Passing the threshold...

I USUALLY REFER to gears winding down or icing over when it gets to October. The truth is I simply cannot move with the same momentum over winter. I should be warm and inside, making things and patiently anticipating the thaw, but instead I am encouraged to work upon mountains of reading and take notes which would better be taken in Spring and over Summer. I find it unusual that as a whole we elect to save Summer for spending time outside and doing little work at all, when we are most awake and most able to explore our most inexplicable thoughts. Just as we wake from a dream which recalls to us memories translated into wild and ineluctable imagery, we forget it soon after to spend time with our conscious which tries but cannot recall. The moments and the time we have are all in reverse and the night's ruminations and reflections are swept aside with the vexations of the daytime. We are so perplexed that all we can do is think over what has already occurred, rather than be with ourselves at the most profound moment.

This is just like winter, I believe, when we ought to be kept warm and recovering ourselves because we are spent with so much thoughtless living, but we are instead immersed in study or work, worrying about the festive occasions that are to come and not thinking for a moment that it is life we are living and not marionettes. We need not be obliged to spend the winter worrying about what we cannot adhere to and holidays which have become overburdened with fleeting and unimportant gatherings and festivities. We must find a balance. We must cast aside the routines which deny us purpose and reflection, or we must at the very least recognise that it is, after all, all invention. We are humans, and we require time to breathe and reflect, and even allow the overworking mechanism to frost over when it is needed. The reflection and the quiet moment of reconciliation are warmth which moves us forward again.