What is it about February? Even this one, a third over and temperatures have been closer to 50s than even 40s. Not balmy, of course .¤.¤. For the past three months not able to go out the door in anything but an overcoat of some kind; this uniform that we all wear: the navys and blacks and charcoal grays, in New York commuting for as often as I do the subway company I keep more funeral parlor than rumpus room.
Why do we grow up and into these Beckettian uniforms from the primary colors of kindergarten? (As a toddler I had a smashing ruby red shorts and harness outfit that I wore when tooling around on my fire-engine red tricycle .¤.¤. Now I don’t even own a stitch of clothing that’s red.)
Resist the tendency to look beyond February, to March, April. Spring. Once twenty-eight (twenty-nine this year) fleet past, then we’ve gotten through another winter, the very idea that a hundred days every year we treat as if they are a Castor oil choke pill: “Did you get your flu shot? I know it’s not as cold as last year, but hell, it’s still cold . . . I hate being cold.”
There are these two fishermen from Long Island who bring their catch to our neighborhood’s farmers’ market every Sunday in February. Even on these mild Sundays faces and hands are lobster-red, and when there’s a bit of cold breeze up, they are first to say thank you to the bundled-up shopper for coming out on such a frigid day, brushing off any concern you show for them. I mean these fellas go out into the sea of a February dawn and haul in nets, wrestle with frozen line and do any variety of hard ocean- and bay-spray labor and still THEY’RE the ones who graciously say “Thank you, sir,” for coming out in the cold, while I marvel at how they can use their meaty red hands at all, much less handle the fish cutlets and ice shards and tiny glassine bags that look so foolish in their grasp, these men whose cheering, wisecracking selves never fail to make a dent in my February blahs. And to listen to Ewan MacColl, a folk singer whose work the fishermen call to mind: http://mysp.ac/ybqRGV (most especially, “Such a Parcel of Rogues in a Nation,” courtesy of my friend, Graeme.)
This too, I've found, is a February blah-denter: Slow-going on the downward slope of 24th Street between Sixth and Fifth avenues, where the wind is always up and I commune with my own Private Statue of Liberty on the horizon of New York Harbor.
And yet it is so sunny, it seems, every day, and mild if not warm, since we’ve been back from Key West in mid-January, not a single day you could legitimately call cold .¤.¤.
Maybe this year, the blahs have as much to do with the sports world: football fanatics without their Super Bowl, ten days before pitchers and catchers report to spring training, a month before March Madness, hockey fans (even the players) surfeit with games that don’t inspire (Columbus vs. New Jersey, anyone?), bone-weary and uninspired after four games in six nights, and pro basketball, what hardly seems like a league, a slow-motion exercise to the playoffs and even those don’t excite until game seven of the finals.
Demi Moore? At least last February we had Charlie Sheen. Sorry, but I'm finding it hard to get too worked up. Wasn’t Demi in “St. Elmo’s Fire” in 1985, eight years after “Saturday Night Fever.” Gosh, life was simple then.
And, yeah, they were running the Boston Marathon. In 1977, the winner was Jerome Drayton with a time of 2:14:46. Last year, Geoffrey Mutai at 2:03:02 . . .
Early last February I injured my hamstring. But this year (knock on wood!), it’s been all systems go. Here’s how I finally chase away the February blahs this year:
Only 67 days until Boston!
Next: Running for Your Life: Intrepid Route
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