freeze

Recently, Ian Belknap’s live literary smackdown extravaganza, Write Club, celebrated its 10th anniversary. I was honored to be asked to return to Chicago two years ago to compete in favor of the concept of FREEZE against THAW. It was a dream come true and a personal joy. In working on current work in tandem with this anniversary and current events, I felt posting my essay might be… of value.

Look: It’s easy to be against freeze. It’s Chicago. It’s Chicago after a winter that, as far as I can tell, just ended last week. Hell, it may even return and then have a spinoff series where it goes to space. As a heads up, I come to you as a former rhetoric major who really loved Cicero, so expect a bunch of random quotes. I also come to you as someone who lived in Chicago for over six years before just recently moving to Los Angeles. You may now boo if you wish.

Thank you. But, you see, I come to you with prophecy and insight. Though the thaw may seem more appealing, more welcoming, more… warm. It is that very perception, conception, and deception which has and will lead to further ruin.

I come to you as Cassandra, but with better hair. But, unlike that dumbass Hector, you must actually listen to me. At least for another six minutes.

Per ardua ad alta — Through hardship, great heights are reached.

"They were pleasant spring days, in which the winter of man's discontent was thawing as well as the earth, and the life that had lain torpid began to stretch itself,” said Henry David Thoreau, a man whose idea of returning to nature was living in a cabin and dining out every night. He would never survive the bitter winter of a Chekov play. Hell, he’d never even survive a fight with Ensign Chekov of the Enterprise.

Thaw breeds weakness. It creates the folly of expectation, of hope—a hope that can never be eternal. Icarus can fly into the sunny skies, but there he cannot remain.

"Oh, that I had forever remained in my native wood, nor known nor felt beyond the sensations of hunger, thirst, and heat!” If Frankenstein’s monster had remained frozen in the ground instead of some idealist Pollyanna running over and Thoring a bunch of lightning into his face, then a small, Swiss child would still be alive instead of dead on a mountain while a monster rides away on a LITERAL ICE FLOW. It is a universal truth that clocks and chocolate cannot stop the rage of a serial killer. As we learned from Kubrick’s ‘Shining’, only the freeze can.

It’s uncomfortable, I know. We’re America, the nation mocked throughout the world for its weird, colonialist optimism. Manifest Destiny isn’t a racist, propagandist, imperialist theology a pessimist comes up with. Our people have always preferred the chipper Jeffersons, Reagans, and Bushes over the dour Adamses, Mondales, and Gores. And, honestly, that sort of canny, beatific optimism is how we managed to reach the national and international heights we have. BUT, the problem with living in the thaw is forgetting that the winter will return.

Ice creates cynicism. Frost breeds skepticism. It may not be “fun” or “allow you to blissfully sell arms to radicals”, but it’s TRUTH. No matter how sunny the summers, the freeze WILL return.

Thomas Paine wrote, ”These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country;” He was also such a cantankerous asshole that he managed to get convicted of crimes in other countries IN ABSENTIA. That’s the kind of insurgent bullshit only a man born in a part of England with weather the BBC described as “fascinating” can accomplish.

THAW is Henry David Thoreau not paying a poll tax for the Mexican-American War and spending one night in jail and having his life changed. FREEZE is John Quincy Adams dying ON THE FLOOR OF CONGRESS protesting the valorization of the Mexican-American War. THAT’S commitment to the cause. That’s the kind of real policy work you can only accomplish being born in the icebox that is the love of John Adams.

There’s a collective blindness and memory loss that occurs on the balmy beaches of our post-Revolutionary national thaw. I’m sure it’s even happening now. In this very room. “Phew, we made it through the winter. Things are wonderful.” Like I said at the beginning, I lived here for over half a decade and every fucking winter I had to listen to people WHO WERE BORN HERE complain about the cold. They’d forgotten the freeze. They’d forgotten what bitter defeat at the hands of your own hubris feels like. You know who doesn’t complain about the winter? The fucking Russians.

Americans have a saying, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.” Russians have a saying, “Harden your body to make it fit for working.” There’s no crying in Russia because it would literally freeze your eyes to death.

America’s greatest literary contribution to the world is the celebration of individualism and nature. Russia’s greatest literary contribution to the world is the concept that if a gun shows up, someone needs to be shot.

The Russians defeated Napoleon and Hitler simply by living somewhere NO ONE WANTED WALK THROUGH. America went to sea on a boat that couldn’t even survive its maiden voyage. Chutzpah cannot conquer ice.

THAW is fighting something called THE COLD WAR and thinking you won in 1991. FREEZE is it’s 2018 and holy shit it NEVER ACTUALLY ENDED.

As Mr. Freeze, a man we all knew I was going to eventually quote said, “Threats are meaningless to a man who has lost everything.” Those are the words of an ice cold badass who’s not going to let a guy in a flying mouse onesie fuck up his shit.

Heed my frosty warning, Write Club: “Thaw is thy crutch; now if thou lose thy stay, Thou on him leaning, and all Troy on thee, Fall all together.”

Let the storm rage on. The cold never bothered me anyway.

Thank you.