Ah Winter! Although we know he will come, we turn away at his approach, our longing eyes t’wards Spring as if this season means only draggle days and we try to imagine ourselves out of ourwinterselves, into frocks and shorts and easy light. But Winter is here, these ice twisted streets, the wind like a bully with too many teeth, powerful, pushing us down, slapping our faces with a cruel hand, all but just Winter. We can cow down, submit, falter and become less powerful. We all do this at times, in the dark, in the longing for Spring. Just heading for work is a fight and a soak or a slip. It can make us crabby, shift our saliva into spit, our feet into loud pounding away. Winter can feel like Culloden to me, the oppressor being Winter himself which, if I think about it, is ridiculous. Winter is winter and I am a piddling mortal. So what to do about the darkling ice twist draggle day thinking?
Well, music for me and inside work and more. I get out there with a challenge. I am me Big Winter, and you have no idea how good I am at being me. I pick my sky and I know I am lucky to see the whole of it from my island home, and then I just go, quick, fast, right now because I can see the grey cloudskid laden with hail and more about 20 minutes off. I walk the track, looking up and out at the bone trees the cold stones, the brilliant moss, impervious it seems to any winter bite. I watch a bird flight, hear the geese honk about, catch the flash of low sunlight through a spider web ‘cross dead grasses, see the sky in puddles, crunch last ice and smile at the amoebic snow melts aside the track. All is passing. All always will. Winter included.
I would, in my younger days, begin a Winter Love thingy. I would encourage poetry, song and music, twist ice walks and evenings beside an ebony fire, a gasp of talent only visible in the clarity of winter. Northern lights are wild and not just behind my home but in every one of us. We just got lost in cities and wages and other stuff that has nothing to do with real life.