Today's tantalizing touch of warmth (high 56?!) will be accompanied by lashing wind and thunderous rain through tonight and Friday morning, at which point we begin our descent back into the cold, icy catacombs. As Joe pointed out yesterday, Saturday's expected high of 39 is more like the normal low for this time in March, but does "normal" even mean anything anymore, man? There is a chance of snow on Saturday. Sure, whatever.
I just got back from a long trip to northern California, much of it spent driving up Highway 1 from Morro Bay through Big Sur to San Francisco. It's so incomprehensibly beautiful out there that the mind reels, becomes numb, drifts out to sea and gets happily eaten by sharks, becoming one with nature. I watched elephant seals scream ferociously at each other, then immediately fall asleep spooning together on the beach. And the weather is, routinely, what one might describe as "perfect," with brisk, misty mornings succumbing to warm, sunny afternoons followed by cool evenings and beach bonfires with ukulele accompaniment and free grass.
Nevertheless, it's good to be back in New York. No, really! Northern California can be sublime, particularly in and around Big Sur, but you could never really live there, could you? There's nothing abrasive, like, say, more snow in spring, to give you your edge. Everyone there is either fabulously wealthy or living out of a pickup truck with a self-sustaining organic greenhouse growing in the back. Many white people have dreadlocks. No, you're a New Yorker, you need a little seasonal adversity to remind you that life is extremely short, everything is always changing—especially the climate!—and you need to hustle and strive if you're going to accomplish anything in life.
That probably sounds like a bunch of middle class establishment brainwashing to anyone on the west coast heating up matcha tea on a camp stove outside their yurt right now. "Enjoy the rat race, New York capitalist pig," they whisper smugly as they unfurl their yoga mats on the edge of a cliff overlooking the vast cerulean ocean. "Hope you're making enough filthy lucre to pay your heating bill!" Not really, but that's what Snuggies are for.
New Yorkers know these seasonal vicissitudes keep our minds fresh and keen, and save us from sinking into the complacent mental morass induced by repetitively gorgeous weather. Whom the gods would destroy they first make complacent, Californians. This rollercoaster weather we're enjoying here on the right coast is not killing us, it's making us stronger. Faster. More resilient. Better at sarcasm. We will bury you. Looking is cancelled.
The National Weather Service says there's a chance of snow Saturday morning before 9 a.m., followed by a chance of rain, followed by the possibility of more snow Saturday night. Equanimity is the freedom from wishing the present moment to be any different from what it is. Let's make hot toddies and polish our manifestos. (Yes, that's a euphemism if you want it to be.)
