It is not the deep chill that affects me most – though the
tip of my nose feels as if bitten off by the frost – but the constant change of
mood, the up and down, the sideways that won’t even let my old river rest in
peace under its sheet of ice.
One year when my car crapped out in Passaic, Pauly – who was
always begging rides to Quick Chek – made me walk with him instead, and
crossing the Wall Street Bridge I noticed that the ice had stacked up on the
surface of the river like ice cubes, all frozen together.
Years later, the Hudson River did the
same when I could see look out my office window and still see a wider expanse
of it.
But even though it is as cold now as it was then, the rough
tumble and hefty lift of this changing environment won’t let the river alone,
making it cool down or warm up in a way that must drive the fish as crazy as
the weather drives me, neither of us knowing how to address this constant
change, neither of us left alone long enough to adapt. Let it be cold, if it
must be, or let the thaw come even if unnatural this time of year – although
back when I lived in Passaic
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