1:33 pm.
The corner of my street (Suburban Detroit)
I misread the bright sun as an indication of warmth and leave my house in a sweatshirt and jeans. Once outside, I notice the porch thermometer read 30.6 F and one gust of wind makes me sure that is a generous estimate. I venture back inside for a second sweatshirt and a scarf.
My fingertips grow numb around the red, leather-bound notebook as I begin the walk to the corner. There are no city regulations on sidewalks- they vary neighborhood to neighborhood. That said, the sidewalk begins at my neighbor's place (absent in front of my own home) and stretches to the end of Pierce where it crosses its parallel compatriot along Merriman Road. I begin my walk in the wet, asphalt street, fearful of splash-back from passing vehicles driving through the puddles of thick, gray slush. A quick hop over the foot-wide puddle at the base of Glenn and Claire's driveway puts me safely on the sidewalk.
Not quite every other square of the sidewalk is salted-- it seems to go two or three on, two or three off. The salted squares have returned to their usual shade of notice-me-not beige. This hue is especially lackluster and stark next to the squares still covered in snow now glowing blue-white and brilliant in the sun. The variance between the two types of squares is geometric. The whole thing looks like a column in an inexpertly crafted chessboard.
I stop at the corner. Looking down, I notice I am on a beige square. I stoop to examine the pile of rock salt that rests in the center. Each chunk of salt is maybe a 1/3" in diameter, a polygon varying from cube to tetrahedron. I wonder if its crystalline structure resembles a magnified version of the snowflake it so readily destroys. It seems strange the two should have such a volatile relationship; salt and water seem to get on rather well in the sea. I drop the salt rock I am handling into a pile of undisturbed snow. Immediately, it begins to burn through the layers of frozen water. I swear I hear a sizzle. The salt on the roads and sidewalk changes the smell of this cold, adds a sharp, metallic note to the air. I walk back breathing deeply, imagining I can smell the difference as I cross from a salted square to an unsalted one and back.
I particularly enjoyed your last paragraph. My first thought was to remember a Rocko's Modern Life episode when he tries to get a driver's license. He meets a random character wabbling through the halls who stops next to him and says, "Don't step on the white tiles." And then whispers, "Hot lava." How funny, then, when you take a piece of rock from a beige square and drop it on the snow, hearing the sizzle as it "burns" through the snow.
ReplyDeleteBut you make a fair point about the relationship between salt and water, and the scent that drifts up from salted streets. I like how you imagine smelling the difference between each square you walk over. I'm definitely going to try taking a piece of street salt and dropping it on undistrubed snow just to see if I can hear it sizzle, too.
You make great use of what seems to be a short journey. Your attention to detail is astounding. I really like the image of the sidewalk as a geometric pattern. Your musing about salt and water and their volatile relationship is another interesting point...technically, I don't think the "salt" that they use on the ground is the same as the salt in the ocean. Just another reason why the two probably don't get along...
ReplyDeleteThat's one of my biggest complaints about winter: the deception of the sun. Maybe I'm just too hopeful, but I actually get mad at the sun when I feel cheated by its illusion of warmth.
ReplyDeleteThe salt is incredible -- I never really noticed it as a kid, because it seemed fairly natural on country roads, but the city sidewalks are absolutely covered. I've never *really* studied the rock-salt as individual pieces, only as a bunch. I love your description ("tetrahedron").
ReplyDeleteCuriously, I just saw the Super Bowl commercial that takes place in Detroit. I don't remember what make of car, but the ad was telling: There were all these very romantic portraits of the city's skyline (the Joe Louis sculpture, etc.) And then, at one point, Eminem appears in front of a choir and says something like, "This is Detroit, this is what we do."
I remembered our (brief) correspondence (to which I'm still looking forward to responding), and I was curious how you might have reacted to it. The perspective is epic and old-school (it's a very "downtown" view, with tall buildings and sharply dressed people wandering gray streets), but not "flattering" in the traditional sense. This entry reminds me of that -- a rich homage to a dreary day.