I’m reminded of the expression cold hands, warm heart. I do hope that’s true here in winterland. But maybe this necessitates my leaving the house, because now my hands are ensconced in the perma-69-degrees of central heating. Gordon believes that houseplants need to be stressed to become hardier. Perhaps this was only his logic after we had gone through a season of not watering them because life was too busy, but they always survived. I might need to get out of the house more and let the bitter cold play across my cheeks and sting my fingers.
The idea of venturing out into the cold today is not purely derivative of cold hands, warm heart. It is actually the inspiration of my dream that I can’t shake. It was so powerful and so detailed—and most of all it dovetailed so perfectly with what I wrote about in my other blog last night, that I know it was from beyond me. Before bed, I posted Maybe I need a rabbit-fur coat… in which I draw strength from the bunny I observed in our yard last night. We can both make it through the winter here, I thought. But then, I dreamed about rabbits. Two rabbits. That I rescued from a friend’s yard. I put them into cages to transport them and then brought them into my house. I let them out, but they were wild. They could not be held without scratching and they immediately began to defecate all over my white rugs. Oh, I said, I hadn’t thought through the whole pooping thing. My friend said they could be trained to go in a litter box. Ugh. This was not what I’d had in mind. I suddenly wondered why I had brought them here at all. Wild bunnies—in my house. I clearly couldn’t live with them here and they surely didn’t want to be here. At first I decided to take them to a shelter, until I realized the thing to do was just to release them. They needed to go back outside—it would solve everything.
After waking up with the initial that was odd… I began to think about the juxtaposition of my dream and my writing and found that they were connected. The rabbit does just fine out in the winter, but the inspiration I may need to draw from it is to allow it to draw me outside. To breath the cold air and allow myself to feel the chill and the wind. To feel the sadness of moving and being lonely at times. And to see the sky and the snow and the birds and the people. To enter into the streetscape that passes me by through my double-paned window. Maybe I need the cold hands to warm my heart.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Saturday, January 15, 2011
The Winter of My Discontent
I stand, forehead pressed to glass, so cold and hard on my skin. Looking out at this winter landscape. A white frieze of snow clings to the bend in the bare branch beyond the window. White against the dull dark gray of bark. White tipped branches stretching towards the gray colorless sky. A landscape in sepia. Gordon says we can see things more clearly in the winter. Brutal. Honest.
I see the beauty in it. I do. It is stark and stripped and minimal. But I’m not cut out for the winter—my body suffers in it. My wrist and fingers ache on one hand. My skin is chapped and rough. My cuticles are brittle and peeling. I’ve already had 3 colds. I cook food that is too fattening and I eat too much of it. I am leached completely of Vitamin D.
I dreamed last night that I was behind the wheel of a small car that I could not manage to keep within the lines of my lane. I was careening down a steep, twisty incline in rainy weather, scraping against guardrails and other cars. The road ended on a small spit of land upon which sat a structure that contained only a small square room lined with benches. The sea raged on three sides and was wild and tangled with kelp. The interior of the room was bland and stucco and off-white and there were no windows. It was a waiting place. And it was peopled with odd acquaintances of mine from my distant past and one little boy who had lost his mother. I was there for a long time. Remembering. Thinking back on the past. Offering comfort to the little boy. People would come and go from the room. It was never clear what we were doing there, only that we were waiting.
I awoke with a strong sense of that space: of the sea swelling and ebbing just behind the walls. I carried it with me today—that raging sea. That uncomfortable feeling of waiting. Of suspended, upended time. Of the loss of direction. Or the just plain lost.
Winter is a time for longing. It is a time of absence. The beauty of chiaroscuro.
I see the beauty in it. I do. It is stark and stripped and minimal. But I’m not cut out for the winter—my body suffers in it. My wrist and fingers ache on one hand. My skin is chapped and rough. My cuticles are brittle and peeling. I’ve already had 3 colds. I cook food that is too fattening and I eat too much of it. I am leached completely of Vitamin D.
I dreamed last night that I was behind the wheel of a small car that I could not manage to keep within the lines of my lane. I was careening down a steep, twisty incline in rainy weather, scraping against guardrails and other cars. The road ended on a small spit of land upon which sat a structure that contained only a small square room lined with benches. The sea raged on three sides and was wild and tangled with kelp. The interior of the room was bland and stucco and off-white and there were no windows. It was a waiting place. And it was peopled with odd acquaintances of mine from my distant past and one little boy who had lost his mother. I was there for a long time. Remembering. Thinking back on the past. Offering comfort to the little boy. People would come and go from the room. It was never clear what we were doing there, only that we were waiting.
I awoke with a strong sense of that space: of the sea swelling and ebbing just behind the walls. I carried it with me today—that raging sea. That uncomfortable feeling of waiting. Of suspended, upended time. Of the loss of direction. Or the just plain lost.
Winter is a time for longing. It is a time of absence. The beauty of chiaroscuro.
Found Journal Entry--written 4/8/09
San Francisco.
Leaving this city will be so incredibly hard. Here, in these lines, how can I sum up what it was to hear the tincan rustling of the eucalyptus leaves, and walk home with their scent clinging to my pants cuffs? How can I capture the way the yellow sun fell on the whites city made up of tiny squares, laid out on hills like a miniature train set? The rumble and clacking of the trains on the streets and the clanging of the trolly cars? A city so much a city, where you can still hear the cawing of seagulls that swoop over the buildings reminding you of the nearness of the sea. Cresting a hill in the center of a city, and seeing a fragment of bridge and a wedge of the bay floating disconnected between the tall buildings of downtown. Walking the uneven, dirty sidewalks of the Western Addition, avoiding dog poop and broken glass, even as the air smells of flowers and lavender and again, always, the eucalyptus, towering over the parks and perfuming the air with their heady, urine soaked scent. Beautiful and overpowering all at once.
What is it to say goodbye to all the people you know you’ll never see again. You were just one more face in the ocean of faces that made up their background of life, as they were part of yours, and yet how connected we are to this artifice, this external stage set that we acted upon and in front of. What a terrible thing it is to have to say goodbye, to close the final chapter. It’s like reading a book that you love dearly, and not wanting to finish it—wanting so badly for it to never end, so that you turn the last page, and immediately begin touching it and leafing through again, as if there must be something more, someway to continue the journey it took you on.
Leaving this city will be so incredibly hard. Here, in these lines, how can I sum up what it was to hear the tincan rustling of the eucalyptus leaves, and walk home with their scent clinging to my pants cuffs? How can I capture the way the yellow sun fell on the whites city made up of tiny squares, laid out on hills like a miniature train set? The rumble and clacking of the trains on the streets and the clanging of the trolly cars? A city so much a city, where you can still hear the cawing of seagulls that swoop over the buildings reminding you of the nearness of the sea. Cresting a hill in the center of a city, and seeing a fragment of bridge and a wedge of the bay floating disconnected between the tall buildings of downtown. Walking the uneven, dirty sidewalks of the Western Addition, avoiding dog poop and broken glass, even as the air smells of flowers and lavender and again, always, the eucalyptus, towering over the parks and perfuming the air with their heady, urine soaked scent. Beautiful and overpowering all at once.
What is it to say goodbye to all the people you know you’ll never see again. You were just one more face in the ocean of faces that made up their background of life, as they were part of yours, and yet how connected we are to this artifice, this external stage set that we acted upon and in front of. What a terrible thing it is to have to say goodbye, to close the final chapter. It’s like reading a book that you love dearly, and not wanting to finish it—wanting so badly for it to never end, so that you turn the last page, and immediately begin touching it and leafing through again, as if there must be something more, someway to continue the journey it took you on.
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