Tag: winter

emotions

night and day

etikser

I don’t know the constellations like so many do. I know the Big Dipper, and the Little Dipper, and I used to know the North Star. Now it’s just me and that bright star I see so many nights in the west…Sirius? a planet? I don’t know…and it’s not just for me, it’s for everybody, I suppose…that bright star (or planet). It’s been guiding folks for centuries. Surely, you know that star.

I remember lying in bed at the beach after Christmas. It was night, and so it was dark, the room was dark but for the glare of the tv, and outside it was dark. Beach dark. The way it gets dark at the beach. There was enough light from the pier to see white caps as they moved on shore, what a treat, and the sky (eastern) seemed clear but with just one distinct light, probably a planet, I assumed, just to the left of the patio door frame. I didn’t think it was the North Star, but my eyes were drawn to that one bright light on the vast dark sky, and I held onto it as if it were my North Star. How many times I looked out before I fell asleep. And every time I woke during the night, I looked out at the waves and then up to the star. I looked to see if it had moved. Was it closer to the door frame? Did it get to the right of the door frame? It was the dearest, most precious thing to me at the moment. I didn’t understand, but I knew, without figuring it out, how precious it was to me. It was as if that star was there for me.

I had things that were worrying me that night, and the light, whether it was a star or planet, was wonderful and stayed with me as I navigated an anxious state of mind. Whatever troubles were haunting me through the night and the previous and the following day, whatever troubles were part of my life, I had that star. I wish I could see it every night from my bed. I wish I could open my eyes in the middle of the night, like I did that night, and take in the wonder of that little bright light and it would give me peace enough to return to sleep.

I need to get to bed. It’s late and way too cold to go outside and look for stars. I can pull the curtains aside and see the skies outside the window are cloudy gray, too gray behind the treetops to see any stars. Even my bright star in the west. When I wake in the morning, it will be past the time for stars. The clouds scatter and the morning sun shines bright these days on criss-cross footprints and left-over snow, and sweet little birds hop about and peck at wintry white icy crystals.  

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Like flickering starlight, beautiful words from songwriters call and inspire:

“In the darkness of my night,
In the brightness of my day.” [Bob Dylan, Girl from the North country]
Out of Dylan’s prolific wording and wonderful imagery, these simple words have called to me for years, and it was inevitable one day I’d write about the darkness of night and the brightness of day.

Kris Kristofferson repeating Bob Dylan’s description of Johnny Cash: “Johnny was and is the North Star, you could guide your ship by him.”

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© etikser. All Rights Reserved.
All photos and images here are my own.
They may not be used elsewhere or reblogged.

 

night sky

a pocketful of starlight

etikser

Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket.
Never let it fade away.
Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket.
Save it for a rainy day.
— Perry Como (1957), written by Paul Vance/Lee Pockriss.

[My thoughts from a December evening, a few months ago, during the Geminid Meteor Shower.]

I debated whether I wanted to go outside in the cold again, but I felt moved. Unlike last night, I’d wear a scarf this time, and zip my jacket, and I’d sit, make myself comfortable, in my summer deck chair.

Just what I did.

Clearly, it was starry. The sky was beautiful and the night around me felt wonderful. I was glad I was there.

Less than a minute, and I saw the moving flash to my right…behind the tree branches in my next door neighbor’s yard. Enough to make me gasp. It wasn’t the kind of meteor where you’re not sure you saw it. This was bright and clear, and it arced, fading along the way, to the right. Shooting stars are what they are. A second’s worth of something magical about the universe. Not the kind of magic we see with our imaginations. But the real deal.

I sat and looked to see if there would be more. And the dark sky, with shimmering stars loosely scattered among the tall branches, was more exquisite, I believe, than the meteor itself. The very reason we go outside late, on a cold December night. A pocketful of starlight. I was glad I was there.

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© Etikser. All Rights Reserved.
All photos and images here are my own.
They may not be used elsewhere or reblogged.
Please visit my other blog, Clover & Ivy, https://cloverandivy.wordpress.com.
I post mostly nature photos there.

seasons

a little bit of February

etikser

Maybe February is there for these very thoughts. When my physical body is weary, exhausted, and my heart feels heavy…which means, I guess, my eyes feel weighty. Which means what? I feel sad? Sorry? Knowing those deliberate thoughts of encouragement, and visuals of twinkly stars and wintry tall branches, knowing these aren’t enough to re-set my frame of mind.

Maybe perennials need the cold dormant period of winter to find energy for a new spring. Maybe I need February to get through to the other side of my mood.

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© Etikser. All Rights Reserved.
All photos and images here are my own.
They may not be used elsewhere or reblogged.
Please visit my other blog, Clover & Ivy, https://cloverandivy.wordpress.com.
I post mostly nature photos there.

