The rain will get to you, they said. You'll find yourself beaten down by the grey days and the rain and you'll eventually move. But it isn't the rain, it's the perpetual twilight, the not-day that starts in the mid-afternoon and gets darker and darker until the sun finally lifts again sometime mid-morning the next day.
Of course, all through this past summer my surprise was renewed every day by how light it was, so late. The day seemed never-ending; I had to close the blinds just to cut the glare enough to read in the early evenings. I had no idea that this would be the price for that largess, that overabundance of sunlight. It was the same in Dublin, I remember, how late we could walk those unlit village roads at night in the beginning of fall, and how as Christmas closed in so did the night, until all I wanted to do was huddle in my blanket next to the electric heater with the red foil flickering to imitate fire, clutching a bottle of wine and trying to decide if whatever might be on BBC2 would be worth getting up and crossing the cold room for.
I have lived so many places since then, through many different kinds of winters: winters of sand, and snow, and equatorial monsoons. Winters of heartbreak, of children's delirium, and the winter my neighbor's chihuahua bit me while I was putting Christmas light in my yard (which actually counts as pretty damn funny, although it's left me with quite a prejudice against lap dogs).
This winter is hard. No matter how hard I work, nothing gets done and the bizarre centrifuge of daily life throws out more and more things that need to be done even as I fail to accomplish the things that were flung out before. I'm exhausted and overwhelmed, even as I recognize all of the things I have to be grateful for. I'm grateful enough already, dammit! What I really need is a few more hours of daylight. And possibly a chihuahua for comic relief.
Of course, all through this past summer my surprise was renewed every day by how light it was, so late. The day seemed never-ending; I had to close the blinds just to cut the glare enough to read in the early evenings. I had no idea that this would be the price for that largess, that overabundance of sunlight. It was the same in Dublin, I remember, how late we could walk those unlit village roads at night in the beginning of fall, and how as Christmas closed in so did the night, until all I wanted to do was huddle in my blanket next to the electric heater with the red foil flickering to imitate fire, clutching a bottle of wine and trying to decide if whatever might be on BBC2 would be worth getting up and crossing the cold room for.
I have lived so many places since then, through many different kinds of winters: winters of sand, and snow, and equatorial monsoons. Winters of heartbreak, of children's delirium, and the winter my neighbor's chihuahua bit me while I was putting Christmas light in my yard (which actually counts as pretty damn funny, although it's left me with quite a prejudice against lap dogs).
This winter is hard. No matter how hard I work, nothing gets done and the bizarre centrifuge of daily life throws out more and more things that need to be done even as I fail to accomplish the things that were flung out before. I'm exhausted and overwhelmed, even as I recognize all of the things I have to be grateful for. I'm grateful enough already, dammit! What I really need is a few more hours of daylight. And possibly a chihuahua for comic relief.
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