State Of Syracuse Weather

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Syracuse's mayor presented the State Of The City last night. It was a good show. The speech was held up on the hill with windows overlooking the city. The lights dimmed and the blinds slowly rose revealing the world outside. The plan was for us to see Syracuse's nighttime skyline in panoramic vista. Instead we greeted a wall of white snow.

The mayor could have complained or joked about terrible weather. That's what I'm used to hearing. But he didn't complain and that's a lot of why I voted for and support him. He said it was like we were in a snow globe. Beautiful. He embraced the weather and referred to us as "the titans of winter." Oh, I like that.

At XO Taco prior to the speech, I wrote the following in my notebook:

I'm starting a pro-snow campaign in Syracuse to change the mood. I'm not expecting this to be the mayor's primary initiative. Some things I have to do myself.

If I were mayor, I'd gather the weather reporters and media executives to present the case for changing the talk around the weather, setting a new tone. It's not a conflict of interest like choosing sides in a political race. Just present the weather in a fairer light.

Celebrating the weather will lift the city's mood. We live in winter sometimes from late October until the first days of May. We get a lot of snow. This morning it's nine degrees with a fresh layer of snow and some ice. We can say it's too damn cold or declare that it is nine degrees and people are still out walking, driving, shoveling, beginning their days. We can cheer the DPW for making all the roads safe. We can celebrate a sky that is eggshell blue and bright with sunshine. It really is a beautiful day in our neighborhood.

This reminds me of the push a few years ago in North Dakota to drop North from the state's name. Ridiculous, right? But North sounds and feels colder. South Dakota is in no way tropical, but it sounds more inviting than North Dakota. Dropping North might seem foolish, but it would have a positive effect on the feel of the place. And the feel of something is often much more important than we care to admit.

Here in Syracuse, we don't have to change our name, just shift the tone from being snow victims to becoming snow titans. We can show gratitude for the chance to talk with neighbors as we shovel, to brush off a colleague's car as we wait for ours to warm after work, to come in from the cold and be offered a mug of coffee. We can marvel at how inches, sometimes feet of snow fall, yet the day goes on as if it were spring with cleared roads, open businesses, and a thriving city.

If we hear, see, and read reports celebrating winter, we can begin accepting it. Acceptance is a step toward happiness and happiness is powerful stuff.

I'm pro-snow, pro-winter, and bet your chilly ass I'm pro-Syracuse, the city of winter's titans.

Steering Clear of BOOM

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I have been pretty busy. That's good. Being busy means I am engaged in a bunch of things. I'm not overly busy. That's the state of trying to do too much and failing to engage any of it well enough to feel good. I'm coming up on that though, and need to be careful, but for now I'm just pretty busy.

Still, being this busy has kept me away from writing and that sets off a warning. Reminds me of Apollo 13 when the Saturn V loses an engine on ascent. The astronauts wonder what's up. CAPCOM wonders what's up. The flight director wonders what's up. Then one engineer says, no problem, we'll burn the other four a longer and all will be well. My warning light is blinking and mission control is checking my systems. I'm okay to burn longer, achieve orbit, head for the moon.

The thing to avoid is when Apollo 13 went BOOM after leaving Earth orbit for the moon. BOOM is bad. BOOM is life-threatening. BOOM ends things fast. I don't want BOOM. I've been there before.

That's some comfort too, familiarity with such things. I've unintentionally blown up my life several times. In each case I was dead in space, but I did what Gene Kranz directed after Apollo 13 went BOOM: I worked the problem. Those engineers and directors made let Apollo 13 go on to the moon, knowing gravity would return it to Earth. There was no shortage of hardship and danger along the way, but the astronauts arrived back on Earth. Boom wasn't the end of the story.

Even so, I don't want to go BOOM. I'll avoid being too busy to write, stealing twenty minutes at the kitchen table typing this. I'll write a little and remind myself a lot. Then I'll close the computer and decide what to do next, where to engage, what to let go, how to be busy but not overly so. After all, I'm going all the way to the moon.

And back.

Manure

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Yesterday I had a good idea for a prose poem. I grabbed the computer and typed it as best I could. It came together quickly and I followed the thread through to the ending.

At which time I realized it was complete crap.

Creative people too often complain their stuff is terrible when they no better. I find such people tiring and tune them out, which is why I want to be careful in saying the draft I wrote, about a guy I knew in college who sang aloud, despite being born from a good idea, is absolute manure. I've written good stuff and bad. I know the difference. That and I'm not looking for anyone to build me up about this. I'm not stopped by the failure. I'm not even slowed down. Why should I mind manure?

Manure can be useful. Spread it just so and things grow, so I'm told. Sure it stinks, but we get over that. If we can make use of it, then manure might just smell sweet.

(Manure, by the way, turns out to be a fun topic about which to read, if done right. Donald Hall, whose essays are done right, wrote often and delightfully about his grandfather's manure pit. See Life Work and Essays After Eighty. Check that shit out.)

In creative work, failures far outnumber successes, so there has to be some benefit to the creator that goes beyond failure and success. In other words, creative people have to appreciate the turds as much as the roses.

That last sentence certainly felt like a turd.

More than just accepting when things go awry, I have to enjoy having written these things and then use them as fodder of some kind. I'm not saying that I smile and dance every time something falls apart. More often than not I pound the desk and swear a lot. Still, there has to be something more to creating than being successful or else things just ain't gonna work out.

Some failures can be rewritten, if the idea is that good. More often, the idea lies fallow and comes up in some other piece, some other context. But most of the time, the idea fades away. Another one comes along.

When I was a writing teacher I would write a page, share it with students, then shred it in front of them. "I can always write more," I'd tell them. Getting too attached to something I've created, well, that's a big old mistake.

Just to make sure of the crappiness, I've just re-read the draft prose poem. Yep, it's bad. This is the best section and even it disappoints me:

His face was always shadowed. His smile a white surprise. His eyes ready to break into song. I'd hear him in the showers. His terrible voice echoing off the tile walls.

Like a bad car wreck, I've totaled that poem, declared it a loss. It wasn't insured, but I'll still get something for it. I've already gotten this piece and probably more.

By now I'm well adjusted to the sweet smell of all this manure I'm creating. There's no telling what might grow from it, but something always does.