XLV. winter's tale

on Wharton, Robinson, and the reason for the season (eating snow)

I am trying to honor the hibernatory instinct, the animal instinct for sleep. Those who know me will laugh, when haven’t I honored that, but this feels different—in deference to the early shuttering of light. I have been carving deep grooves of rest in the day. Twenty minute naps that turn into an hour, set down hard into unconsciousness. These naps have not impeded going to bed as soon as possible, nor improved waking up earlier. I sleep and sleep and my dreams are again flooded with water.

I have never dreamt of winter. Or at least I have never, to my recollection, dreamt of snow. The water in my dreams is always rushing or very deep, bottomless; there is always the threat of drowning. Maybe there isn’t enough time, in a dream, to watch something freeze. I was born in an ice storm. I love all the details of my birth. Perhaps because my conception was so accidental it is comforting to feel like in the end everything came together for my debut—god had time to scrape together a plan. I feel heralded, welcomed into the still world for a purpose.

I’ve been reading for comfort, tearing through Edith Wharton’s catalogue. Ethan Frome, her short tragedy, is buried in snow. Carriages plow through it, trees collapse under its weight. There is not much light in the titular character’s world, from his dark hovel-like home to the few hours of bleak sunlight he might catch while working the frozen land. Instead of capturing the yellow-white light of day, Wharton masters the gradient blues of dawn and dusk. Time is yawning; it’s as if the whole narrative can only be seen under perpetually heavy lids. “Here and there a star pricked through, showing behind it a deep well of blue.” There is a flirtation in the line. Wharton teases an entire other sky, with perhaps another bundled populace shuffling under it, but from our side we can only see what the stars deign to let through. They hold the curtain aside just enough for themselves, leaving us with only a tantalizing glimpse backstage. I am weirdly moved by this line. I think it is the wonder and promise of a hidden thing. It is kind of how I feel about my life right now. A little starburst in an otherwise unremarkable, rapidly darkening sky. Like the only thing to guide me is a little corona of blue, a hint of a promise that there is more for me than I am able to see just yet.

a frozen lake in Catskill

I’m going home on Saturday. Game day: UK v. UofL. So much of this year, since June, has been in relation to home—going to or coming from or staying away. Last month I read Home by Marilynne Robinson and remembered that home is a crucible. It is an ice storm, precious things frozen in time. It is a birth-death cycle, you can never find the bottom of the well. Robinson weaves the tapestry of this book slowly. Events unfold under the point of view of the youngest Boughton daughter, teary-eyed and dutiful Glory. She makes biscuits from scratch; she bathes her ailing father; she listens in the dark of her room for the sound of her brother’s return. The plot is largely contained within the house. The emotional swells filtered through the fantasies, hopes, loyalties and griefs of one generous, diminishing woman. Robinson has a gift for tenderness. She treats her characters tenderly even while exposing them. Everyone is Good which makes their failures towards each other especially devastating. She transmits the heartache of home, how joy and grief wrestle. It will sit with me, as the first in the series, Gilead, did and I will be further induced to grace because of it.

Every year I wish for an ice storm. Everything is encased in a translucent glass. Buds are stunted mid-bloom, insects are perfectly trapped on leaves. Each blade of grass is sheathed like a tiny sword to be crushed underfoot. Water is paused mid-flow. Pebbles and pavement are glazed over and made dangerous. Ice preserves, but only for a time. In the morning sun it’s alive in golden reflections. A world of little mirrors. By afternoon the ice has melted and the living things are wilting, everything droops under the weight of half-frozen water. Things are browning. Slush forms. Nature unfreezes, and time is ugly again.

xx

Mia