Winter With / Winter Without...

...Snow.

Several years ago as I stood in my driveway futilely trying to chip a thick layer of ice off the top of the snow so I could shovel and get out of my driveway, it started to snow/rain. We have this weather condition here that weather forecasters call "wintry mix." It's not snow, it's not rain, it's not sleet, it's not ice. It's all of those things, and makes for far more treacherous driving than say five feet of snow. It effectively puts everyone in gridlock as driving in these conditions is terrifying--that is if you can get out of your driveway. 

On this morning, I had been pounding ice for an hour and had covered maybe a foot of ground when it started to snow again. I was recently divorced and had just been laid-off from my job during one of the worst recessions of my lifetime. All the anger inside me was not enough to break up that ice, and I felt completely abandoned, hopeless, and above all useless. I swore off winter forever as I shook my fist into the wintry-mix sky, feeling like an idiot in my insolent yet feckless gesture, at the time which seemed a sad metaphor of my life. 

I thought of all the places I might move: Nashville, Miami, Dallas, Oregon, California. I stayed here, and in the years since, there's barely been winter to speak of. I'm not sure if it even snowed once last winter. Wouldn't it seem as if I should be happy with that? Instead I felt off all year. Not emotionally or physically but horometrically, which is a word I just found using Dictionary.com. I was trying to capture the adverb of  time or chronology and tried "temporally," which I thought wasn't a word, but it turns out it is if I am to believe the spell check on Blogger. So new word discovered, but let's go with "temporally" anyway.

I realized that I felt off because I didn't have a winter. I am so accustomed to the the four seasons that not having one of them makes me feel like I have forgotten to do something, and our seasons are all starting to blur now. But winter seems especially integral to my cycle throughout the year. It's the time I buckle down and when simple tasks require great effort, which for some reason feels more satisfying at the end of the task. Winter Solstice and Imbolc are my time of personal growth and of nurturing. It's the time of year I do the most writing, reading, cooking, and planning. It's also when I feel the most hopeful about my future and when I pursue my dreams goals with less trepidation, perhaps due to the idea of the year being new.

One thing that has helped me achieve this time of nesting is snow. It forces me indoors without feeling guilty about it, and watching the snow fall outside while I am warm and inside gives me a sense of coziness, security, and fortitude that I don't experience any other time of the year. In the spring I'm full of hope, in the summer I'm full of energy, in the fall I'm sapping the last drop of sunlight and dealing with melancholy that visits me every year at the time.

I think of images from my childhood--Friday night snowmobiling, Sunday afternoon sledding, Saturday afternoon ice skating, hot cocoa, fires, frozen winter panes, making snow men, bus stop snowball fights, snow forts, riding my horse Suzi before early pink sundown. I think of Narnia and the power of imagination and the way a lamp post looks at night, golden under a blanket of snow.

So while I still hate wintry mix, I have come to love snow, or rather, I have remembered how to love snow. And without it, I'm feeling a bit lost.

I spent a beautiful snowy weekend in early February in Michigan to celebrate my mom's birthday. On the drive to MI, I crossed an invisible barrier from midland to northerly. One second the earth was brown and ugly and dead, the next it was white, bright, dreaming not dead, and alive in contrasts. The sun poked out in the thick winter sky as it started to snow and created something I'd never seen before: A snow rainbow. It was there only a moment, and I felt like it was for my eyes only.

We had a small but fun birthday party for my mom. Just my dad, my bro, his wife, and kids.  I felt really happy watching my mom blow out her candles, thinking of all the birthday parties she'd given us over the years. She always made our favorite dish, our favorite cake, and even had presents for us. What I remember about birthday was feeling very special and loved by my mom and being really happy. I don't usually get to travel to Michigan for her birthday, but this year, I really felt like I had to be there. Staying up late with my bro and mom and dad and just laughing around the table might have been the highlight of the month for me, and one of those moments in life when you know exactly who you are and where you came from and feel good about it.

After they went to bed, I stayed up to watch the snow fall, flakes as big and fluffy as popcorn. I turned on the outside light, sat in front of the fire, and felt a familiar feeling. I get this feeling when I see certain paintings. The paintings usually have the same theme and style--impressionist, 19th century cityscapes of pubs and blue wet streets, umbrella-shrouded souls making their way against the elements towards the warm glow emanating through the window. It was so beautiful I couldn't sleep. I went to bed several times, only to get up again and behold the beauty of snow gently falling and covering us in a protective blanket. It was so beautiful I couldn't sleep. It was so beautiful I couldn't sleep. It was so beautiful.

I didn't sleep! I slumbered and dreamed while awake!

