fyer, fyer! my heart!

What I love about winter is the hardness of it. Winter is hard. Brutal sometimes. It steals the breath straight from your gut, it pushes you forward and backward no matter where you're trying to go. Winter adds obstacle upon obstacle to normal life: Walking on even sidewalks grows challenging when the ice is invisible and the packed-on snow adds grip-impeding texture to sidewalks for which no one will claim responsibility. One is certainly much less agile in layers (even soft, loving layers) of wool, cashmere, down, leather, and fleece. Even the act of breathing--something so basic so as to be usually unnoticed--becomes a hurdle as the icy dry air cuts slivers into your nose and drives daggers into your chest.

In the places where grass usually grows in the summer, mountains of sludgy gray snow steal color from the cityscape. Gray-brown skeletons of unbelievably living trees flatten against the gray sky. Gray buildings bleed gray slush running down to gray sidewalks, spilling over into gray streets. Ash-tender gray leaves flutter beneath clumps of gray snow to be picked at by gray birds who fly and huddle in gray masses.

Winter is the most beautiful time of the whole year. Can you survive this hard beauty? Can you be the color in a gray world? Can you breathe the sharp air, feel it slice its way into your lungs, and smile from the exhilarating aliveness the pain brings with it? Can you wait for spring and find the waiting beautiful--the waiting itself? Can you sit in the death of the world and glory in it--without trivializing it? Without running away?

Can you be broken, hour by dark hour, by the unrelenting challenges of winter? Can you let the cold seep into your bones and still find warmth to share with others? Can you be the fire by which others warm their frostbitten hearts?

What I love about winter is that it doesn't let you off easy. It doesn't let you bring anything less than everything you've got. Only the hardest of winters could push you to build the hottest of fires, could make survival depend upon the most intense, most passionate desire to live.

anticipating a feast of thankfulness

I am feeling sort of desperate for Thanksgiving. I can't wait. I am longing for Thanksgiving.

I think about it constantly: five whole days. Five. Whole. Days.

I will not travel north to see my family. I do feel a little guilty and a little self pity; but Five Whole Days..Five of them! All mine.

I will sleep, certainly. I will make a cranberry-sage pie. (Practice for the madrigals potluck. Scientifically required.) I will probably roast a turkey (and then make turkey stock with the frame after I've roasted that). I will get to fill my freezer. And I will eat very, very well.

I will probably clean: I will scrub everything so that when I sit down to my turkey and pie, I will do so in a shining home. All will be tidy, all clean. It will smell and look dazzling and delicious.

I will probably go to the Art Institute. Probably on Friday. I will spend as much time there as I can stand. I won't bring my phone--I won't even bring a purse of any kind. That way I will be able to move as freely as possible.

[I will grade, of course. I will have a stack of final papers to grade. I will grade in between scrubbing floors and washing dishes. I will grade in between rolling out pie pastry and basting the turkey. I will grade before and after my trip to the Art Institute.]

[And I will plan for the spring semester, if I can. And put together still more job materials. I will, somehow, by some miracle, do these things, too.]

I will go for a long walk. Saturday, probably. I'll take nothing with me but my keys and I will walk as long as I can. I will walk in the middle of the day, no matter what the weather. I will walk along the lake, and if it is gray and doomy, so much the better.

And I will sit quietly with God. Between the walking and the working; between the grading and the art; between the pie and the portfolio--between everything, I will sit for a few minutes here and then there, and I will sit quietly and I will attend to God.