Mindful Living: Falling Into Winter

Someone asked me today if I'd had a good week. A good week? "Sure," I said, because I guess most of my weeks are good weeks. Sometimes there are days when I lose myself in obsession (usually over lost love and love lost), but general I'm as chipper inside as I appear on the outside. When I do have rough days, they are brought on by those 90 degree summer specials, when my clothes cling like Saran Wrap. So even after a cool summer like the one we've just been ejected from, I'm still a little relieved when that sudden cool, maybe even cold breeze steals in my bedroom window.

But it's not so easy when winter tip-toes by. Even though I've woken on Fall mornings for 37 years now, I'm still surprised and a bit on edge when I peer out at the foggy grass, barely discernable through the early hour. It's not that I don't like winter itself, it's the segue into something mysterious that puts me off balance. We are still in the realm of middle earth, too cold for suntanning and too hot for cocoa. I'm waiting to crack the ice on my windshield into little chunks that skitter off the hood. I'm waiting to feel the tickle of my cat's whiskers as she crawls under my comforter. I'm waiting to hear the icy crackle of the bushes by my front door as I push them aside. I'm waiting for soft cotton sweaters that I can clamber into, and slumber long afternoons away.

Still, still, I am a little afraid. What will the darkness bring? Will that tiny shiver of moonlight sprinkling the snow remind me of sadnesses past? Or will it be a fleeting melancholy, as ephemeral as the stars that dance in my eyes after a glance at the sun. Will I have dark days brought on by a lone gray cloud slipping inside my heart? Will I forget the feel of the water, from warm to cold as I dove from one dappled shadow to the next? Will my heart forget the steam of summer? Will loneliness stir?

As I dip my toes into this winter, pull back, and dip again, I will, for the first time, have a quiet companion to my wanderings. I discovered him slipping in just as winter does, in odd places and unexpected breezes. He is the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, who seems, even though from another country and another time, someone who asks the same questions, wanders the same woods I do.

Although some might think a philosopher like myself would be an inveterate poetry reader, in fact I've always found poetry to be a bit of a burden. The words of poetry are too often dense, and give up their secrets only with concentrated digging; too much work for me. So when my friend sent me this quote of his, I sensed a companion spirit. The piece she sent me read: "I beg you.... to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without ever noticing it, live your way into the answer...." Rilke sounds like I might sound if I were a poet, gentle prose and explorations into the same subtle flavors of things. He understands why I ask so many questions.

So, perhaps this winter he and I will hold hands and walk outside through the frozen grass. We will look back at our footsteps setting into the dew, and maybe wade into this Vermont winter with a little more courage. Perhaps we will even bound out to the snow with a hollered "cheerio," which will be nearly lost in the soundless cold. We will merge into another season in one swift, and joyous moment.

Copyright January, 2000