Saturday night I took my mom out for her birthday. She asked me to take her to the Box Factory to hear the Ed Bagatini New Swing Orchestra.  Ed Bagatini just started this orchestra, and he's 82! My mom worked with him at his music store when she was a teenager. It's possible she hasn't seen him since 1960 (but not likely given the nature of small towns), and watching them meet again was really special. I found the band to be impressive. From ages 82 to 19, they embodied a spirit in music I feared was long gone or dead, killed off by rock n roll and school budget cuts in arts and music education (while there is always plenty for boys football). Ed led each song with a little intro about the original composer and delighted us with sordid Jazz stories. Are there any other kind? As I watched him the lead the band with his count and a snap of his fingers, that swing still in his body, I thought about the kind of spirit and heart tries new things and gets other people excited about it. 

There was a time when I thought 80s meant old age, but clearly, old age is a state of mind, and I felt so inspired that I'm only 44 and still have many lifetimes ahead of me if I am willing to keep trying and not be afraid. Ed still owns the music store and has two other bands! He also played a lot of his original music, which I really liked, and one song in particular really got my attention. As they played, I started composing lyrics in my head, or at least starting to. I heard something like "Too close for freedom, too far for comfort." It's about a doomed love affair. When they get close they feel exposed and vulnerable but when they're far from one another they feel desperate.

Before the concert I asked my mom to choose a restaurant, and for some reason she chose Roxy's, an old hamburger stand that's been around since the Sixties. I was hoping she'd want a more elegant affair, but it was still fun, especially playing with the old jukebox machine with real records. The carhop stand is still there, and I thought of her as a boisterous teenager on a night out with friends.

The next day I went down to the frozen pier, hoping to take some dramatic pictures on my crummy camera. I nearly got stuck in sand and snow and made my way in the icy winds to the pier, where I lasted about three minutes. It was snowing and blowing and impossible to take pictures as I could barely see three feet in front of me. I gave up and went home, then met up with my bro and nieces and nephews for an afternoon of sledding. That night my mom and I made a pizza and watched an old Columbo mystery and laughed the whole time.

I reluctantly drove home to

...No Snow

After that Winter Wonderland Weekend, it was back to brown, muddy, barren Indy.

My partner opened a new play, and with that I was invited to a string of cast parties. We celebrated Valentine's quietly yet sweetly and a day early to avoid the crowds, and I took him to see the film "Les Miserables," his favorite Broadway show. We had a romantic dinner and stayed out late talking and sipping wine.

I saw two concerts, Erin McKeown and Hannah Georgas.

I went to a small unassuming wedding of a good friend and loved the vows.

I had a few dinners out with friends. I worked out. I read. I played guitar. I cooked. I cleaned. I purged. I watched movies and tv shows on Netflix.

I had a few dark days and nights when some ghosts started bothering me. It's okay. They got me writing again, and it turns out that the scariest things about these ghosts is their own unhappiness.

I suspended my Facebook account indefinitely. I realized that it was becoming an agitator to me for many reasons, and that I needed a break from the continual flow of information. I needed to think about my life more honestly and why I had the need to be connected to people, whom, truth be told, weren't actually my friends. I needed to think why I needed to present myself in that public forum, and had to question the image I was presenting. Was it real, distorted, or made up, and could I live more authentically if I didn't have the need to write about it, which I know is weird, because here I am writing about it in another space, except hardly anyone reads this, if anyone.

I feel a lot more peaceful since I left the site. I was well aware of how addictive it was, and I didn't like it that I was constantly reading about things that I actually didn't care about. Since leaving,  I'm not reading political propaganda from either side, and I'm not reading annoying memes about women and wine and weight. I'm not reading about what happened on television shows that I never watched in the first place. I'm missing events, updates on who was with whom at which bar, and how someone hates the traffic. I mean I'm not missing that stuff.

In all honesty, I am shocked that I lasted this long and even more shocked that I'm not the least tempted to go back to it. Since I left, I've received actual emails from friends who were concerned, and have exchanged meaningful correspondence, and what's more spent valuable face time with friends. One night as I was waiting for the concert to start, I felt terribly alone. I was the only person in the room who was not bent over an iphone looking at Facebook. Everyone there was with a companion or friends and yet no one talked to each other. They took pics of their heads pressed together, then presumably posted to their status and then waited for comments from other readers. What bizarre social behavior. I have a smart phone but not an iphone, but I always tried not to look at Facebook out in public and especially when I was with people. I (used to) have friends who would constantly check their Facebook while they were out "socializing," constantly updating who said what or where we were or who drank what, and I always found it annoying. I am also annoyed by fact-checkers who interrupt the flow of conversation to look up and verify trifling facts. I also realize now that I actually have no real need of an unlimited data plan and that I mostly use my phone the old fashioned way--to place and receive telephone calls.
  
Additionally, I have not listened to, watched, or read any news of any kind for the past three weeks, and I don't miss it. I'm living in my own little world, at least for now, and while I wouldn't want to do it year round, it seems I need this time. I had some healing to do this month. I think I have finally turned a corner. I could be mad at myself for letting myself get hurt and insecure, but I'll just forgive myself instead.

Let it snow.

