other times, sadness, and cold

Been thinking about other times, sadness and cold. Been thinking about sad people too. Chester Himes, Chet Baker, Kerouac, Bukowski. There’s more I’m sure. Been thinking about the cold too. It’s cold where I live. Last night it snowed about four or five inches. Snow is strange to me still. I like how it feels under the bike tires on the morning commute. But I don’t like the way my fingertips burn with cold until I get to my desk and pound on the keys a bit. It’s sadder when it’s cold. My footprint is huge when it’s cold –heating, food comes from far, heating some more. I shovel the beautiful snow off the sidewalk in front of my post explosion home, making sure that perfect lines are drawn from the sidewalk to the driveway. I dig out the car even though it won’t move for a few more days. And it’s nice, snow, all white and pretty. But in a day or two it’ll be yellow and dirty and icy and sad. In other times people were sad in different ways, different fears and apprehensions. During Baker’s times there were big wars and depressions and hatred. During our times there’s warmings and terror and obesity and other greater and lesser wars, against drugs, thugs, bugs and even plants. Can you believe we have open all out wars against plants? Poor coca and ganja, growing quietly on hillsides, not expecting to be chemically bombed from above or cut down and burned like genocide. Still sadness is good I suppose. Sadness brings a melancholy creativity out of some like Baker. Here we see Baker being blue, an old term perhaps but meaningful nonetheless. It’s easier to be sad than grateful. But there’s a time for sadness too and there is a time for everything. Things just are innit? I mean we could wish them to be different, strive for them to be different, but a thing is just a thing and nothing more.

Here is Chet. Nothing more.