Where Does the Light Go?

I love an early snow. Love the shadows in the deer tracks on the mountain ridges, the way the snow leans against the window panes of Mt. Baldy Lodge, a roadhouse right out of a Bing Crosby movie.

November has come to the forest, as the poets say.

“Where does the light go?” a friend wondered the other day, speaking of the slow fade of late-autumn sunlight.

“Maybe inside us?” was his verdict.

Hmmmm, good-a-guess as any, my friend.

November is the month when you burn your tongue a little on some old family recipe. 

November just smells better than the other months. It seems cleaner, fresher, a little buttery…layered.

Can you believe Thanksgiving is only a week away? Love an early Thanksgiving. Wish it’d come in June.

Speaking of football, here’s a cosmic question for you: The other day, the Vikings and the Bills had a spectacular football game. Won’t go into details, but there were fumbles and other magic. It was a masterpiece.

Now, this game started at 1 pm on Sunday. Had the networks decided, a week earlier, to move the game to 5 pm, would the game have been exactly the same – the fumbles, the miscues, the crazy multiple endings?  

Or, because it was played later in the day, would biorhythms and body clocks change everything. Would the footwork and synapse times vary just enough that you’d have an entirely different outcome?

Would the coaches have been too coffee’d up to stay with the game plan? Would the QBs be not quite so sharp? Would the tailbacks dance a different dizzy dance?

I mean, why would the time of day matter? Yet, I suspect it does. The answer, I’m sure, lies in the laws of physics, fate, mysticism and emotional gonkiness.

By extension, how does the time we do things affect the outcome? Should we break up in the morning? Should we make love at midnight?

I’m no Einstein, I’m not even Jewish, or very deep, or particularly well educated or well-read. Well, I am well read. But little of it sticks.

I also seem locked in my own personal time warp. I’m still getting over John Wayne’s  death. I still drink Bosco, I play with Silly Putty.

Did you know Silly Putty was invented during the 1940s when the Allies were short of rubber? That’s right. Boric acid plus silicone oil equals goo. Silly Putty won the war? Well, not exactly. But we’re all the richer for it.

In short, I am my own museum.

So?

By the way, know what’s underrated? The family couch. I mean, is there a happier place this time of year? Good games, snowy movies, re-runs of “Taxi” and “Cheers.”

To hear my son Smartacus laugh at Danny DeVito the other night was a form of chamber music. Do parents love anything more than the sound of their kids’ belly laughs? I’d rather hear Smartacus laugh than sail the world.

That’s what’s missing on TV these days: laughter.

Know what else is underrated? Long walks on November days…the amber light…the crunch. November walks knock something loose, reboot the brain, season the psyche.

You crunch a few acorns, you kick through some leaves. You try to figure out where the light goes.

 “L.A. is the loneliest and most brutal of American cities,” Jack Kerouac once wrote. “N.Y. gets god-awful cold in the winter, but there’s a feeling of wacky comradeship somewhere in some streets. LA is a jungle.”

Well, you should see it now, pal…the parks, the underpasses.

But, fundamentally, I disagree. You want wacky, come to L.A. You’ll find endless blocks of strip malls, butt-ugly apartments, and freeways that tie us up like bank hostages.

That does something to a person. Know what it does? Drives him to the mountains or the sand.

But in L.A., at least you have that option – hop a mountain, skim the sea.

A jungle? Nope.

That’s glorious, my friend.

That’s where the light really goes.

Thanks to Forrest Gale for the “where does the light go?” question. He always has an interesting take on things. Meanwhile, email the columnist at Letters@ChrisErskineLA.com. For past columns, books or gifts, please go to his website, ChrisErskineLA.com. Cheers.