Preparing for Winter [melanie]

It’s almost here. Winter. Where I live in the South, winter generally lasts from November through February, spilling just a bit over into March. But since March carries with it the hope of spring, we’ll go ahead and toss it into the post-winter category, rounding the number of dreary months needing to be endured down to four.

It’s important that you understand I’m not a fan of winter. The cold is a big part of it, as is the ever-growing darkness. You can also throw in the frenetic and demanding spirit of the holidays, the bleak emptiness of January, and the climactic melancholy of my birthday which falls soundly on Valentines’ Day, year after lonely year. But let’s not go there right now. After all, we’re just brushing along the first whispers of the season. No need to dive headlong into absolute depression.

With this level of pessimism going into the season, it is absolutely vital that I seek out every possible method of preparation for the coming days. Winter will still attack me, but if I plan it right, I will see its assault coming in time to grab some of my stockpiled resources and fight back. Or at least to get a running start toward my cave of last resort.

I’m embarrassed to admit it, but this is the first year it has occurred to me that preparing for the impending season of dread might be a way to thwart it. Nearly every year, I rest 100 percent of my sanity on the magical threads of hope. “Maybe this year won’t be as bad as last year,” I say as I click my heels together three times. I grin and bear it as best I can, and as one would expect, outside forces determine the severity of my winter depression. Sometimes it’s mild. Sometimes it’s nightmarish. But what can I do about it? Move to Miami?

This year, I’m thinking differently. Giving it a little attention, I find I’m able to make a list of things that I will need to make it through the winter with as few scars as possible. I wouldn’t try to weather a hurricane or an earthquake without adequate preparations, so why should winter be any different?

1.Stop making excuses and buy one of those Seasonal Affective Disorder lights you’ve always been curious about.

It seems silly. To buy an expensive lamp and sit by it for hours a day, expecting it to enhance mood. But studies show it works, and I need to get over myself and just buy one. Consider this winter a testing ground. If it doesn’t work, donate it to folks in northern Alaska. (Honestly, how those guys survive one winter is utterly beyond me.)

2. Make a list of comfort foods.

Things like … chili. With chopped up onions and shredded cheddar cheese. Yes. I can feel the love just imagining it. I’ve always wanted to make chicken chili (tomato-based, not white), and never have. I could eat off of it all winter! And I can add things to this list and every couple of weeks try a new dish. Let cooking be your frosty day companion. Solid advice.

3. Go ahead and use the gas fireplace.

This is not the time to conserve. It’s always a fight in my home this time of year. How cold does it really have to be before we can justify using the gas fireplace? This year I suggest using the cash I’m saving on dropping gasoline prices to pay the natural gas bill. This is my well-being I’m talking about here. It’s okay to pull out all the stops.

4. Embrace creative projects.

I’ve wanted to get back into maintaining my painted journal and pull out my brush and watercolors. And here’s a confession. I also love coloring. In coloring books. I should fill the house with my Crayola-colored pages. And it might not be a bad idea just to brainstorm a creative projects list. Maybe there are some other things to help me over the hump of the cold days when I’d rather not leave the house. The goal is to light my creative furnace and to embrace the challenge of entering into projects that have a beginning, middle, end so that before I know it, March has blossomed.

And what would my winter survival guide be without the crucial spiritual element?

5. Seek the Lord.

Winter generally means more time at home. Which, if used efficiently can also mean more time to read, more time to meditate, more time to pray. I constantly yearn to spend more time actively seeking intimacy with Christ. Here is my opportunity. Four solid months of it if I so choose.

So let’s see what we have so far. Light. Food. Warmth. Creative work. Intimacy with Christ. I’d say that’s pretty much the basics of life, wouldn’t you? And suddenly, what’s this odd sensation I feel? I hesitate to say it, but I think I feel rather optimistic. Could it be that winter doesn’t have to remain the vicious bear I’ve always made it out to be? Could it be that simple planning is the key to thriving rather than just surviving?

