It's like a scene from Doctor Zhivago
Sunday, 21 December 2008 12:06
We've had snow before. Nothing like this, though.
A picture would be worth a thousand words, but that would rob me of four pages of typing.
We're not blanketed, we're duvet-ed. I can't wait for the sun to come up so I can get out there and finish putting the roof on our igloo. We have plenty of building material now. I might even have the strength to lay down a bobsled run. Or a ski jump.
I'll post a picture when I'm done.
We have a visitor at The Compound, kooky cousin Karen, so I'm thinking another pair of hands will improve progress.
We have nothing else to do.
Yesterday the wife drove our wagon into a ditch in a futile attempt to pick up Karen from the airport. No one was hurt, but that car ain't goin' nowhere for awhile. Our driveway is impassable. The street we live on is, as well.
A friend picked up Karen from the ferry and dropped her at the gas station on (what we'll call) the main road. So, the family trekked the mile or so up and down hill and vale through treacherous ice and freezing conditions to meet cousin Karen. And pick up some half & half, and a bottle of wine, and some bacon...you know, a few essentials while we were out.
Within an hour of making the return trek up that icy road past the ditched car back home, the snow started falling again. Good timing, really.
The power went out briefly last night. Were we to lose electricity this would really be an adventure.
We'd be like Omar Sharif and Julie Christie trapped for the winter in some mansion on the frozen steppes of Russia. Except we have Internet access. And half & half for our coffee. And DirecTV.
Otherwise, we're exactly like Omar Sharif and Julie Christie.
When I was 14, my mother took a sister and me to see "Reds" - Warren Beatty's 194-minute attempt to make John Reed's "10 Days that Shook the World" gripping cinematic entertainment. I dug it.
It just so happened, around the same time, Pater Wenker had made the decision to go cable and install HBO. This was a very big deal.
Does anyone remember ONTV or the Z Channel, first forays (at least in LA) into cable? We had friends who had the aforementioned, but HBO was better. I'd go so far as to say it was a transformative moment in my life. The movies. Countless movies (shown without commercials) that I could watch over and over again. I must have watched "Heaven Can Wait" fourteen times.
Jame Bond marathons.
There was an homage to David Lean, HBO showed: "The Bridge on the River Kwai, ""Lawrence of Arabia" and, yes, "Doctor Zhivago."
I left the theater after "Reds," went home and immediately watched Lean's portrayal of Pasternak's classic. I wasn't your average 14-year-old dork. I was something of a super-dork.
But I was hooked. The idea of Russia, the sheer size, the vast snow-strewn expanse, the Siberian Railway, and...Revolution. This was fascinating stuff to a kid in Southern California suburbia. We had to drive for hours to see snow. And Revolution...well, there was the Reagan Revolution, but somehow that didn't seem the same as what went down in Moscow circa 1917.
So, I went to Berkeley and studied Russian History, wrote my thesis, "How Western Travelers Effected 19th Century Russian Peasant Reform," and then drifted into the world of underemployment. The idea of Russia, though, has never died. I've never been. In fact, am very wary to go. I have such a romanticized vision of the place, I know I'd be sorely disappointed.
I'd rather look out my window at a snow-covered yard, imagine it reproduced a billion times over, and recall lustfully the image of Julie Christie's divine face framed in fur.
Honestly, has any woman in the history of film ever looked so stunning.