Outlaw World

The last of the 12 inches of snow was falling, seeking low spots near the garage to fill in. It is snowy days like these that put me in mind of Stephen King's The Shining. I glanced at the hardy shrubs outside the library window, looking for the slightest sign of movement, a sure give-away that they had moved towards the house in a threatening manner, even though I was never quite sure what evil havoc shrubs and bushes could wreak. They had the uncanny ability, to be sure, to discountenance one when they abruptly moved from yon to hither, as they did in Kubrick's film version of The Shining, but since the pruning shears and snippers and coppicing saws had all been secured away, what harm could a bush do, other than throw nasty allergic-reaction causing juniper berries at you.
It is snowy days like these that are so Edgar Allen Poe cum Vincent Price... when the temperature drops precipitously, when the snows pile up to the windows and even higher, causing the sunlight diffused through the clouds to blink out as the casements drowned in the frozen precip.
It is especially days like then when the city layoffs have reduced the number of snowplow drivers from 100 to 50 that cause the tell-tale heart to apprehension. Well, I was not intending to go anywhere anyway... for a few days, at least. I would be alone, shut-off from the madding crowd... totally alone... perhaps the power will go out again as trees, laden with snow, genuflect into power lines... at least the snow cover will insulate us for a while. How long would it take for the temperature to drop? How long can one go without food? Water I could get from melting snow... as long as there was gas to the water heater. If the power grid goes down... say, have they ever done anything to bring it up to "code" since the Great North East Blackout of 2002? No, I think we decided on spending the money in Iraq instead. So here we are at the mercy of "possibility of freezing rain through 10:00 PM." Here! Here at the Mountains of Madness in the imaginary yet all-too-real virtual own, private Antarctica of Lovecraftian design....

It was at this point I heard the growl of cams, pistons, lifters, and low gears engaged with a mighty will. I ceased my mournful meditations, said "Shoo!" a couple of times at the Raven perched over the door, and went to the window, where I was rewarded by the sight of a monstrous sun-denying blackness of an all-wheel drive Escalade bucking and churning against the white stuff. The symbolism was acutely Evil triumphs over Good and Pure Whiteness, but I took the role of the advocatus diaboli, and cheered for the trampling of nature under the wheels of progress... just this once, feeling myself a bit like John Milton as he wrote about the noble lineaments of Satan lost from Paradise, fallen yet unvanquished. For this was my rescue: my nephews in one of their wonderful, munificent gas-guzzling, smog-spewing terminators-on-wheels come to my door. I thought briefly of "Down And Out In Beverly Hills", because it had been based on a French film "Bodou Sauvé Des Eaux" (Bodou Rescued From the Water), and I was - if I were anything - certainly Montag Sauvé Des Eaux Gelées (from frozen water)... or Des Neiges (from the snows), or durci par le froid... par l'orteil de Dieu!! I found myself saying... by the big toe of the Lord! thinking along the lines of frostbite followed by starvation.

They beat a path to the door, and snow tumbled inside as I threw it open. Lots of boot-stomping and scraping, cheeks filling with breath and blowing on fingers stripped from wet gloves, scarves flung randomly through the air and coming to rest on the decor as if the entire front room had been TP'ed by high-spirited and sophomoric knitters and purlers.
Earl Grey looked out from the kitchen and started the tea brewing. Aloysius ( pronounced A-loy'-shus ) produced the New York Times in its blue plastic bag which the paper boy had placed on the porch earlier, only to have it buried until spring. We would fight later over who got to read the NY Times Book Review first... the first reader got to recite the worst of the pretentious pomposities out loud to the rest of us, so by the time we got to read it, they were considerably watered down, and we tended to take the Times's word for it that some bright young thing of 21, fresh from Oberlin, was oracular beyond her years.

After a great indulgence in tea and after the paper had been strewn across the library floor, talk turned to more mundane things, things which were not of all that great an interest - sort of like the talk on Thanksgiving after everyone has eaten too much soporific turkey and drank too much wine and siesta was the order of the afternoon... turned to things, in short, such as my blog.
Ayden mentioned the post on drugs, and wondered whether I was seriously in support of crack. I explained that I did not mean manufactured drugs, rather the pharmacopeia that grew normally within the world, mentioning once again the fact that human beings produce cannabinoids naturally within their own bodies. I said that it was the nature of life: there is pain, and God - in His mercy - also provides various means of assuaging the pain.
Austin said, "Then you consider hemp to be "wheat", not "tares"?"
"Precisely," I answered.
They had, of course, heard a lot about the debate on drug legalization, but had never heard anyone say that such naturally growing alkaloids might be part of God's plan, as it were.

I ended up saying that the predominant mind-set of the USA was an effort to "Outlaw the World". The paradoxical right-wing "welcome" to the democratic revolutions in the Middle East were typical: invade Iraq to "kick start" democracy. Then when the big, bad black, red, and chrome Hog of democracy revs its mighty engines, change your minds and say that it is all terrorists.
The three of them nodded in unison.
Outlaw world in Outland Universe... there is no High Plains Drifter coming to save us, just ourselves. We just can not outlaw everything we do not like, as the governor of Wisconsin wishes to do. Pretty soon, there will be nothing left but Homeland Security, TSA, Wars-Agaist-Whatevers, Czars heading up those Wars, and just an enormous Posse befuddled by the fact that every time they shoot one of the James Brother, Jesse or Frank, they just pop right back up again... like children playing cowboys.