Time will tell. Maybe this will be the year that finally strips me of years of seasonal discrimination and unnecessary depression. Maybe all it takes is just a little bit of preparation, seasoned with hope.

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The Short, Unhappy Life of Jack Everett [joshua]

One night he fell running into the field west of campus. The grass was wet and cold and the dampness made him wheeze. He once told a friend he hated wet grass, but there was no where else to go. For a while he stayed face-down on the ground. The girl came out after him.

Ivey called on him for five and a half months. He was happy to let her. One night she decided they had better prepare for her leaving. She told him it was over on a soggy night in the field west of campus.

"You're so dramatic," she said.

But she knew he meant it.

They trudged back. It was the beginning of the end of the night. They lived their lives entirely after dark. Time did not matter at the turnaround, the dollar theatre, the Perkins, or the utility hall in MEP. They never parted until daylight. They talked about her family and about sex. She wondered why his tone changed when speaking to dogs. He loved her accent.

When her leaving came, he took the picture of her on the beach in Massachusetts. He rode home in the wet and cold and the dampness made him choke. She rode home on a jet. That was the funny thing. No one else noticed but it was not the first time she flew away in the wheezing air. Time was when they both felt they were dating but couldn't let anyone know it. She never felt safe and he knew it.

"It's not that I don't want to get up in the morning," he told her, "it's that I just can't."

"You're over-simplifying," she said.

"You're all I've got," he said.

She didn't respond.

It went on like that for months. She traveled to Rome, Sydney, Istanbul, and Montreal. He spoke to her in Turkey. He told her that he had written her a letter thirty pages long. She said she didn't have time to read it so he summarized on the subway. He told her he loved her, that she was everything he ever wanted, how he longed to hold her again, that he was sorry for whatever. Her red hair looked like fire in the damp underground breeze.

He caught her the next year in Tangier. She was better dressed but her smile hadn't changed.

"Allo," she said.

He ached for her accent in his ear.

"How's the job?," he asked.

From the look of her, she was making quite a living selling custom handbags internationally for an up-scale New York company infamous for a 1995 scandal involving purses made from celebrity pets.

"The usual," she shrugged, "How are things for you?"

"Eh, been better," he mumbled.

He kissed her and it was reckless. Just as their lips met, she dropped her labrador valise. It landed right between the two grates on which they were standing and slipped through a crack onto the subway track below. As she reached to save it one of her heels got lodged in the iron mesh of the grate. He ran down the steps as she struggled to free her shoe. She reached the platform barefooted just as he reached the bag and the train reached him.

She collapsed in shock. She had hoped he'd finally propose.

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The Adventure of Tim the Glimp [mark]

Along the soggy path stood a ruddy Glimp. His face long and haggard from the night he'd just been through. You could see his cheeks were hollow and round, dark bags were slung under his sullen eyes, well, you could if you could see beyond his thick fur. To you and me he would look like a squirrel with a short tail or a hamster with a long one. But don't tell him that; he is very proud to be a Glimp. I cannot tell every detail from the night previous-- it was very dark, but this is what I heard from the Tarmar who claims to have seen quite well.

The Glimp had been walking alone along the river path in the evening colors enjoying the distant sounds of his chaotic and hurried village--there was really no way to enjoy these sounds but distantly for to be near is to be within the flurry of Glimp, Tarmar and Schaelmeter about their daily scurry. The Glimp, who we will call "Tim" because to say his real name without large incisors protruding from your lips would be near impossible and to spell it would challenge even the greatest of linguists. Which I am not, I am merely a teller of a tale heard once long ago... but I digress. Where was I? Oh yes, Tim the Glimp! Tim, in effort to chase the bustling city sounds even farther away, thus making them even more pleasant pushed along the river path deeper into the wood. Terrible things had been said about the wood but they did not seem so terrible now, no one had mentioned that when you reach the clearing and the bridge across the river the sound of the tumultuous city cannot reach you. And you are alone. At last! The drone could not reach him and he was alone with his thoughts for the first time in his short life as a Glimp. Tim reached out for the weather worn rail along the bridge across the river and all went black.

