dance of a painted lady: winter

Showing posts with label winter. Show all posts

Before it was Spring's turn...

Winter had one last dance around the garden!

Over it

Are the days of winter sunshine just as sad for you, too? When it is misty, in the evenings, and I am out walking by myself, it seems to me that the rain is falling through my heart
and causing it to crumble into ruins.

Gustave Flaubert

I am lonely, yet not everybody will do. I don’t know why, some people fill the gaps and others emphasize my loneliness.

Anaïs Nin

Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: You don't give up.

Anne Lamott

Winter. So over it.

Signs of life...

Keep your faith in beautiful things;

in the sun when it is hidden,

in the spring when it is gone.

Roy R. Gibson

A hush is over everything,

silent as women wait for love;

the world is waiting for the spring.

Sara Teasdale

One swallow does not make a spring, nor does one fine day.

Aristotle

...tiny, but unmistakable.

Not yet a new season but a move in the right direction for me. I'm so over winter and feeling blah. I need light. I need to feel the sap rising. I need my words to come back to me so that I can reconnect.

I miss them.

I miss me.

I miss you.

Signs of life. Tiny, but unmistakable.

Out in the cold

All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost;
the old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost.

J.R.R. Tolkien

(1892-1973)

There is peace and rest and comfort in sorrow.

Søren Kierkegaard

(1813-1855)

But I'll tell you what hermits realize. If you go off into a far, far forest and get very quiet, you'll come to understand that you're connected with everything.

Alan Watts

(1915-1973)

Brief journeys - a moment on the rails

The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy.

There is radiance and glory in the darkness, could we but see; and to see,
we have only to look....

Fra Giovanni Giocondo

(c.1435–1515)

The grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.

John Muir

(1838-1914)

We don't remember days; we remember moments.

Cesare Pavese

(1908-1950)

A moment on the move, at dawn, passing Durham cathedral, snapped through a grimy train window with my phone... I looked up briefly from what I was reading and it was so lovely, it made me draw breath.

What a week of strange, sad, uncomfortable, funny, beautiful moments. Some of them will be remembered for a while, some forever, most hardly any time at all. A journey of moments... not all of them equal. I'm trying harder to notice the moments, to be in the moment, and to mark more consciously those to hold on to. And then letting the rest go.

Beautiful ice...

...in the blue and white light of an early morning.

It makes the 'up and out' worthwhile.

Suspended

I like these cold, gray winter days. Days like these let you savour a bad mood.

Bill Watterson

(1958)

"It's snowing still," said Eeyore gloomily. "So it is." "And freezing." "Is it?" "Yes," said Eeyore. "However," he said, brightening up a little, "we haven't had an earthquake lately.”

A. A. Milne

(1882-1956)

Year's end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us.

Hal Borland
(1900-19780

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.

Helen Keller
(1880-1968)

Hold fast to dreams,

For if dreams die,

Life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly,

Hold fast to dreams,

For if dreams go,

Life is a barren field,

Frozen with snow

Langston Hughes

(1902-1967)

I want to unfold,

I don't want to stay folded anywhere,

Because where I am folded,

There I am a lie...

Rainer Maria Rilke

(1875-1926)

In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness. Our life is a long and arduous quest after truth.

Mahatma Gandhi

(1869-1948)

I've spent the past three days in bed, mostly sleeping, sometimes just lying there, staring at the ceiling... I'm not sick. I'm just tired. Really tired, inside and out. And I'm hiding. Avoiding. No denying it.

Normally I love this time of year - it's a time to pause, to reflect on the year that's closing, take stock, count the steps taken and then to look forward to what's to come, dream about it, plan for it, anticipate it... and, usually, I relish that. This year, not so much. I don't really want to look back - nothing there I want or can bear to spend any more time looking at right now. I can't really bring myself to look forward either though. I have no inspiration or vision for that imminent future, even less for the future beyond that. And what I do see waiting out there, know is coming, I don't much care for. It's more hard stuff and I don't know how I'm going to find the energy to tackle or change it. My bouncebackability, usually so reliable, feels decidedly unbouncy.

Not that the here and now is particularly comfortable or interesting to contemplate. It's quiet though. And it's not backwards. Or forwards.

I just want to hold my finger down on the pause button and stay here, in this space in between. Suspended.

