Studies of Matthew T. Marco

If American supermarkets are like cathedrals, then the day before an impending catastrophe is like Easter vigil mass – the place is packed and you don’t get to leave for at least two hours. After the wait for ingredients for meatloaf and pasta e fagioli, we hoped the snowpocalypse would live up to the forecast, if only to rationalize our maddening experience at Harris Teeter.

And by Sunday morning, this was the view of Washington from space:

(From NASA via DCist)

Alternately snowmageddon and snowpocalypse, the experience on the ground for the last four days has been imbued with end-of-the-worldness. I’ve narrowed the romantic appeal of the debilitating snowfall to the erasure or essentialization of the known world. Cars are camelback marshmallows, the solid black asphalt streets are an aqueous white. My weekdays have been spent cooking, eating the leftovers, watching The Wire and movies set in D.C. (a past-present-future set of All The President’s Men, Burn After Reading, and Minority Report).

Today, the snow hasn’t been falling so much as it has been blowing, alighting on the meter-deep snow drifts only after coasting on highway-speed winds. It’s the third snow day this week, and tomorrow’s the fourth. The city is on spring break, but it’s February with treacherous weather and very little notice. The fucking meatloaf lasted four days and was fucking amazing, worthy of every expletive. I’m also developing a taste for roasted fucking vegetables – especially carrots and onions. There’s still some soup for lunch tomorrow.

Tomorrow night, we’re scheduled to fly to Houston, but that’s tentative like so much else in this state. But when I fly out, it’ll be the first postcard of the year, and Chinese New Year at that. And there will be no snow.