Death of a Memoirist

My current project is unloading, auditing, reorganizing, and inventorying shipping containers kept above the center of McMurdo. It's mind-numbing, but the manual labor is gratifying, and outside the container is a view across McMurdo Sound to the Royal Society Range. The days have peaked around 40 degrees, which is warmer than Chicago. Today clouds rolled in after noon and the wind picked up, volcanic particulate blowing like snowfall over ridges, things cold more than warm.

First impressions are all I ever care for; it is far, far better to make general presumptions that are incorrect than measured and considered judgments that are accurate. I have been at McMurdo three days and there is something depressing about how all of the work done here stays here. The geographical disconnect from the world above converts naturally into a relinquishing of responsibility and wild immaturity. The community is oddly immaterial, obsessed with itself. What's even odder is how people seem to embrace this.

But, hey, it's still an honor and a blessing to get time down here. Though something in the community comes off as a bit acrid, the landscape and work never fail to impress. Consolation.

I do enjoy talking with a British guy who works in the wastewater treatment plant. This evening we had some tea and he told me about time spent in Norway as a special ops soldier in the British Special Services. They wore what were called "white silks," thin white camoflouage jumpsuits to cover parkas and such. He described having to go to the bathroom - "take a dump" - while suited up, how the suits would sometimes blend with the snow as you squatted, how you couldn't see well while wearing such bulk and how you sometimes dumped accidentally directly into your suit, zipped back up, felt the waste slide down about your ankles where it sat above the elastic band. Sad story.

(That's the best I've got?)

I plan on hiking this Sunday and posting more pictures, which are of far greater interest than a personal blog. These entries are trying--for you, I assume, as much me. Good night.