A Winter's Refrain

I would tell stories long into the cold nights about the nights that had been even colder.  About the time in the mountains when my clothes froze on my body so hard that they wouldn't catch flame even as I stood full in the small fire.  Only the tips of my shoes melted.
As I talked, we huddled around a gas heater like hobos around a trashcan fire in some Steinbeck story.  Equal parts artists and the dispossessed, trying to make money out of our nothing.  The security guard later saw us waiting for the ancient elevator with boxes in our hand and told us that there were stairs that might be quicker.  One of us just smiled and said,
"If we liked to work, we wouldn't be in television." And it was probably true.
I knew where I was going in life, but I wondered about the others.  Older, and many long past the days I'd yet to see where past decisions really start to set, and your life becomes a concrete thing.  Some with kids, all with debts.
That same day I had met a woman who stirred my heart; there had been precious few in the last months.  Smiles are often misread, and sometimes sadness is just the way of things.  I felt like she was an affirmation of something, but I didn't know what...and even then, only in passing.  The feeling was gone in a days time and then, even though none knew my heart, I was still embarrassed of it.  Her spoken for, as the best ones are, I had to simply nod my head in respect and thank her for her beauty.

There had been an unusual progression of fascinating women that had passed into my life in that week's time, and I started to worry that I was turning sentimental.  The Big Man at that cold job was near twice my age, and he had just laughed.  He knew the score from long before I had been on the scene, and not even a week later I would be nodding in solemn understanding and wondering if I would be naive my whole life, and if bitter was the only alternative.

In the hectic tumble that is the falling down of days, the first weeks of the year collapsed into new paradigm.  The shift came as though in the midst of a dance; two pairs of eyes meet and then lose each other only to meet again when the rhythm changes and the lights dim.  As Juliet was only eyes before Romeo's heart built the rest of her out of the scattered bits of dreams he'd carried.  We know how that story ends though, and tragedy is only beautiful once.
The joy I had seen in my friend's face had started to fade, and I felt angry.  People around us, people close to us in the city and in the business failed so spectacularly every day at things that should come natural.  It wasn't his fault, and I knew straight away that he would soldier on with his shoulders down against fate.  The fight would be valiant, and they say that's what builds character.  The problem was one of belief, and if we are to hold up a God that asks everything of us, then its seems best to let sleeping dogs lie.  He knew as much, but a cold bed is a hard lesson.