Under the Weather

I don’t know what they do in these pockets of the country where the weather is of a paradisiacal nature, as in fluffy clouds, skies burnished blue to the horizon, temperate, well, temperatures, and breezes that can be filed immediately in the soft and gentle folder without a moment’s thought.

How do they talk to one another? How do they communicate at all?

Just at that point when we back here might cover a slow stretch in the conversation by saying, “cold enough to freeze your spit out there,” these poor people must just stand there looking at one another wondering what to say next.

“Get a load of that sky. Ever notice how nice and blue it is?”

I doubt that these words are ever said at all in these lands when the sky is always blue.

It would be like noting that the water is mighty wet today, or the earth is awfully solid, or that in these here parts things fall to the ground when you drop them, every single time.

When this is all that you have ever known there is seldom a driving need to comment.

It is only when you in your past have seen the sky an angry red, or streaked with an alarming yellow green, or slate gray and fixed in place in that way that precedes the worst kind of blizzard, that you are situated philosophically and emotionally here in the present to look up and say “man, now that’s what I call a pretty blue sky.”

These are fine people in these pleasure spots of the earth, I don’t say that they’re not, but when it comes to weather they are soft and untested and look an awful lot like the Romans in the latter days of the decline and fall of their empire, as all the noble virtues were bred out of the citizenry and they cared only for bread and circuses and low humidity.

There’s a certain idling or neutral gear that can be shifted into in the course of the conversational arts that keeps the engine turning over, the vocal cords engaged, and the conversation humming through the dry spells. The topic of the weather is perfect for such occasions.

It’s not politics, it’s not religion, it’s not taxes or debt or the decline of common morality or the state of the euro. It’s the weather. It’s hard to get too worked up at someone who says, ‘hot enough for you?’ no matter what his affiliation or strongly held views are otherwise.

It’s difficult to meet the statement:

“Cold as can be out there.”

With a curt:

“No it’s not. It could be a lot colder.”

Or at least you don’t hear much of that. You just nod your head and say ‘yep,’ or ‘got that right,’ or ‘you’re not a-kidding me.’

Universal peace is one step closer.

I am not certain that the great Greek rhetorician Demosthenes ever actually said that in a pinch you could always say in conversation with a stranger that you had heard that it was a dry heat they had over that way, and you’ve always found that a lot easier to take but a lot of scholars are now saying that’s only because he thought it was too obvious to put into his notes.

There are always empty spots in any conversation that occur between one topic of keen interest and the next, which nonetheless need to be bound together, else the entire enterprise is kaput.

Talking about the weather is perfect for these moments.

But there’s got to be something there to talk about, if you take my point.

When the weather is unfailingly nice, even polite you might say, when there is no hail to classify as either BB pellet, golf ball, baseball, softball, basketball or dirigible-sized, then human interaction dries up and we all suffer.

Perhaps an example will help.

Say we are in one of our movie-making capitals, which are capitals precisely because the weather is always very nice there, allowing for year round filming.

I can picture two fellows meeting on the street, movie industry types, and chatting of this and that. They are just coming to know one another. Perhaps they touch on the latest in macrobiotic diets, or the feng shui of the dog’s house in the back yard, or the most recent starlets that they have shared a malted milkshake with down at the drugstore.

Well, say further that they are involved in the script-writing business and the two of them give some time over to the question of whether it is better in the one fellow’s screenplay to have the kindly lady librarian turn into the Swamp Thing before or after the Town Chili Festival, with something to say for either side, but with a strong case to be made that all in all it’s better that she make the transition actually during the Festival, as all the townspeople will be gathered in one place at the time, the easier for snacking upon by the Swamp Thing in one meal and getting on with her busy day.

These are interesting enough topics, but eventually are dead ends. In other words, there comes a time when there simply is nothing left to say about Swamp Things, dog house feng shui, or macrobiotic diets. Something might occur in the meantime, but pursued exclusively, with no conversation putty to bind them together, the string of topical beads we call conversation quickly come to a close. These are topics that narrow down the more you talk, rather than opening up.

We can see this in the following exchange.

First Fellow:  Yes, you see the rule I have is that I insist on chewing each mouthful of grain one hundred times.

Second Fellow:  Is that so?

First Fellow:  Yes, exactly one hundred. Never more, never less.

Second Fellow: You don’t say?

First Fellow:  Yep.

Second Fellow:  How about that.

My point is that there is a natural end point as to what a rational person can have to say about macrobiotic diets, fine as such diets are.

As a topic pursued exclusively or continuously, it peters out.

Now… all might not be lost still. If he is an especially enterprising sort, the second fellow might seek to take up the reins of conversation thusly:

Second Fellow (seeing an ant make its way across the sidewalk): Seeing all these bugs around it makes me think of Jamie Rudolph in second grade who read a book and said we were all going to come back as bugs after we die. It makes a fellow wonder if there’s something to this whole reincarnation thing. 

First Fellow: Oh?

Second Fellow: Well, I mean to say, it seems like we ought to take the time to count up the number of bugs and bees and aphids and woolly caterpillars there are in the world, and then go add up how many people there are that have ever lived in the world, and if the two sums are the exact same number, well that ought to prove it right there, don’t you think?

First Fellow: You may have something there.

Second Fellow: That’d be a lot of counting though.

First Fellow:  Hmm.

And then there’s a certain amount of awkward silence, and the one clears his throat and the other one says were you about to say something, and the first one says, no, I was just clearing my throat, and then they both kind of scuff their toes into the ground waiting to see if anything else was going to occur to one of them, and then that’s about it.

Not a word on the interesting topic of microbursts and how they are often misidentified as tornados by the people actually living through them but you have to honor these people’s experiences, after all they’re the ones who were in the middle of it.

Not a sentence, phrase, or clause given over to the relative virtues of attic fans, oscillating fans, air conditioning via window unit or central, or the interesting ways one or another of them have heard of cooling a house off in the middle of a heat wave, including spraying it down on the west side before going to sleep.

Not a syllable on how we often get a warm wet February around here, which is contrary to the common thinking, and which a lot of people never take the time to notice.

Not a single minute given over to the way the air coming off the Gulf Stream comes right up through Texas and Oklahoma and all the way up near to Iowa bringing all sorts of good things our way, except, that is, when it is bringing mischief.

Even a simple ‘we surely do get the weather here, don’t we?’ would bring some small measure of relief and further the cause of simply humanity.

Well, except they don’t. Get the weather there. And that’s my point.

If they did, these fine fellows could be talking still.

Instead, they go their separate ways.

They may have worlds in common in ways that they don’t even realize and which will now never be achieved. There is a loss of bonding and the free flow of conversation and the healing touch that comes with embracing the universal brotherhood of man.

There may have been whole other solutions to the Swamp Thing conundrum that would have emerged if they had only spoken for a few more minutes, they may have given thoughtful time to considering just what would it mean to chew 95 or 105 times instead of exactly 100, which might just take the whole macrobiotic thing to a whole new level, they may have come upon great things in the line of canine feng shui in ways that even the acknowledged masters in the field hadn’t even dared to think of yet.

But no.

This is not to be. For the lack of simple filler in the course of the conversation, that conversation falls to earth wounded, struggles, and dies.

In the entire absence of the phrases ‘cats and dogs,’ ‘just a light misting for now,’ and ‘starting to pile up on the side streets.” whole worlds of opportunities for the advancement of civilization have come and gone. Mostly gone as it turns out.

Mark my words, the downfall of civilization may be writ in these burdens we put upon the happy exchange of views between one person and another.

And it’s all because the weather is so danged nice out there.  A shame, isn’t it?