A February Lament

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With my unfailingly encouraging, challenging, insightful and supportive sweetheart Adam as my witness, I'm making an effort to regain consistency in my writing. Here is my first shot at what I hope will be a twice-weekly regimen.
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From my living room window, I watch the snow wrestle with the wind and lose, time and time again. The trees sway as if to a melody only they can hear; they try to shake the frozen weight from their branches but cannot, so they go on swaying – an eternal dance.

The sky is a dull white. It doesn’t project, or pierce, or see. It simply hangs, and window-gazers lose their way trying to stop feeling its heaviness.

The earth is devoid of color. All a blank, it moans with weariness and wishes for the spring. It wishes to feel soft and green and new again. The dancing tree boughs ache for birds to hop amongst them and brighten the Earth with their songs.

Other houses look like sleepy giants with their blinds and shutters drawn low, using rest as a defense against the season. No matter how I try, I can’t imagine life inside them.

For some time now, I have felt as heavy and frozen as the winter. I try to feel colorful like September, alive as May and as warm as July, but February dominates. So I go about (nearly) all my life’s activities, feeling numb within.

I want a cure for the restless unease I’m trying to beat down, but the listlessness is powerful and pervasive. I know myself to be blessed just as much now, or more, as I was before winter, but the power to glory in the source seems to have escaped me somehow. I seek it by going through the same motions I went through before, but all feels shadowy to me now.

These feelings that grip me cannot abide – I know spring is coming. But in the midst of winter of the soul, it is so hard to remember that.

People all throughout time have felt the way I do now, I am sure, and so my heart goes out to them. Whoever you are, you are not alone. Do not reproach yourself. Instead, hang on, because February is short. March is interim. April approaches. May will bring healing.


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2 comments:

Adam said...

Nice post.

Clive Barker's "The Thief of Always" took place in February for reasons similar to the ones you've listed. http://bit.ly/9ckE64

I read that book when I was 10, and it scared the ca-ca out of me.

Pam Elmore said...

Nicely written. Thanks for the encouragement to hang on...