Of Snow days, God Complexes and Cuomo's State Wide LARP

     It’s the 2^nd day of 2014 and there is already a state of Emergency for New York , yet not a flake has touched my brand new gloves with the little foxes on them. I can feel it though, the electricity in the air, the mix of awe and contempt we have for Mother Nature as the news sells us on this month’s hottest natural disaster. The stores are mobbed, milk and bread flies off the shelves. Being a childless twenty-something, I grab the staples of mac & cheese, Tostitos and decent beer from the local deli next to the beer distributor. It will be enough to tide me over until society rebuilds itself again on Friday afternoon. 

It’s become this sort of game, a large scale live action role playing game where we all pretend that the world is ending. Hold up in our houses for a bit, then go back on with our lives.  It’s all very entertaining, getting swept up in the fear and danger of a potential disaster without having to face actual peril.  I also get a half day of work, which I am always for, whatever the reason.  For a society that generally doesn’t stop for anything, I believe that these Stormageddon phenomena suits a very vital purpose.

Humans can control, manipulate and even create the world around us to our whim. Printing living tissue is an actual thing now! We’ve all but conquered God and made Mother Nature our bitch. Unfortunately a large part of being human is the realization of how small we are in comparison.  There was a time our ancestors gazing up at the stars, worshiping the forces that dictated their futures in hopes of currying favor and surviving another day.  Technology has reduced  most of life’s larger problems to the point where we end up being overcome with tiny details, small tasks, and petty problems. It’s easy to see how focusing on such small things makes us feel incredibly big and according to human nature BIG = IMPORTANT. 

Everyone is so important today. Everything they do is crucial to society that the world  would collapse if whatever they did wasn’t done.  Yes it makes us feel important, but damn is it exhausting. The world runs like clockwork, never stopping, always going. We are open 24 hours on Thanksgiving. The Holidays were an orgy of spending, eating and chaos. We can work in the winter, having conquered the darkness and the freezing temperatures. What used to be a time when we all would just stop and sit, drink and fuck for lack of anything better to do, is just another day.  

I believe everyone is so focused on the next apocalypse to shatter the world around them, not for love of disaster or destruction, but because we are desperately searching for the pause button.  Nothing else seems to get us to stop in reverence to the world we are living in.  It’s a deeply spiritual need that people are so keen on denying themselves.

I’m sitting home, on a Thursday at 3:00PM because the roads were shut down. The state decided that nobody was important enough to halt emergency and road clearing vehicles by getting stuck in the snow.  I will snuggle with my husband, make hot chocolate and catch up on my reading. I will not worry about the clients I need to call, or the laundry that is sitting in the hamper.  I will be incredibly unimportant and small as I remember that there is a universe that has always existed and will forever exist whether I do or not.  For a few short hours I will be connected with my ancestors who lived in awe of Mother Nature, not just annoyed by her inconveniences. 

Secretly, society needs to be reminded how much bigger the universe is than just mounds of bones and goo meandering around our little rock nestled in the middle of space. We need to ponder those moments and celebrate them.  Don’t let Mother Nature be a small annoyance, pay her respect for she has been here longer than you and will be here long after you.