balmy anyway
A couple ironies - one related to my last post. I came from NJ to NC when I was sixteen to go to college..and both me and my sister and many college friends all stayed here. In my case a large part was the weather. It's nicer, longer. And even in the middle of winter there is a certain weather pattern that occurs which sets me at peace. An unsteady warm breeze blows from almost due south. The sky is completely overcast with low flying stratus clouds heading north. The air is completely saturated with humidity. I open the doors and windows and let the wafting air inside. A fog forms on all the mirrors. Visible droplets of water form on cold walls and doors which become wet to the touch. And the air smells all the same as if there were an april shower passing. And so in that moment you have springtime.
At times in my past new year's eve was a magical time of wild partying, tequila, screaming at the moon, a knit gang of friends, romance, ecstasy, and complete exhaustion. Somehow all those things drift away like in that Bob Dylan song. You don't know when you stopped doing certain things or knowing certain people..it all just drifts.
So no crazy time this year. Just some delicious balminess in the air. Midnight is one of the hours of the day that I am always awake during. So with the apathy of the season I described in my last post, I decided to lay down at around 11:30- just before new year. It was probably a small depression wave. When a shallow angst washes over you like the roiling air floating out of an oven you've just opened.
I can handle many different negative emotions...but for some it requires being horizontal by an open window with a cat. So laying there in the dark smelling that wayward spring air I watched as my cats also sniffed with enthusiasm at the richness that was bathing us. I realized how many elements from my last post were present and found it amusing. It also revealed a truth though--that the "dormancy" I referred to, although expressed as a seasonal process, is actually more of a metaphor for a dormancy of spirit. So in a sense that winter I mention is in many ways a winter of years.
So the enticing air and the cats and the horizontality all worked their magic upon me and I began to drift away blissfully. As I sank away I contemplated the irony of being unconscious at the moment of the new year and how this was really a unique celebration unlike all the others which involved being awake. And yet maybe every minute or two I would start awake to the sounds of my neighbors anticipatory fireworks and as quickly I would fall back into sleep. It sounds uncomfortable but it was quite the opposite. When you sleep blissfully in air like that you don't really enjoy the sleeping time as much as you enjoy the brief satisfying moments of consciousness that wash in. It is at the precise moment where we are "falling" asleep that is so satisfying. So the evening air and the fireworks held me suspended right at the very door of sleep and a light rain finally dragged me completely under.
As I said midnight is never a sleepy time for me..so this was a nap. I awoke spontaneously about an hour and a half later, the breeze still immaculate but the rain now just a dripping. I spoke a word to the darkness that I wanted to be my first word this year, and got up.
At times in my past new year's eve was a magical time of wild partying, tequila, screaming at the moon, a knit gang of friends, romance, ecstasy, and complete exhaustion. Somehow all those things drift away like in that Bob Dylan song. You don't know when you stopped doing certain things or knowing certain people..it all just drifts.
So no crazy time this year. Just some delicious balminess in the air. Midnight is one of the hours of the day that I am always awake during. So with the apathy of the season I described in my last post, I decided to lay down at around 11:30- just before new year. It was probably a small depression wave. When a shallow angst washes over you like the roiling air floating out of an oven you've just opened.
I can handle many different negative emotions...but for some it requires being horizontal by an open window with a cat. So laying there in the dark smelling that wayward spring air I watched as my cats also sniffed with enthusiasm at the richness that was bathing us. I realized how many elements from my last post were present and found it amusing. It also revealed a truth though--that the "dormancy" I referred to, although expressed as a seasonal process, is actually more of a metaphor for a dormancy of spirit. So in a sense that winter I mention is in many ways a winter of years.
So the enticing air and the cats and the horizontality all worked their magic upon me and I began to drift away blissfully. As I sank away I contemplated the irony of being unconscious at the moment of the new year and how this was really a unique celebration unlike all the others which involved being awake. And yet maybe every minute or two I would start awake to the sounds of my neighbors anticipatory fireworks and as quickly I would fall back into sleep. It sounds uncomfortable but it was quite the opposite. When you sleep blissfully in air like that you don't really enjoy the sleeping time as much as you enjoy the brief satisfying moments of consciousness that wash in. It is at the precise moment where we are "falling" asleep that is so satisfying. So the evening air and the fireworks held me suspended right at the very door of sleep and a light rain finally dragged me completely under.
As I said midnight is never a sleepy time for me..so this was a nap. I awoke spontaneously about an hour and a half later, the breeze still immaculate but the rain now just a dripping. I spoke a word to the darkness that I wanted to be my first word this year, and got up.