But of course, that's not possible. Time moves on and I can't avoid that. I can't avoid what it brings. If I've found anything to be true this past year, it's that the only way through stuff, is through it.

I just don't think I'm ready.

I'm not ready.

I am not ready.

Yet.

Crystalline thoughts...

Every piece of the universe,

even the tiniest little snow crystal,

matters somehow.

I have a place in the pattern,

and so do you...

T.A. Barron

(1952)

I choose to believe this, even when it's not entirely clear how, or obvious where that place is. It's as close as I come to faith.

Snowed in, snowed under...

Maybe this will be the week that things start to slow down at work? I hope so 'cause I only have about three day's worth left in me and I still have five days to get through.

The good news is that we have had more beautiful fluffy snow over the past few weeks than I've ever experienced in my life and it's gorgeous. This weekend brought a fresh fall... lots of it. Very pretty.

It does bring the whole country to a standstill though, which I find somewhat amusing (the whining needs to be experienced to be believed) and somewhat infuriating (honestly, it's not as if it never happens and yet we're always caught so unprepared). The sad thing is that it makes travelling for those who need to (like me) a real mission and even basic services like post and gas supplies are affected. They reckon that millions of Christmas deliveries are backlogged and are going to fail to arrive in time and people in more remote areas are having to go without heat - neither of which is funny or I think truly acceptable in a first world country.

Other than that, I'd rather just enjoy what there is to enjoy about it. The whining and whinging I hear all around me doesn't prevent it, or make it go away any faster, so I reckon we should just surrender to the snowlove!

My plan for the next few days is to layer up, walk out, and keep going until I can stop and hunker down properly over the holiday. With perhaps a pause or two to take a photograph or make a snowball in-between.

I hope holiday preparations in the virtual and real worlds are going well. I may get a chance to swing by and see for myself soon. That is, if this is indeed the week that things start to slow down... or I get snowed in.

Otherwise, it'll have to wait 'til next week.

Either way, sending a lot of ♡♥♡♥♡ out into the ether... with a little ❄*❄*❄ attached!

Thin ice or ice cold water?

Actually, I think I'll just walk away from it all.

Roll on the holidays...

Thankfulness, every day - Twenty One

A few days away... away from work, away from the city... disconnected.

Now that I'm back, I'm thankful for that mental, emotional and physical breathing space. Also thankful for the snow, which made everything feel calm and quiet and beautiful. And for that light on the horizon, literal and figurative...

Morning sky

Not what we have

but what we enjoy,

constitutes our abundance.

Epicurus

(341-270)

Some days this is all it takes to set the tone right.

Other days it takes a bit more effort.

Today I'm going for the former.

Balancing act - a reflective retrospective

Yesterday started bright and sunny but it turned grey and heavy and then at about three o'clock snow swirled down in big feathery flakes and dusted everything pretty. I know that some parts of the northern hemisphere are having much more snow than they'd like and others less than they need but this was just the right amount. Not enough to stop things moving but quite enough to make it look lovely.

I noticed that the evening light is starting to last fractionally longer and although it was already pretty gloomy when I walked home and not the best for taking photographs, this is what the acrobatic statue on the canalside looked like, all dressed in white. I actually like how it turned out. And the combination of not walking in the pitch dark, and the fluffy whiteness, really made me feel better.

As I wandered along I was thinking about how this walk, brief as it is, always has an impact on my day. Sometimes it reflects my mood and sometimes it lifts my mood. It never leaves me unmoved.

I looked back over a few of my previous posts and I was struck by how some of the walks I've recorded capture these reflective moments and the changing seasons - the everyday ramblings, routines and rhythms of my life. I like that.

This statue is something I especially enjoy seeing and respond to and depending on how my day, week, or month is going it reflects for me either joyful exuberance, the achievement of perfect balance, or the courage and staying power it takes to stay upright no matter what the universal elements fling at one. It's always beautiful.

I hope you've had a good week so far and, like me, are looking forward to the weekend...

Treescape of the mind...

I willingly confess to so great a partiality for trees as tempts me to respect a man in exact proportion to his respect for them.

James Russell Lowell

(1819-1891)

I've been thinking about trees.

