February 2: Weight of Winter

PhotoMobMIT_0092_edited-1.JPG, originally uploaded by lizkdc.

There is a peace in the cycle of winter. Our knowledge that its very strangeness and intensity, burying and reshaping the world, will pass away again, provides us with a certain power.

Our ability to hold time in our heads, to know what the world was like before and what it can be again, is part of the magic of this season.

The plants on my windowsill react to the shift in light. With the snow well over waist high outside, they begin already to shoot forth new greens, with an unthinking chemical conviction that shifts in daylight ensure the coming of a spring in so many days, regardless of what the white walled world beyond the panes of glass say.

But we humans preview and prepare for spring in a different way, able to live over again in the midst of chilly dark February the past experience of what a bright April day is.