Here's a song I love to listen to in Winter. I love to write while listening and to listen without any distraction. Bon Iver: "Holocene."


Some pics taken with my crummy phone camera.

Tabletop Jukebox at Roxy's

 Cool creepy heads in front of scary Stepford daughter painting!

White-out conditions at the pier

Frozen Lake Michigan

Pear pizza!

Hannah Georgas

Grilled chicken and orange salad

The Thin Line

I wondered if February would be as kind as January.

Well it wasn't.

Or maybe I wasn't kind. To me. Maybe I took some cues from some other people. Let them get in through those cracks of persistence. Persisting the bad and resisting the good.

It's my doing.

All was not lost. Some was really good.

I think I should be lucky to die and utter such words:

Life. Mostly beautiful and sometimes really painful but mostly beautiful and sometimes so painful that it became beauty in and of itself, you know in the right light with the right words and just the right amount of resolve.

It seems in February a transition occurred.

My words and my writing are so much more real. And so much more protected.

Can I keep up the facade, and should I call it a facade? This appreciating the moments business? Is this fake?

I know I was trying to achieve an effect, and maybe in a year's time, I'll look back at it, and not choke on the sentiment and not spew it out like sour milk. 

Maybe it's the mothers milk to still believe like that, to get through these infantile times, to grow up big and strong on big beliefs.

I've been working on some songs and poems, and now my writing is coming out in verses and phrases, and because this is part of my now, it will become part of my history, and part of my thread, and one frame of the tapestry.

February was painful, and it was beautiful, but in hindsight it was mostly beautiful because it took me to a new vista. Or am I revisting this vista I abandoned so long ago...or did I just drift away, and lose sight of it while paddling to that elusive horizon, that piece of sun I'll never touch.

I had to get back here. This was Atlantis.

I swam away frightened by the waves of my beautiful invention.

Only I can live here.




I set a goal for this month. I set the date, Feb 28th, a Thursday. And that's today.

I have my five chords, but I don't play them in rapid fire succession the way I had planned. 

I didn't practice enough.

But I started this new song called "Abandon Me."

It's a plea.

It's her salvation, to be abandoned.

It's mercy.

But it's never tendered.

Sometimes you just have to grant yourself that passage, that forgiveness.

You can't rely on others.

Especially those who loved you.



So here I am wondering about something. 

Anonymity.

Is power or is it coward? 

About writing and revelations and vulnerability.

Behind this veil.

And knowing hardly anyone reads anyway.

And still this protection. This riddle.

Am I kidding myself?

No. I'm not a joke.

I'm dead.

Serious.

This is the time to die, slowly, letting go of each detail in circumstance and pomp and grief.

It makes the being reborn all the sweeter. That first yellow daffodil. So delicate and yet facing the most bitter weather of all: that is unpredictability. Frost and sunshine and one last snow. But she comes out anyway. Is she stupid or is she strong or can she simply not help it? 

Her time has come.

I have to be here.

I have to inhale the ashes.

That's my skin.

And if it's not thin

Then it's tough.

And that's when I lose myself.

The good part.

Right now. I burned the bad. The thick. The callous. The canker. The fear.

Next time, I'll tell you how I did that.

With shiny new skin that's never been burned.

But knows it will soon enough.

dewey complexion

I have a half empty heart
which is a pessimistic way of saying
I have a half full heart.
How could you possibly be optimistic about a half full anything?
My heart just sits there half empty and not hungry
Just chugging but not moving
And my eyes can't see three feet in front of me
I'm in this mist.
Like after a rain before the sun comes up
or a little while after it's gone down
And the edges are all blurry
The colors are all blue and grey
And all I can see is tree lines
and some muted moon light
And the thing is, it's kind of peaceful here.
Not a sound
Not even a thought in my head.
No smell except damp, moss.
And I'm here all alone
Answering to no one
Because no one asks of me
And that should seem like loneliness
Except I like it
Except when I don't
And I'm starting to wonder if it should scare me
And if I should be scared because I'm not scared of this
Of this of this of this of this
Anesthesia
and this amnesia
of things that used to matter to me
And this letting go
of the things that once filled my heart
And the wondering
Did I let them go
Or did they leave me
Did they catch the last train for the coast
along with the father, son, and holy ghost
Ghost of a woman I used to know
She doesn't haunt me
She can't reach me
Am I too far gone
Or have  I gone too far
Or did I go just the right distance
This is fog and this is a pleasant purgatory
Lotus eater
except instead of pleasure
I feel nothing
Which is better than pain
A ghost of a poet in me would once have screamed
No, you are wrong!
But that ghost, she don't haunt me no more
She caught the last train for the coast

Here comes the moon up through the trees
I'll just lay in this wet grass
And smell the rotting earth giving life to new earth
and wish for constant twilight
so I don't have to choose one or the other
Muted blue and grey
It's easier on the eyes
Dew drops for tear drops
Better for the complexion