At the moment those I encounter are mostly stripped bare and displaying their shapely branches and beautiful bark against wintery skies. I love to see them like this, although I admit I'm already starting to look closely for the first leaf buds of the Spring. I enjoy the wintery starkness but at this late stage of the season, with the beauty of the snow now gone, I am ready for winter to be over. The trees I pass on a daily basis are such a tangible sign of the seasons coming and going and I love that about them. Living in the inner city I treasure the few trees I encounter for their being not as plentiful.

When I was a very little girl I loved The Faraway Tree books and I'm sure those stories fueled two of my grownup loves - travel and trees. I was thrilled by the idea of a huge tree that housed magical characters and had fantastic and exotic, if not always pleasant lands that appeared on a cloud above its tallest branches. I'm always inclined to climb trees and secretly, I think I still hope that one day I'll stumble across a tree like this. It's no secret that on the wishlist for my dream home, large trees feature prominently. In fact, a treehouse would be perfect.

Some of my favourite places to curl up, especially with a book, have been in or under trees: the willow tree in the garden of my earliest childhood, an old oak tree on campus, the stone pines on the wine estate where my mother lived for a while, milkwood trees at the beach, a eucalyptus grove on the edge of a picnicker's lake, a copper beech in a Parisian park... I think trees and I were made for each other because with my Celtic colouring - ginger hair and pale, freckly skin, which goes quickly and horribly red and crispy in the sun - I always seek (and always have) the shady spot.

I also used to have a recurring dream in my youth about a tree that was hollow in the middle and had a spiral staircase, which ran up inside it. Sometimes that tree was a haven and I felt nothing but calm and peace when I went into it. Other times, I would go into the tree, start to climb the stairs and then the tree would seal itself closed with me inside. I'd start to run out of air and be paralysed and increasingly frightened - at which point I'd wake up with my face pressed into my pillow, feel like I was actually suffocating but be unable to move immediately, which was even more terrifying than the 'locked in the tree' dream which preceded it. I feel anxious now even thinking about it. But as you can tell, I never did suffocate, it's been about fifteen years since I last had that particular scary dream (although I occasionally still have the waking paralysis-fear thing), and my love of trees far outweighed any negative association that this nightmare leant them.

Last weekend I had a dream that I was in a garden. It was large and lush and full of beautiful big trees, including a solitary old yew tree. I recognised it specifically as such and also as the type of tree that I'd dreamt about as a youngster although I'd never known it to be a yew before. Isn't that odd - my dreaming self, conscious of a dreaming self? I understand that some yews in Europe, including one in Scotland and another in Wales, are amongst the oldest living things on the planet, estimated to have lived thousands of years. Yews have been considered by many throughout history as sacred and they can grow so large that some have been converted into tiny chapels. They're poisonous (with the exception of those red berries so that birds can eat them and distribute the seeds) and are often found in graveyards, symbolic of life, death and immortality. I believe they're revered in druidic culture and some ancient Celtic peoples poisoned themselves with the yew rather than surrender to Roman or Christian rule. I'm not sure if this somewhat morbid association is significant to my dream or not, I was just struck by how of all the trees in the garden, this is the one I took note of and related it to that younger dreaming self.

And then last night, when I was sorting through some old photographs in search of one I'd promised to send to a friend of us together in her garden over a year ago, I came across this one... yew berries, taken on a walk near her home on that same weekend. I had forgotten all about it.

Weird and amazing how one's mind sorts and filters and brings certain themes to the fore at certain times. I have no idea why this tree thing is specifically on my mind right now or even why I've rambled on about it here.

But there it is.

Weather beaten...

...or beautifully patinated?

Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference.

This week's been one of layers on and layers off - personally and globally, alternating high waters and doldrums - a bit of a rough ride at times but I'm sure I'll decide it's all just lovely texture in the end.

Today's Friday and, in my little world, what's not to love about that? Hope you have a happy one and that the weekend is one of sunny skies and plain sailing...

Bon voyage mes amis!

♥

Thawing out

Frozen solid from shore to shore is impregnable and hides the depth beneath but at least it's safe to walk on. In rivers, lakes and matters of the heart alike, it's those big chunks of ice floating around after the thaw has started that seem to be the most dangerous and difficult to navigate.

It's great to see a glimpse of blue sky but I'm not sure I'm equipped to deal with icebergs.