In Cold Rain

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It is mid-October now, the nadir of winter in San Mateo. Outside it's
chilly. Inside, it's glacial. I've learned to appreciate many
things this year: butter, fixed prices and most recently, indoor
heating. Houses here aren't even insulated. For most families, this
isn't a problem because they cook on wood fire stoves. These keep
their kitchens relatively warm; indeed, most Mateanos spend the winter
quite cozily huddled around the horizontal hearth. But our house has
a gas stove. This, even when lit at 300'C and with the door ajar,
keeps our house as comfortable as barracks in a Siberian labor camp.

Which wouldn't be so bad if we could just go outside. But winter in
San Mateo, means non-stop rain, and I'm not talking about the cute
kind. This is torrential rain. Rain that makes the gutters ping like
cymbals. Rain cascading over the doorways you've dreaded all day
walking out of. Going outside, means umbrella over plastic poncho
over in knee-high rubber boots. And still coming back sopping. Into
the Siberian barracks. You can see why I haven't left the house since
Friday.

So what to do in the cold rain? Watch pirated DVD's for one.
Yesterday, I saw "The Pianist," that acclaimed film where Adrian Brody
plays a virtuoso who survives the holocaust by hiding in abandoned
apartments. Near the end of the movie, Brody's character becomes
pitiful. Scene after scene shows him shivering, his feeble hunched
over itself like a boomerang. After the movie, I came out of my room
to find my roommate Alexandra, shaking, hunched over the stovetop
warming her hands. I began to chuckle. "What?" She asked
plaintively.
"I'm sorry Alex, but you look just like the guy in the pianist." She
looked at herself and wailed.

Like in a war zone, you must make sacrifices to survive the
Guatemalan winter. Sacrifice: the forfeiture of something highly
valued for the sake of something even more important. Here, the
"highly valued" is hygiene. You sacrifice it for warmth. This didn't
seem like it would be a problem a couple of weeks ago, when I put on
my one pair of thermals and wool socks for the first time. But then
the temperature dropped. The prospect of taking off my ski jacket and
Corte blankets became petrifying. And what was the point of
changing my clothes anyways? It wasn't like I had anything better to
put on. And then came the odor. A stubborn rotten onion stench that
permeated everything. Where was it coming from? I checked the fruit
bowl. Then the trash. Nothing. Finally, I went into a roommate's
room. "Oh." I cringed, and began to hold my breath."
"What?" She asked.
"Nothing." I expired.
"Just tell me." She insisted.
"Alright," I sighed, and told her she smelled like armpit.
"You know, darling," she grinned, "My room smelled fine to me until
you came in." I figured she was just being spiteful. Then later that
day, as I stripped for my weekly cold shower, out came the rotting
onions again, more and more pungent with each the removal of each
sweater.

So why don't I wash my clothes? Well, I do. That's one great thing
about the rain. Washing clothes is easy. You don't even have to rinse
the soap out. The hard part is getting them to dry. The clothes I
washed two weeks ago are still flopped over the clothesline like
wilted lettuce. But they're clean alright.

Another great thing about the rainlenty of time to read. I just
finished --In Cold Blood--, a novel where Truman Capote reconstructs
the murder in Western Kansas, paying special attention to the
psychological nature of the murderers. Near the end of the novel,
Capote devotes chapters to the life of the murderers on death row.
They spend their reading Thoreau, learning impractical vocabulary
words, journaling, pining in their cold cell. They missed so many
things. Beach umbrellas, strawberry sundaes, long walks beneath an
open sky. Capote said that he strived to make the reader see himself
in the murderers. In my opinion, Capote succeeds quite brilliantly.

But oh sweet gloom. You'll soon be gone. The Mayan prophets just
predicted the sky will clear by Wednesday. Oh they'll be dry
clothes, dry streets. I can go outside. Run. I'll smell human
again. Wednesday, just a novel or two away.

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