Winter and shit
I learned today there is a difference between astronomical seasons and meteorological seasons. Astronomical winter has not yet begun, but meteorological winter may have, I don’t remember for sure. To be completely honest I only that a difference between these two kinds of seasons exists, but I do not know what the difference in fact is. I either didn’t learn that or I learned it temporarily and quickly forgot. Perhaps a bit of both. Perhaps I learned some of the distinction then got bored and quit learning, then forgot even that bit of learning. That sounds like me.
My wife told our children today that we are middle aged. I forget the context - again perhaps I got bored and quit paying attention. My oldest child is of the view that we are old because we are grown ups but we are not old for grown ups. Maybe we are meteorologically but not astronomically old? I’ll have to email the National Weather Service and NASA and ask them to clarify.
The idea of being middle aged is intimidating. Will I live to be eighty? I hope so, in that I hope to make it that far, and I hope not, in that I hope to make further. Many people in my family died young (I recently learned that this is a class thing; apparently the idea that people get conservative with age is more the result of everyone but the rich dying off and so not getting to grow old) and so my sense of old is distorted. I am closer to the age at which my grandfather died than I am to the age at which my mother had me.
Whatever the opinion of astrologers and meteors, winter seems to have properly arrived. It’s too cold and there is too much snow. The wildflowers in our garden look like tall dead sticks and the grass is all brown. I think we’re going to have about three and a half months of this, maybe four. Then will come all the wet of spring, and the basement flooding and the worry about home repair. Winter there’s fear of the pipe’s bursting but otherwise fewer home maintenance worries, though there’s the costs of heating. Summer’s too rainy as well, and the air conditioner is too expensive. Fall, now that’s the nicest season, mild and cool and the least total worries about my stupid house.
I’ve got to be careful typing like this as it’s late at night and those house thoughts are really money thoughts and then it’s insomnia. I deposited a paycheck maybe two weeks ago and we were down to two hundred dollars. That was a shock. I’d deposited it two weeks late, so that’s my fault, but the lizard part of my brain that is good for nothing but worrying, it has no sense of that, it just skitters and bares its fangs.
It’s easy to think of winter as a time with less life, but really the life comes inward: mice under the kitchen cupboards and above the ceiling (I need to get the exterminator out again, my another thing that’s been weighing on my conscience and to-do list, not because of any qualms about killing but about cost), and more spiders. Can I claim that I am living inwardly as well, in this my existential winter? Externally going through the motions, getting no taller or stronger, but my belly a bit bigger… that’s life of a sort. Right?
The back and hip pain that plagued this fall have significantly abaited, nearly gone altogether. That’s part of why I’m growing horizontally instead of getting stronger; I overdid it I think, at the gym and in the office chair and in the kitchen (which is where I type instead of going to bed), and got quite sore. I tried various alternative movements and nothing worked and so I just rested and I began to feel better and after quite a lot of rest I think I can begin to workout again.
I miss deadlifts. I like the simplicity - just pick the thing up off the floor - and the intensity - the thing is very heavy and lifting it up squeezes all other thought from my mind. I also like the detail of it, trying to do all the small pieces of the movement with precision, exactly correctly. I look forward to returning to deadlifting in a few weeks when work lets up, an existential spring. Similar to how I don’t remember the difference between astronomical and meteorological seasons I think I also conflate existential and aesthetic: when I lack what feels like sufficient creative outlet and participation in intellectual community I get a feeling of malaise, existential winter. That’s silly, it seems to me, because all I really need to do is read more, write more, spend more time on music. That I don’t do so is not entirely my fault - stupid fucking jobs, man, fuck! - but is still largely my responsibility (no one does anyone any favors, in the long run; we have to make things happen or they won’t happen). And there’s nothing deep about it, no dark days or some such bullshit, it’s just a matter of spending the right sort of time again and again for the long term. There may be a metaphor in this about gardening - paying attention to frost dates in order to plan out when to plant, rather than paying attention to the planets - but I can’t manage it just now, maybe next June when things are really growing again.
I say that, but in terms of writing on this little aspirational blog of mine, this year that’s about to close (it is strange that we’re entering 2020, because that sounds very futuristic, like science fiction distant future) I wrote about 22,000 words so far, about 4,000 in the spring, none in the fall, and about 9,000 each in winter and summer. And really, I wrote little in the heart of the spring, mostly I wrote in the early spring and the late spring, i.e. basically in winter and summer. So the whole idea of existential winter breaks down it’s an aesthetic matter; winter’s really a higher output and higher diligence time for me in terms of working at my writing (that’s all this really is, practicing, trying to get better). Come to think of it, I typically deadlift more when it’s cold out as well! Maybe the winter feelings are bred by the fall lack of activity. Maybe I work my way into feeling good, then slacken, then stay slack too long, a self-inflicted freeze, snowy weather the real aesthetic spring. My cats are getting crazy now and their running around is setting my teeth on edge, and I’ve developed a case of the hiccups - haven’t even had a drink, though come to think of it I might do, some booze to warm against various categorical winters.