Fortuna in Febraio

In Pittsburgh, February 28 is recognized as a kind of meteorological milestone: the ungainly death-swoon of what is locally recognized as the longest month of the year. February is the Hector of Winter's army: admired for the strength of its resistance, but reviled and spat upon once slain.

Classical mythology may provide a reasonable starting point for describing my sense of this city, with its grim circle of seasons. I'm thinking of the basic structures that form the grammar of Greek drama, the sense of cycle and return. Both the ancients and their modern adherents like to say that Fate moves in a cycle, that birth follows death follows buying a lemon from a shyster named Fergus in one, long, relentless and unalterable sequence that started before the bat flapped its wings over the waters and will continue until the earth erupts in flames. Fate's cycle should not be confused with Fortune's wheel, of course: these two concepts, cycles and wheels, could not be more different, for a cycle is a mathematical abstraction, while a wheel is a mechanical device invented by some lazy and clever Mesopotamian gravedigger. The abstraction is subject to statistical analysis and formal proof, while the concrete image remains just that: a hard, blob-like, unwieldy.

In applications it is difficult to differentiate between true cycles (characterized by repetition) and stochastic ups and downs (characterized by persistent singularity.) A certain level of oscillatory behavior seems to be built into the structure of biological existence, in the sense that if I am dead broke, homeless and hungry today, either my fortunes rise or I quickly die and remove myself from the game. Even on a psychological level, a certain undulatory behavior is inescapable: I prove a theorem, and for five minutes I rejoice; but by minute 6 I'm wondering if there's an obvious corollary, by minute 7 I'm second-guessing a technical detail, and by minute 8 I'm scuffing my heels, wondering if I've wrung dry the Theorem Gods and if I'll ever have a good idea again. This pattern (exultation to despair in under 10 minutes, following by a slow re-pooling of hope, energy, and ambition) seems an almost universal feature not just of the mathematical psyche, but of the creative consciousness in general. But is this a true cycle or just the random bit-flip in the texture of Organism?

As mentioned, February is the dog month in Pittsburgh. The sky's have been gray for four months, and while the temperature still feels bitterly cold, what falls from the sky is not snow but rather some gritty concoction of water, ice-chunks, acid particles and soot. The streets are empty, save for angry drivers and chunks of trash that blow like tumbleweeds through the alleyways and along the riverbanks. All animals have left town, birds to the Gulf of Mexico, fish to the ocean, stray cats to the sewer pipes and dogs to their dumb dreams by the hearth. Trees stand skeletal and resentful again drab hills, flowers are nowhere to be seen, shopkeepers nod stiffly instead of saying hello, and the daily mail turns up wet and crumpled. Pittsburgh is in the dumps just now, and so, by extension, am I. Whence the question: cycle, or random draw?

The implications of the answer may be nil: if it is a cycle, then it will happen every year, and unless I wish to sign up for a lifetime of seasonal depression, I need to get the hell out of this city. If it is a random down patch, on the other hand, I in my infinite mysticism would be inclined to interpret it as Nature's Goad to go do something new, and would probably pull up stakes just in case. Either way, February is a great month to start planning The Next Thing.

There may be more to this than the weather. When I took this job, Benjamin wasn't even a blip on the radar, and the choice boiled down to finding a city with a vibrant cultural scene and ample opportunities for research. Fancying ourselves urbanites, we felt that Pittsburgh would be an excellent option, with its affordable housing, its status as an air hub, its major research universities, and its large population of Starving Artist Types (with whom, of course, we would stay up carousing ‘til the wee hours, swilling absinthe and spouting Shelley.) Pittsburgh loomed in our imaginations as a Down City on the Upswing, a hub of intellectual and artistic activity and a convenient way-station in our relentless and eternal bushwacking through all facets of the American Experience.

Well, turns out a couple of estimates were wrong. Firstly, housing, while cheap, is still too expensive to afford easily on a single professorial salary, especially if you add things like child-care to the mix. Moreover, air quality is among the worst in the nation, something I never thought to check before moving here but which, it turns out, I care rather deeply about. Add to this the fact that local drivers have no sense of how to deal with cyclists, that the rivers are both polluted and inaccessible, that city remains deeply segregated, and sports and drinking are the preferred local pastimes, and suddenly the reasons for my rocky relationship to this City seem absolutely transparent.

These days I'm dreaming of mountains, clean air, sandy coastlines. I'm dreaming of wide spaces and laughing children and abuelos and music and warmth and sunshine. I am possessed by the spirit of The Great American West: mid-lecture, chalk in hand, a roomful of eyes staring with mild interest at my scrawling on the board, I suddenly smell the sweet scent of wild lowland hillgrass after a rainfall, feel the sharp, dusty leaves of the California oak, let waves wash over my body and watch the sun set over tide pools crawling with crustaceans and red algea. What am I doing in Pittsburgh?

The weird thing is, Benjamin seems to be dealing with this place just fine. He is he happiest baby in town. He gets up in the morning with a chuckle, he smiles through breakfast, and he pounces with pleasure in the jumperoo until his legs can't take it anymore and he retires to the ruana for another half hour of naked rooting and grinning. He tells jokes to himself and laughs out loud at his punchlines, he thinks Follow the Finger is a great strategy game, and he loves all food except for applesauce, which he tolerates with horrible gestures but stoic goodwill. Is that kid operating in a different micro-climate? Does he know something that I don't? Perhaps he is a prophet, Tiresias, miraculously transformed from a shrivelled old blind man to a bouncy baby boy with flush cheeks and a smile, who instead of prognosticating death, war, and incest, babbles his wonderous insights in a language only the pure of heart can hope to understand.

How far I am from that state! Perhaps a few Herculean labors would help: find Fergus the golden fleecer and return the lemon; clean the stable which I call my desk; lop a few dog heads and liberate the mango eater from her mid-eastern hell. Ah but for strength and cunning! Still, now that February's out of the way....