Siberia Lite

Sample conversation between my office-mate and me this afternoon:

Me: "Meredith, who was the Russian writer who wandered off into the
Siberian wilderness and encountered a bunch of tribesmen with no knowledge of Western culture, except that they all knew who Abraham Lincoln was? I'm thinking of Dostoyevsky, maybe; I want to use it as the opener for this article."

Her: "I have no clue."

Me: "The problem is all those fucking 1800’s Russian authors decided to up and do the whole 'I'm going to wander in the wilderness and either discover my pure and unadulterated soul or die of starvation' thing, which makes it hard to differentiate. I can’t Google it without getting every English department syllabus between Boston and Bangladesh. Was it Gogol?"

Meredith: "Why do you always ask me these things?”

A minute-long pause, then:

Me [tearing off headphones]: "And why the FUCK am I listening to Kelly Clarkson?"

Snow is coming, by Sunday probably. There will be panic in the supermarkets, and the rampant purchasing of bread, water, and, in the Whole Foods on P Street, the last of the soy milk. The cold is already here, whistling down the emptying streets. This friend of mine and I, late last night we’re lying on my living room floor wrapped in blankets against the creeping chill and finishing off the six-pack of Bass that had been languishing in my fridge. “Winter’s coming on,” she says, taking a pull off her bottle. “Survival of the fittest.”

Indeed. Gogol and Dostoyevsky knew it: Winter makes people crazed. You ease into your running rhythm early on a Saturday morning, sneakers slapping the icy sidewalk, and pass someone wearing a fur hat and boxer shorts pissing off their stoop, Hunter Thompson style. People start parallel parking by ear, waiting for the manly crunch that signifies they’ve come bumper-to-bumper with the SUV in front of them. Cabin Fever builds. And this is for an inch of powder.