When you take a flying leap, you expect to land with a thud, and then, after a period of dithering around, you expect to grow roots and stay
put. But things never quite turn out how you expect them to; so here I am suspended
in mid-air for what seems to be a very lengthy amount of time. When I look
around me, much to my surprise, I find everything else is suspended in mid-air too. I am told that this, what I am experiencing is
called ‘Middle of Winter’.
The
sky turns the colour of snow and the bare black skeletons of nature suspend
themselves within it.
When water doesn’t turn into white ice, it turns into black
pools, curious dark shapes floating in the middle of nowhere with wisps of
smoke coming out of them.
I look at this beauty with the same incredulity that one
looks at outer space shots taken by NASA.
But I will not idealize. The pristine snow outside Montreal turns into brown sludge within the city, the extreme cold gets maddening, the bulky clothes heavy and tiresome and the lack of sunlight goes interminably on until you forget that there was something called colour and life and brilliance.