"I say we bash his head and toss 'im in the river!" a cheerful voice rang out somewhere in the darkness of Tim's thoughts.
"Oi say we fling him down them hills to the east! He'd not stop tumbling 'til next week!"
Tim opened his eyes, blinked twice and saw nothing. Night had fallen and the darkness was much darker in the wood. His eyes began to acclimate to the lack of illumination enough so he could see three dark figures towering above him. This is the moment when the fellow we know as Tim began to show the glimmers of who we know him to be today, the great Timothy Fairweather McGlimp. I know that I have just given it away that he gets out of this turbulent pickle but why not? What sort of storyteller would I be if I told a story about a poor little Glimp who got tossed down the hills to the east and didn't stop tumb'ling for a week?

Tim sprang to his feet as only a Glimp could spring and darted as only a Glimp could dart for the sound of the river and prayed for the river path to still be there. He was immediately seized by the clammy paws of a Schaelmeter. No paws are clammier than the paws of a Schaelmeter and these were the clammiest. Tim tore one shoulder loose but was quite suddenly grabbed about the legs and promptly tossed down the hills to the east which were not as far east as he had hoped and quite steeper than he would prefer. Now Tim was not one prone to enjoy tumbling for weeks on end so he acted as only a Glimp in his predicament would know to act. He spread out his furry arms and spun his tail vigorously and fervently, the tumbling quickly stopped followed by the falling and plummeting. As Tim clung to the shallow grass upon the hills to the east he caught his breath and thought. The thoughts he thought were thoughts of scurrying and running away but also thoughts of valor and victory... and those were the thoughts worth thinking. He flexed his muscles and climbed the hills to the east with courage and bravery growing in his chest. Upon the crest of the hill he laid his paws upon the closest Schaelmeter and flung him over the hill to the east ...now I could continue telling the story from the words that Timothy Fairweather McGlimp tells but I think this story is much better (not to mention more accurate) from the words of the lowly Tarmar who was asleep in the tree on the hill to the east.

The lowly Tarmar slept in the tree on the hill to the east as was his nightly ritual. His name was Jill, and he was the fiercest fellow named Jill that you would ever meet--which is not saying much because I have never met another fellow named Jill in all my years. There was Jill sleeping away in his tree when he was rudely awakened by the girlish screams of a Glimp in flight. As soon as his eyes adjusted to the murky blues of the mid-night he was struck full-body by the flightless flying Glimp. Jill, who was quite strong enough to do so, picked up the flightless flying Glimp who was now tangled in tree branches and heaved him back to whomever had thoughtlessly absconded with it into his arboreal resting place. Such a return toss was surprisingly accurate, accurate enough to place the body of the still stunned Glimp headlong across the two heads of the Schaelmeter standing upon the crest of the hill basking in their efficient disposal of a worthless Glimp. Needless to say they could not bask long in their newly unconscious state. The Tarmar, now irreparably awake from all the commotion climbed the hill to take on the task of basking in an excellent toss. Not one to move quickly, Jill took his sweet time getting to the top.

Upon reaching the top of the hill, Jill clearly saw the clearing and in it stood Tim the Glimp wielding a small dagger removed from the sheath of the Schaelmeter which appeared as a short-sword in his paws. Tim was swishing it at a creature who Jill had not seen before in these parts nor the adjoining parts nearby. Jill, the mightiest of all Jills lost all nerve, might and continence and flew away.

Tim swished his blade at the lanky beast hoping to intimidate it away but his actions did more to strike amusement than fear. The beastly form, feeling no need to keep secrets from one so near its own demise and feeling quite proud of his thorough plans with maybe a little frustration from the realization that he now had to perform them all himself because his henchmen could no longer hench from their unconscious loafing, began to speak.

