Winter

Maybe it is the art school angst still bubbling deep down inside or maybe a little bit of goth still trying to break free but I can’t help but love the romantic melancholy of winter in the city.

I love the quiet isolation that a winter day brings. Despite the fact that the streets are full no one is speaking to each other, they are too focused on keeping every bit of skin covered by a hat, a scarf or a hood, all of which hinder communication and force everyone to look down and only down as they walk as quickly as possible to their destination.

I can spend hours watching the smoke billow up from buildings, white and grey puffs on the steel blue skies, and if we are lucky a sunlit sky that seems to contradict itself by being both bitterly cold and warm on the cheeks, if you are behind a window that is. Then there is the river, the river which normally I would think of as cold and icy, yet somehow now, in the months of winter is warmer than the air and the entire surface is covered by a steam that is eerie and beautiful and makes you wonder what could still be living beneath the surface and how those creatures must give no thought at all to the icy air above. Some mornings I see the occasional sheet of stray ice floating along the side, it seems to have broken free from some part of the lake I can’t see and can’t imagine being still enough to let ice like that form yet there it is collecting trash or harboring a duck that must have forgotten to go somewhere else.

All of these things are a wonder and joy to view from my windows or from the train. My mind wanders and I find it hard to read and can only manage to pick out a soundtrack to support my daydreams. For me these days spawn the most romantic thoughts, romantic thoughts that are so ridiculous they will never even appear in a movie. Yet, I have them over and over and think how wonderful it would be if they were all to come true.

Then there is the night. At night the streets are empty while everyone is home going stir crazy and ordering delivery and with an internal clock that is counting down the days until cabin fever set in. Because it is also the holiday season there are miles and miles of faerie lights, on tress on bushes and homes. My favorites are the standard tiny white ones that seem to twinkle between branches, needles and dead leaves. There are few things more enchanting and beautiful than a street lined with trees covered in faerie lights. The stillness is comforting and the silence is just one more thing that adds to the myths I create in my head.

All this daydreaming is neither depressing nor particularly uplifting, but it is just a feeling that is best described as contentment. I don’t believe my thoughts will come true and frankly if they did I would be more than shocked, but it is an urge I can’t control when winter sets in, and I love every minute of it.