This is the first morning that it's really felt like winter to me - though I suppose technically speaking it will be autumn for a few more weeks yet. Still, according to WQXR's 8 o' clock weather forecast it was just 31 degrees when I stepped out of my apartment this morning, I wore my long down coat for the first time this year, and I found white-gray skies and flurries.
Normally I approach winter with some dread - the short days are wearying, and I'm sensitive to cold - my fingers manage to freeze unless I'm wearing the thickest, most ungainly sort of mittens. But this year I have a very different sensation. As I struggled to wake up in partial darkness this morning, I was overcome by the feeling that the day was like an eye that has been slowly closing, gradually shutting out the light as the weeks progress. But in only a few weeks that eye will just as slowly start to open again, and will see the world with new light, and maybe so will I. The city I live in will be stripped and frozen and hidden under dirty snow, to clear the path for new growth - in other words, if there were no winter, we wouldn't have spring, and the annual thrill that comes with seeing signs of life again. I suppose that while we all know this, for some reason today was the first time that I profoundly felt it to be so.
When I took the picture above it wasn't nearly so dark: I was playing with my manual settings again, trying to show how the sun whitened the clouds in front of it as the flurries fell. Now I'm waiting for my laundry to make its way through the dryer cycle - more renewal!
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