Street Theatre

That guy in the tuxedo scarf using a garden rake to clear the snow? Yeah, that's me.

I don't have a snow shovel. The only scarf I own is fringed and has my initials embroidered on it. (It was made by an ex with a flair for fashion design.) I live in a city famous for looking nothing like it does now.

I began because I saw the guy from next door clearing the sidewalk and I thought, oh, right, that's the neighborly thing to do. So I put on my army surplus coat and my runners and my tuxedo scarf and my co-consipirator's gloves and discovered that he'd only cleared the part in front of his house.

The rake worked surprisingly well. I used the tines to break up the packed snow and then moved it along with the back of the rake. I got expert at giving the handle a flick to knock the snow out.

Then I hit on the brilliant idea of making a snowbeing in order to clear the way to the compost. Rolling the balls made a neat, sharp-edged path, and the snowbeing stands sentinel now beside the compost, which should help us find it in the event that the snow keeps falling. So I took care of access and of that responsibility that lies upon us all, to play in the snow when it appears.

To those who have spoken about the benefits of a good sweat for clearing out a cold: very funny. The trees around here are temperate trees. They're not used to holding up all that snow and they keep releasing suprise showers onto unsuspecting rakers. For every drop of sweat, a tear of ice water wrote fever, chills, sinus congestion on my neck.

If it weren't a problem, if none of us had anywhere to go, I'd just leave it. I like the snow. It makes me feel contained and protected, like something valuable wrapped in cotton.

Out there are the marks of my struggle, in neat rows, as though mad mice had plowed the snowfields.

The snow is quietly, gently, silently covering it all up again.