Seasons Change
The leaves are slowly turning golden. Everyday I can see the colors change more and more as a lingering summer heat gives the bees their last chances to pollinate.
I have been yearning for summer to come to an end. My once favorite season, now one I merely get through. Everything feels different now, and not just because of Covid. This particular season of my life, my mid-thirties, feels different, as it should…I guess. Many things I used to love have slowly faded away, making way for new appreciations.
Or maybe that’s my depression talking.
Nothing brought me more happiness than thinking of a warm, summer night spent with friends outside on the streets of New York City. Nights at the cinema where you come out of the frozen dark, tundra, to be blasted with the hot city air. But the lingering summer light as of late makes me want nothing more than the early darkness of winter. Thoughts and words and I never thought I would think, much less utter, much less write.
The Bliss of Hibernation
Getting through the past, dismal and isolated winter was difficult for many reasons, but when it came to my writing and work I seemed to be more productive than I ever was. There is a calmness in the dark. Knowing that everyone has most likely made their way inside, the anxiety of missing something, of thinking you need to be out there doing something flitters aways.
This past winter with candles lit, music softly playing in the background, the early darkness swept over me like a warm, cosy blanket and paved the way for me to write in peace.
What A Difference A Year And A Half Makes
Perhaps it’s all these days, weeks, months spent in isolation. Seasons change and I am not who I once was before the doors closed and life changed far greater for some of us than others. I have grown even more used to my own company even when I can no longer handle being alone. But the heat and the sunny days and the golden light has brought me little joy these last few summers. Maybe that will change as my circumstances do, but for now I am counting down to colder days, where I can breathe easier knowing it’s okay for me to be inside, pottering along as best I can.
That’s what winter is: an exercise in remembering how to still yourself then how to come pliantly back to life again.
Ali Smith