia, and don't even know how awesome winter can be. Look up there at that statue on top of the Board of Trade. What is it. Is it a grotesque idol? A symbol of worship to money and man's greed. Or wait, is it a picture of mankind striving against the world, against circumstance, against the very curse that God has laid on us. What!, is that blashpemy! NO! Did he expect us to take it lying down? To just roll over and say. "Well earth, if you won't yield crops to me without effort than I'll just die" NO! I'm gonna work. HARD.

Ok, now we're walking, and the blood's pumping, and the cold on the outside is at war with the fire on the inside, and the no man's land is about an inch beneath my skin. Much closer to my heart than it usually is. But at least its still a battleground. All of the dead, lying cold in their graves, they've stopped fighting. What am I gonna do, wrap myself up tighter, try and ignore this wintery blast? No, you can wrap me tight when I'm six feet under the ground. I'm gonna fight this cold with blood, and life.

God! Why can't anyone else see this from in here. I'm never gonna be able to right all this down and really capture what I mean. About half way now. Don't really even feel the cold anymore, except on my nose, and my cheeks. Listen to that, thousands of cars. A million marching humans all around me, just strugling? Is it futile? Yes. Is it noble? Yes.

Man I love this. I don't get it. I don't understand why someone wouldn't want to live a thousand years on this beautiful earth. People are so quick to comfort the grieving. They say, death is natural. Fuck that! Death is wrong. I feel it in the fiber of my being. I hate it. I absolutely detest it. Jesus Wept.

I love this cold. Went camping just a couple of weeks ago. And for about 30 minutes, I felt it: this cold is deadly. You can't just lie down. You can't! I love walking it it. I love knowing that walking it is keeping me alive. How did I ever survive without winter? Winter teaches us. Yes, it can be depressing. So what! You can't be happy all the time. Its not about being happy. Its about being winter, so suck it up and quit your whining.

Large coffee.
Don't let it cool. Come on, take that little sip, and swallow too fast. DANG! Ouch! Hot Hot HOT. That was dumb. Don't do that again. Ahhhh. Right in the belly. Yum.

Memory and Consciousness

I often hear people tell me that they don't remember much of their childhood. That before a certain date or period in their life, they just don't have much there. My usual response to this is to wait about 15 minutes in the conversation until that topic has passed and then ask questions that evoke memories from when someone is young. Usually, I'll talk about a cartoon or something and then see if we can talk about the stuff somebody did during or after the cartoon. Thundercats works particularly well. Its very easy to disprove the claim that a person doesn't remember their childhood.

Then, there is the issue of whether or not the memories that we have of childhood, or yesterday for that matter, are constructed. Certainly to some degree they are tainted and filtered through our current conciousness, but how much do the core facts change?

I'll leave the theoretical and academic discussion for another time. I'm interested in a few very practical questions. In particular, I've always had, and still have a burning desire to share the experience of my consciousness with another person. Words are such a poor means of communicating internal reality. First, both parties can have no guarantee that the words being used are understood the same way by both parties. Second, describing a total set of senses, impressions and details would be very hard. Third, that which is communicated is necessarily conscious.

Now what do I mean by saying I've "always had" this feeling? Well, more accurately, I remember thinking about consciousness (albeit without the same complexity) from an extremely young age. And further, I firmly believe that these memories are not constructed because I have memories of these memories. This iterative recogitation of recogitation goes back in a chain every several months all the way to the age I was 5 or 6. This is probably very weird. Not many 6 year olds are concerned with consciousness, nor of memory. But, hey there it is.

In particular, I remember just before 1st grade, thinking about why I am "me" That is, why doesn't mommy, or brother, or grandpa feel what I am feeling. Why when I tell my arm to move, does my arm move, and not Matt's. Why can't Matt make my arm move (without hitting me). Oh, "me" is different from "not me" ok. where is my GI Joe...

Another moment, I remember walking from my house to the bus stop in 2nd grade. I remember the hill of the house next to mine on the way up to the intersection where we stood. I remember stopping and saying. "I will always remember this moment. And stopping at this moment. And remembering to remember this moment."

Also, I remember making that same assertion at other times. Yet, I can't remember some of the times I made that assertion, only that I had made it several times, and that some of the times I had made the assertion didn't stick, although the memory of failing the assertion did.

My next post is going to be an attempt to share as much of the full experience of cold whether running as I can. I've picked that experience because it is incredibly rich with both internal and external sensations, and those senses are more important than the conscious thought experienced during the activity.