"play louder. you will not succeed."

Of course, Margaret Atwood gets at the beauty of winter even better than I do:

"But still there’s a sense of anticipation: you tense for the combat."

                                                                      —The Blind Assassin

That's part of what I love: the fight. You rally, you muster all the strength, all the courage, all the endurance and you fight the cold, the dark, the bare, the desolation; you fight death. Every act is tattered flag waving brightly against the surrendered world: I'm here! I'm still here! I'm alive and you can't catch me!

William Carlos Williams beat me to that, too:

Again I reply to the triple winds

running chromatic fifths of derision

outside my window:

Play louder.

You will not succeed. I am

bound more to my sentences

the more you batter at me

to follow you.

And the wind,

as before, fingers perfectly

its derisive music.

I am not good at fighting, at rallying. As soon as things get hard, I sigh to myself "I want to go home." Still, I love it. I love it in other people and I thrill at the hope I might become able to do it myself. Winter, with its bleak black-and-whiteness, turns the world into a morality play where evil is everywhere and obvious. In the face of obvious evil, what else can one do but fight?