Grimly Fiendish

I'm no parapsychologist, but I'm pretty sure if your idea of the perfect weekend is staying up until 5am Saturday morning after a breathless four-hour conversation about pain, beauty and art; sleeping 'til 11:00; waking to a cold, wet-charcoal day and thinking "Yes!"; and proceeding to celebrate the lack of light with a medley of early Metallica while wishing you had a view of the moors...you just might be a vampire. 

I blame whoever gave me my first copy of Hound of the Baskervilles and let me play Help! on my Mickey Mouse turntable, thus infecting me with full-blown Anglophilia by the age of nine (you know who you are). 

I do not like scraping ice or shoveling 18 inches of snow. Nor do I like the kind of precipitation that can rip your roof off. But I love to be cold and I love rainy days. It brings out my inner Shirley Manson (who's always in there, millimeters behind the worker bee with my Achilles' Heel poised to pummel your teeth in).

Rain gives me the social go-ahead to slow down, which I damn well do anyway, but feel pressured to lie about come Monday morning at the water cooler: 

THEM
How was your weekend? Did you have a good weekend? What did you do this weekend? Did you do anything fun this weekend?

 ME
Oh, pretty good. I started reading Infinite Jest, plus the first few chapters of Candide, watched a documentary about J.D. Salinger, and outlined an idea for a series of short stories that use geographical metaphors to explore the current emotional state of the average middle class Gen X American within an increasingly insular society.

THEM
I built a tree house for charity. 

Telling sunny types you don't like sweating through your bra by nine a.m. for nine months a year is like telling them you're bringing fetus fajitas to the spring picnic. They'll figure you're either a vampire or a Muslim.

So I relish days like today when the joggers, the cross fitters, the triathletes and the yoga booty ballerinas are stuck inside watching Pretty Woman for the hundredth time. Not that I begrudge them their sun. I just need a few dark days to keep breathing. 

Cue the Nick Cave!


Push The Sky Away
(lyrics)

I was ridin', I was ridin', oh
The sun, the sun, the sun was rising from the field
I got a feeling I just can't shake
I got a feeling that just won't go away
You've got it, just keep on pushing and, keep on pushing and
Push the sky away
And if your friends think that you should do it different
And if they think that you should do it the same
You've got it, just keep on pushing and, keep on pushing and
Push the sky away
And if you feel you got everything you came for
If you got everything and you don't want no more
You've got it, just keep on pushing and, keep on pushing and
Push the sky away
And some people say it's just rock 'n' roll
Aw, but it gets you right down to your soul
You've got it, just keep on pushing and, keep on pushing and
Push the sky away
You've got it, just keep on pushing and, keep on pushing and
Push the sky away
You've got it, just keep on pushing and, keep on pushing and
Push the sky away