"I am a little perturbed at you small child, you have gotten in my way." He scoffed with a chuckle, "Let me introduce myself. I am Charlemagne, I live in that prestigious cave just across the river from this here clearing." His nose pointed into the air as he gestured toward the bridge. "That Tarmar has used your small ballast to clobber my henchmen so now I must perform all henching myself. You see, I am on my way to destroy the town which keeps me up at night with its clamoring and clattering. Honestly, why should I move my cave opening from one side of the hill to the other just so I won't hear their noise? I would prefer to destroy the town and be rid of its sonic torrents for good! So now you must excuse me while I extinguish you and be on my merry way to topple the great stone upon your paltry counterparts."

With that Tim summoned all of his strength, raised the dagger and ran at the beast yelling the word, "no."

"Noooooooooooo!" he yelled as he ran. KAH-THUNK! WUMP!
The tall, fearsome Charlemagne took one large step out of the Glimp's war-path. Tim was surprised by such a swift and silent movement that he went dagger-first, head-second into a old and moldy oak tree. The ground shuddered from such a force into the tree and the old oak let loose of one big soggy, rotten and moldy branch directly above the monstrous and unfriendly giant. The branch fell quickly and confidently pinning him to the cold dirt.

At the gates to the city the sun began to rise above the mountains to the east just beyond the hills to the east. When the sun rises in a manner such as this, the guards change their posts. This day as the guards were changing their posts they heard these things, a faint "nooooooo." and a "kah-thunk" off in the distance just down the river path closely followed by an abbreviated wumping sound. The guards, fearing it was Charlemagne, who had written several unkind letters addressed to city hall, ran to curtail his unpleasantness. There in the clearing stood Timothy the Glimp cowering under the tree that had yielded its branch to save his life and the lives of the city-folk. And there under the branch was Charlemagne.

Tim was given a plaque and a walking stick with his name carved in it for his service to the city, he was also given the cave of Charlemagne who was banished to a noisy cell in the middle of town. The cave of Charlemagne wasn't such a bad place to live once Tim had installed a door and plumbing. Jill and Tim became good friends and if you ever happen to walk down that river path and across the bridge you may come across a Tarmar and a Glimp sitting on the porch of the cave of Charlemagne. If you listen long enough you will hear the tale of the adventure of Tim the Glimp. He will tell you his name is Timothy Fairweather McGlimp... but you can call him Tim.

The end.

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Black Dress Confidence [liz]

Put on that black dress confidence
Stroll about this town of abundance
Forget the doubting words that find you
When sleep becomes elusive as the dew
Take all your worry and weight
Throw it in a bag before you’re entangled in hate

We’ve got a mountain to climb
Though it cost more than a dime
It’s time to wade through the grime
And fight up to the top of the lime

Like a runner beside the morning’s tide
Catch your breath and find your stride
There’s greater strength in gentleness
If you’ll show it in your countenance
With compassion to your right
The burden you lift passes into light

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Shallow Pool [theodora]

I've always been one to second guess,
whether I am worth more or less
than what I feel
to be fake or to be real.
My inadequacies are plentiful
maybe somewhat pitiful.
I seem to bathe in my fraility,
wash myself in my depravity,
sink into the incompleteness
of all humanity.
"I want this" and "I want that",
"I am untalented" and
"I am fat".
I forget the bones of children
the hurting and the broken
laying seas away,
while I am swallowed up by
the idiotic worries of today.
"Damn it!" I say and I try to care
but isn't that unfair
if I consciously have to stop and think
that today there will be some who will not
eat and will not drink and will not sleep?
I don't remember, because my eyes are shut.
but:
Shame on me! selfish soul who is so
sarcastic, sick, slick and can't stomach
the idea of it being less and less
about me and my mess,
and more about others. and I fear
Unless! I see the error of my ways,
and recognize how my soul daily decays,
I will always be in this shallow pool
being known as the fool
who can't find peace in the turbulant waters
of having so many treasures and being just
the self absorbed child with so many toys
but so little true joy

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