The snow has been falling. So cold, so cold out that the street plows leave glassine marks of snow-compacted ice that cars have to skate more than drive over.
Twenty degrees out would have seemed almost tropical a week ago. Tonight - not so much. Our old Arctic friend the wind is racing between the buildings again, just as it did a week ago on New Year's Eve.
For myself - I'm in Geno's rock bar, nursing a Glenlivet, cauterizing the burns in my mouth caused by wolfing piping hot beef stew straight out of the crockpot. My local coffee house is closed for a store meeting (we do these at the Orchard and they're a lot of fun).
The bus ride out to work happened moderately close to the start of the storm. It was a quiet but very focussed shift - as was pointed out by our manager anyone who was coming out to the Mall in this weather was serious about buying - or at least looking at - the merchandise. It was a very productive day. A lot of recovery from the excesses of the Holidays.
Coming home I took the first bus that came by with "Downtown Portland" on the front. It was run by the City of South Portland and came back to town by a totally different route. Downtown Portland was obviously an afterthought of the route planners - mostly I took a tour of the main street of SoPo - our name for it, like in New York "SoHo" is short of "South of Houston" (they call it "HOW-ston"), and "Dumbo" is "Down Under Manhattan Beach Overpass".
Here in Portland, besides "SoPo" we have "Munjo" for "Munjoy Hill" and "Woodfo" for the "Mysterious Woodford's" area - though that last is only used by me and only in the last sentence.
SoPo is much more dense, it feels much more like the compact towns visible through the windows of the Downeaster as you pass the last thirty minutes or so into Boston. There is a sense that they crowded together as time went along, like clams taking over a rock - as more people needed places to live that were more functional that palatial the spaces between the houses became smaller - though not more intimate.
A house, a driveway, a house, a driveway; on and on for blocks and blocks. Businesses fronting the street, right off the curb - flower shops, martial arts studios, dance studios, pizza shops, car repair shops.
Until we come out by the Millcreek center and the Casco Bay Bridge opens a view of the lights and - well, not towers, but taller buildings of Portland.
On my way to being disappointed by the closure of my coffee shop - I'll have to brew a cup at home - I passed through Bosnia and saw another chair in the snow, shown in the first pic above. It stands above big rocks torn from the foundation of the old Kotchsmar Theatre that used to occupy the space now known as Bosnia. The rocks are over-piled with old snow and new snow.
I think if you sit in it you hear old movies - you can see the ghosts of every ball ever dropped on the stage by vaudeville jugglers dancing on the wind. Somewhere is the sound of skinless hands applauding you as you take your seat in a private box with only a one-way door.
You smell popcorn. The curtains are parted by a wind from the Bay. Pretty girls in white tights kick their legs for you. Dark men in tails and red ties wave from the stage. White pigeons flutter in the wind.
What do you think happens when the chair is occupied? Leave them in the comments.
Stay warm.
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