It is finally 50 degrees and rainy in Los Angeles today. It is our variation of January.
And all of the misty fog and damp greys remind me of winters in Portugal where we’d all huddle near an electric heater with mugs of tea, waiting it out together. The pause that winter brings–when you actually experience the season in some way–feels more important than we can know when our bodies live closer to the equator.
I miss Portugal winters because there was a sense of a boldly coming spring. The move from winter to spring is buoyant with hope.
I want to find better ways to sit back and anticipate movement, even when the California sun is (so often, so) kindly saluting us as summer children. There must be better pausing and waiting and exhaling in the false winters we know.
There are many things I like about living in East Africa, but the relative flatness of the seasonal changes is not one of them. We basically go from hot and dry to rainy with some variance of temperature along the way. I can’t say I really miss winter, but I do think there’s something to miss about the contemplative mood that winter days can bring.
Nelly, love, what a beautiful new site. I will update the link on mine. Thank you for keeping up with my sporadic poems these days. Poco a poco, I’m trying to write more again. xoxo.