2023

a bit of whimsy

etikser

It’s a dark and cloudy November night, and you have to close your eyes to remember fireflies. Tonight. Tonight I’m missing the on/off drifting flicker of July’s fireflies. It was months ago, I know, but they were here in July, I’m so very grateful, they were here in July, flying and flitting here and there among us, and above us, like a bit of magic, among friends. Like a folk song with a picking strum. Like the notes my friend Laura taught me to play so many years ago. Like the sound of my favorite John Prine song. Like my sister’s laugh.

Ahh, I remember the year fireflies sparkled like magic amongst the highest leaves of the tallest oak trees, mixed with the glitter of stars in a clear night sky on the 4th of July.

Cold nights have their charm, they do, but I miss fireflies. Yet I wonder if I really miss the flying and flickering here and there fireflies, or just the dreamy whimsy of a summer evening.

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© Etikser. All Rights Reserved.
All photos and images here are my own.
They may not be used elsewhere or reblogged.
Please visit my other blog, Clover & Ivy, https://cloverandivy.wordpress.com.
I post mostly nature photos there.

2022

the times

etikser

It was the image out the windshield that framed my state of mind. A car-lined street. And trees up and down both sides. The first time in many months I looked out and saw trees that looked like winter. They all looked like winter. A clear November sky, and it was the trees that made the statement.

Time marches forward. We’re practically at the beginning of December, yet I still feel I’m wandering, lost in time somehow. How long has it been with this feeling? Months for sure. Like I need to wake up one morning soon and feel grounded. Is this an end-of-summer thing? It’s been going on since then. I don’t think it’s that, but it’s a longing for the cold. I find myself looking forward, in hope, to colder days. I long to be reassured, comforted, free of fear and worries. Don’t we all? And I expect winter to deliver that comfort and freedom? Maybe I should read my book, and hope for the best.

winter

winds

etikser

High pressure meets low pressure, and we get loud howling winds. Fast-moving currents…not the ones that move miles aloft in the jet stream…I don’t think we’d hear those…but the noisy whistling winds that whip through our old favorite branches in the backyard.

Winter’s best sounds. One is just a whisper…the soft hiss of icy crystals falling on us from a dark, starless, snowy sky.

The other is a roar.

This is about the roar. A cold, noisy, winter night, and the roar. The howling winds that bend branches to the point of breaking. Those winds.

Me?

I’m inside.

I’m enclosed and surrounded by architecture, and busy with life. With heat, with electricity. There’s this and there’s that, and I’m hunkered down, as if I can ignore what’s going on out there, a hundred feet, two hundred feet above the rooftops. Still, there’s the hum that finds its way past the insulation of walls and windows, past the white noise of every appliance, inside, that cycles off and on.

It’s hardly exceptional. Barely a simple blink or nod, on an evening in the middle of winter.

But it’s not simple. It’s unexpectedly comforting.

Compelling?

It’s as if there’s something I’m missing this winter. The noise of the wind comes like a note to self, a reminder, of the icy cold that comes at the darkest, coldest, emptiest part of an eye-watering cold winter night…when my hands, my gloves, clutch a scarf and the top of my coat up close to my neck, and up over my mouth. It’s almost instinctual. We move to hold onto that little bit of warmth released every time we exhale. But the chill of the howling wind is shrill, strong, and indifferent. Try as I might, it takes my breath away.

That’s comforting? Yes, it is.

winter

wintering

etikser

There’s a drag that comes from lack of sunlight. That’s for real, and the lure of sleeping in on a winter morning is a real temptation.

I’m not a morning person. We know who we are. Years ago, I was in a carpool with a woman who was a morning person. I’m not sure she ever stopped talking for the entire ride into work. It worked out fine. She didn’t seem to mind that no one responded. Other than her and the driver, everyone else in the car was asleep.

This is how it works with me. I open my eyes, and even before the sleep fog clears, a whole litany of unwelcome thoughts line up for attention. Really…can’t I just get some coffee or OJ?

The thought that wakes us at 3 am feels like a heart-thumping immediate crisis. What if there’s a new killer COVID variant? At 8 am, it’s not quite as dramatic, more like a mental listing of every conceivable worry and bad outcome I might need to deal with that day, or anytime in the next six months, or the next six years.

So how does this relate to winter? In the winter, I wake and the sun’s shining through the shades, or it’s not, and either way it’s something to be happy about. Well, maybe not happy, but relieved. It’s something like the winter clause. I have good reason, loosely based on science or nature, to postpone, to hesitate, or to give in. To succumb, to hold back, put off, delay, and dispense, everything I don’t want to deal with, in effect and with great affection, on the pretext that it’s winter.