Sun-filled Days

Whenever I tell people I'm moving to New York, they say something about the weather--that it is too cold, too snowy, too unlike LA. As someone who grew up with weather, the idea of going where we have weather and not climate is not something I spend any time worrying about. But I do think it is so fascinating how many people talk about "THE WEATHER," in capital letters. I have to admit when I first moved here the idea of sunbathing in November to be a novelty. I spent my first Thanksgiving at Newport Beach where I sat around all weekend in a bikini, barely covering up for Thanksgiving dinner. That sun-filled weekend was a far cry from the previous year in Maine where it snowed the entire weekend.

Despite the supposed mood-lifting properties of sunlight, I quickly tired of the blandness of so many sunny days pouring into the next. By October, I am starved for a bit of gloom. I also think this perpetual sunshine is what keeps the city, and its inhabitants, suffering from a delayed adolescence, or as I say, the Peter Pan Syndrome in perpetuity. It's easy to delude yourself into thinking you are younger than you actually are when you don't have the usual seasonal markers, alerting you to the fleeting quality of time. This Peter Pan Epidemic manifests in men dressing much younger than they should. And women trying too hard to dress like their teenage daughters. Shouldn't we give up the low slung jeans and t-shirts with cute, or worse, offensive sayings after reaching our thirties? Just because our bodies may look decent in pencil jeans doesn't mean we should still be wearing them. And if our wardrobe looks like a page ripped from US Weekly, perhaps we are not in tune with our own maturity, or our chronological age.

I always joked that LA is the one place where you could plan an outdoor party in June, a year from now, and be fairly confident that the day of the party would be sunny. This certainty of weather remaining unchanged does something to a person's psyche, I'm convinced. I think it creates an unhealthy detachment from your surroundings, in some strange way. And it helps to perpetuate life being lived inside a prefab-plastic bubble. There is nothing more life affirming as a good storm, whether it involves snow or rain. Life affirming, you ask? Well, it is since is lets you know how little control you actually have over such things as weather, so therefore life is affirmed in the certainty of the uncertainties. So, you acquiesce that you are one minute part of a much larger world. Life affirming, I say. This perpetual sunshine fills you with a sense of control, which is, so obviously, false. And I think, ultimately, depressing.

I won't go into how depressing it is when it does rain since this city, which is not pretty with sunlight, is downright distressing when it is wet and gray. Somehow the downpours feel punishing, as if we are paying for all those days of blandness. I won't go into how treacherous the roads become when it's rainy--all those idiotic, distracted drivers, who don't know how to drive in precipitation is terrifying enough for anyone to want to to barricade themselves indoors.

When I left LA to go to grad school in Boston, no less, I was a bit worried about weather, especially New England weather. Everyone, including my parents, was worried for me, fearing my blood had thinned during all of my years in Sunny LA. I have to say, yes, I watched the weather reports daily, a bit obsessively since I never knew whether that umbrella would be needed later in the day. But in actuality, I found the weather quite unremarkable. Yes, there were snow storms when I would stay indoors to watch the downy flakes come down, blanketing roof tops, cars, and the street. What I had forgotten from my childhood was how quiet the world becomes when covered in white. Yes, the snow becomes ugly after a day or two, and the icy patches are no fun when you're walking. Yet, I found each of the seasons, in all of their drama, quite glorious. There's nothing quite like putting on that sweater on a crisp fall day. Yes, the winter can be wearying, especially by late February. And I'm sure, I will be singing a different tune after a long, arduous winter when all I'll want is a bit of sunshine, the sunshine I had deemed as bland while here in LA. But again, I feel like the ever-changing days helps you to mark time much more realistically. The seasons are literal and metaphorical, no? Spring is birth, summer youth, winter death, and fall old age. Each time a new season announces itself, we are reminded of life's interior clock, ticking. I think these reminders essential to keeping you aware of life on a larger scale. When those dramatic gestures or reminders are no longer so readily apparent, you have to search much more assiduously for them. And thus, time feeling at a perpetual standstill, adding to a surreal quality to life here.

I also attribute the constant sunniness to why all the holidays seem to arrive with so little fanfare, feeling less celebratory, but more a requirement. Face it, there's nothing more depressing than seeing Santa Claus among Palm Trees. Or it was for me.

I suppose if I felt this landscape of mini malls was paradise then the weather would seem fitting. And I guess that's the conundrum of this city--suburban sprawl with all the urban problems of any other metropolis. Thus, the sun, ever present and shining, feels less like a veil of privilege, but more like Dante's Inferno, particularly in late July and August.