How to get through winter
I started writing this last year and that seems like all you need to know about what I think of the season.
Getting through other seasons is not challenging for me. I stop to smell the literal roses growing wild out of a plot of dirt in the Brooklyn sidewalk as the spring air spreads my face into a smile. I shove my nose deep into a bloom that has no scent but its petals brush velvet against my cheeks. The light is long and there is not a lot to rush for. There is time.
The summer days make us mostly nude and the nights take us outside and into each other’s arms. What’s not to love? So it’s a little sweaty. So it smells. That’s alright with me. In the crispness of fall we linger outdoors and ignore as long as we can the nipping of the air. We’re trained all our lives to love the turning of the leaves and the tilling of the gourds. Pumpkin costume. Pumpkin patch. Pumpkin spice.
The sun is in the sky and even when it’s not, you only have to wear, at most, one pair of pants.
Then there’s winter. Dusk is already looming when I open my eyes each morning. Getting through feels all but impossible. Everything is slow. Progress is begrudging. Do I have to go to school today?
I look for proverbial roses and find a dollar-ninety-nine chocolate frosted with sprinkles from Dunkin’ Donuts, even though I never go to Dunkin’ Donuts, I don’t even like donuts very much, donuts are almost always disappointing. But it’s dark before 5 o’clock and my fingers will freeze between the top of the subway stairs and my front door and this pastry seems like the only thing that might turn the lights on in my brain.
I clutch the crumpled wax paper in my fist. I chew the donut.
They always smell better than they taste. That’s what it is.
I look around before stuffing in the last donut quarter. I haven’t even chewed and swallowed the rest yet. I don’t stop and savor it. I don’t dissect the artificial flavors crumbing the roof of my mouth or patiently wait for the sticky sugar glue — “glaze” — to dissolve on my tongue.
How to get through winter? Choke down a chocolate frosted in the cold.
When I started writing this, the winter solstice was 20 days away and the season already represented an existential threat. The symbolism meant something to me but the promise of daylight meant more.
How to get through winter? Remember that the day isn’t over when the sun goes down.
Then it was coming on Christmas and I got so distracted counting the rambutan skins scattered across the platform at a Chinatown subway station that I missed my train. I made a playlist of holiday tunes that don’t suck and that little victory over all the same old goddamned carols helped. Jazzy songs about bad gifts (socks) and bad jokes (capitalism). Getting out of town helped.
Then it was January, which is, it turns out, not the time for new beginnings. February in New York has always vexed me but this year the misery came early. I didn’t realize how long it had been until I overheard an old man chatting up a family of tourists drowning in luggage at the West 4th Street station: “You came at the right time, we didn’t see the sun for seven straight days last week.”
Oh, that’s right. We didn’t. No wonder. They shouldn’t have given us a new season of The Great British Bake Off at Christmas, they should have saved it for February when New Yorkers need a reason to go on. This concept of the two-week winter break and subsequent return to absolute normalcy is deceitful. Cruel. Back to work? Please.
Next year, I’ll treat The Holidays as the start of the celebration, not the event itself. I’ll consider Christmas the opening ceremony to my Great Indulgence-Hibernation. All the blankets, lots of naps, sleeping in, sex. A glass of something before bed, a shot of something in a cup of hot tea. In morning coffee! A big bowl of popcorn. Cozy pajamas and furry slippers and many, many layers. Champagne. Creamy soups and warming stews, braised meats and long roasted root vegetables, the sunchokes that survived in frozen ground.
I will do more, not less, I will just resolve to do it all inside. Stir the spirit by soothing the machine. It can end at Mardi Gras. I went to New Orleans for a couple of weeks and now I’m obsessed with the idea of Lent and where it came from. I didn’t give anything up this year, not officially, I’m a little behind schedule because I was busy laboring under the imbecilic impression that January 1st was the right time to introduce a period of austerity. Now I’m catching up on all those inside indulgences. I’m fattening myself up.
We spent a lot of time in New Orleans tracing and debating how exactly the Catholic Church came to usurp primordial ritual. Maybe next spring I’ll design a personal 40-day sacrifice to weep for Tammuz, god of fertility, and honor Osiris, lord of the underworld and judge of the dead. Until then, surely the cycle of life and death will continue with complete disinterest in my abstinence or lack thereof. All roads lead to Babylon and 20 days remain until the spring.
Warm. Soon. and, your taste in music is exceptional. Thanks for adding Isfar Sarabski to my playlist.