First Snowfall

At 8:45 this morning I kissed Zoogle goodbye, hugged my wife, and boarded American Eagle flight something something something for Minneapolis, site of a mathematics conference on multi-manifold data modeling. The technical details of the trip are a blur: after two months of fractured nights, I collapsed like an old souffle, unconscious two minutes after takeoff and prodded into reluctant wakefulness only by the ghastly recorded voice of some frumpelmarm saying "please stay seated until the seatbelt sign has been turned off." Seated I stayed. In Chicago O'Hare I met a young Hasidic Jew named Lipa who was carrying an acoustic guitar. We talked chord structures and commandments before boarding, and parted on confused but amiable terms. Mid-flight he approached my seat to announce that he had remembered the remaining two commandments: no idolatry, and no eating of live animals. This revelation sparked a lively debate among my rowmates, one of whom was a churlish program director at a Catholic University, the other a jolly church administrator for a fusion Baptism-Lutheran congregation in suburban Minetonka, both of whom admitted that they would be hard pressed to recite the ten commandments in order. (I did not reveal that Lipa was working with a measly set of seven: too nice of a guy to ratfink like that.) Snow was falling by the time we touched down in Minneapolis.

This will be my first Zoogle Leave, and I confess it makes me nervous on multiple levels. First because Catalina is stuck with exclusive Zoogle duties for five days, and I fear for her sanity. I also wonder if Cosmico will remember me when I get back, and forgive me my gadabout if he does: he seems to have no head for anything but the teta, and though he doesn't seem a boy to hold grudges (how many times have I played Cosme Cohete when all he wanted to do was sleep?) it is entirely possible that behind those placid glauco eyes and ponderous animal cheeks lurks the soul of an accountant, silently taking stock of who was where, when and for how long. I also fret about missing milestone moments. It's not just that the kid gains weight like a prizewinning boar; his gaze has focused, he produces new sounds daily, and his neck muscles are as strong as a Soviet powerlifter's. I'm afraid I'll return and find that he has a full set of teeth, can flip over at will, and commands a vocabulary of 100 words.

It's good to be in Minneapolis. The bracing cold is good for the spirit, and the place has character, with its riverfront, its flourmills, its ubiquitous bars and their grungy denizens, tall headband toting blonds with Judas Priest paraphernalia. And I confess that it will be nice to sleep through the night, talk research, and have some uninterrupted time for work. But as I pull the heavy drapes over the sealed window, and contemplate the inoffensive, forgettable wall art in its thick gilt frames, brush my teeth and think about sinking into my king size bed, I feel a certain chill in the air, an absence of vital energy and a distance from the warm center of life. My intuition says that it has nothing to do with the first snowfall of the season.