I think all Canadians have a certain appreciation for the weather. It’s capricious at the best of times and I cannot escape the fact that I live in a place where it hurts my skin to be out outside for half the year.
My issue with weather is that it is a pretty stupid thing for how powerful an effect it has on people. Perhaps I am just shouting into the wind, puns and all, but I do not appreciate the idea behind it. We are basically these slavering beasts who’ve merely accepted the meat in front of us without regard for it’s origin or purpose for being there.
I mean, the weather is irrefutably that which keeps humans alive and also that which kills the most of us. It bring vitamin D or skin cancer, gas or booze, it can even cause depression or joy. It’s the ultimate two sides of the same coin.
I think, as I write this, that maybe the weather is a sort of personality test, a Rorschach of sorts. It shows what your wants and needs are.
A person may be distraught with the Sun because of how much it makes them sweat while another loves it for how it makes their child play. The weather, then, is a barometer of how much you’ve done with yourself and what you see in others.
If you respond negatively to weather, do you ever wonder why. What about this space, place I’m in at the moment is so changed by the weather. Humans spend most of their time inside in Canada and so I’m assuming that weather is really a matter of moving between places. We’ve made it so that we can control the temperature of these places but no one is all the miffed if their office is too cold, their house too humind if they are preoccupied.
I think this obsession with weather, a thing which spawns pieces like this, is a reflection of the paradox of North American living. We here are so used to things going our way, of the order being preserved and preservable that it’s no wonder we get mad at weather. It’s something we notice when we have nothing else to notice, nothing else to control but our own reactions to things.
Or maybe it’s a symbol of wealth for us harsh-climate dwellers. The farther from the grips, the ups and downs, of the Sun and Stars that you are in this country, the more well off I’d venture you to be. If you are unable to control your own climate how it means you are still beholden to a more environmental side of humanity. The same side which saw its population fall if rain did not and I guess I just find that a frightening thing to consider given how far removed I like to pretend I am from that way of life.
To dispel any morons from thinking I’m advocating against poor or anything else along those petulant lines, I want to say you are mistaken.
Clay
Clayton Tomlinson 