Member-only story
I’ve enjoyed the cold air that’s blown down through the Arctic Circle this week, it’s reminded me what a real winter feels like, reminds me what nature really is: infinitely stronger than us.
This morning I slipped, running to catch a bus, and I wonder if I broke my wrist — though it is probably only sprained; though it is not so bad that I can’t type this sentence, even if there is discomfort and numbness. I don’t blame the slippery pathway through my garden — I blame myself for being in a rush; I didn’t really have to run, the urgency was pure fiction.
The temperature is already back on the rise, rising past the point of freezing by today, according to weather.com; it is like reality is fading away, the strange dream of seasonless weather is returning again. The cold woke me up; slushy warmth will inevitably put me back to sleep.
Life ought slow down, hibernate — that is the point of winter, after all. But modern life has no interest in slowing down, preferring, rather, to slip, running in order to remain fashionably, rather than critically, late.
