What was once an exaggerated and romanticized enclosure has become a reality. The weather has become extreme, down to negative 20 degrees and still dropping, accompanied by winds inducing negative 40 wind chills. I am now a prisoner in my cabin, more specifically confined to one bedroom small enough in volume for the floor heaters to combat the creeping fingers of the cold, slowly inching through the walls and windows, a struggle being lost throughout the rest of the cabin. Personified in my minds eye for the first time ever, the winter cold has revealed a cruel and unrelenting face stalking around every corner (not too disimliar to Tom Coughlin's heinous sideline visage; sorry, sports reference). Humbling in it's power, the blanketing freeze indiscriminately encompasses all, squeezing tightly and mercilessly doling out an inordinate share of purple nurples.
The paralyzing cold seems to me an outdated idea, something we have evolved past and defeated, so when I now look outside at the rolling images wavering in the thin bitter air I am transported to times of lore, to tragic accounts of all consuming depression and loss. This must be the dearth and vacuous role winter has come to symbolize and embody. Reduced to a briefly debilitating annoyance in our modern times of furnaces, motorized vehicles and instant oatmeal, the cold's unrelenting force yet remains unquestioned. They say a man will be frostbitten within 12 minutes of exposure to these conditions. Our meek flesh has no chance in resistance to the bitter truth, the cold will halt every function of life within our bodies, stop our blood in its necessary paths, and propel melodramatic metaphors and pretentious prose from the fingers.
The wind through my cabin sounds as if the rear engines have been switched on for take-off and I can't blame it for attempting an escape. I, however, happily hunker down, button things up, boil water for my tea, pull down my beenie tighter over my ears, insert my earbuds, surround myself with books; completely captured, only myself and my ideas and a heightened sense of my own existence. I say, let it blow, I welcome the opportunity to strengthen my resolve. I am just thankful that I don't have a real job, as venturing out in that mess would really bite. It is cold out there.
