At security, I’m selected randomly for a screening. The guard asks my age. “Twenty…”, I begin, trying to remember if I’m 27, 28, or 29. “Twenty. Okay.”, he says, cutting me off. Somehow, he believes I look nearly a decade younger than I am. For two days, I’m packed light, with no checked baggage. In my rush, I forget to get some American money. This worries me.
It’s been snowing for three days now, the first real snowfall of the season. It’s a wonderful feeling to look outside and see it falling1. Winter brings it’s own sort of coziness, like the way sun is for sports and rain is for movies.
A lot of people don’t like the winter, whether it’s because they get tired shoveling, they’re late from cleaning the car, they don’t like dealing with the messiness, or they simply hate being cold. To me, it’s all part and parcel of living in the Great White North. The summer brings as many unpleasant issues — burning car seats, stifling heat, unavoidable sweat. I wouldn’t be able to appreciate one if it wasn’t for the other.
I tend to get tired of the weather only at the end of each season, because they seem to drag on for so long2. It’s a never-ending cycle of enjoying the new season, then missing the next one.
There’s this great poem by Shioh T’ao I think of when trying to explain this:
Spring comes, and I look at the birds;
Summer comes, and I take a bath in the stream;
Autumn comes, and I climb to the top of the mountain;
Winter comes, and I make the most of the sunlight for warmth.
This is how I savor the passage of the seasons.
My version would go something like this:
Spring comes, and I admire the blossoming feminine beauty;
Summer comes, and I go for a drive;
Autumn comes, and I fall in love with everything;
Winter comes, and I cherish the warmth.
This is how I savor the passage of the seasons.
This is why I love Canada. I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.
For now, I’m enjoying the snow.
Snow is a relatively hard thing to capture on film. With so much white, there’s very little contrast or texture, so nothing to lead the eye. You want to give a sense of being suffocated by all this now, but too much of the same thing in a picture becomes boring. It’s balancing the subject and working with available light that becomes important.
I don’t think we’ve reached the record for snowfall yet, but we’re close. I tried to walk to work, but gave up. Even trudging through the snow to get these shots left me sweating. It’s days like these that I’m thankful that I live in a condo, because my condo fees go towards shoveling the parking lot. People told me they had to shovel their driveways a couple times in one night.
Outside, the snowfall is fast but light. From the blanket of white on the cars, one can tell how long it’s been snowing. Against this white is the aching orange glow of the sky, and the warm fluorescent street lamps. The blinds of the houses across the street are all closed and the lights are off.
City in a snow globe. Lifeless. Plastic. Shaken.
In the darkness of my living room, Emiliana Torrini sings to me about love in the time of science.
It shouldn’t hurt me to be free
It’s what I really need
To pull myself together
But if it’s so good being free
Would you mind telling me
Why I don’t know what to do with myself
It’s the last day of the year. The little clock on my screen tells me it’s six minutes to 2 a.m. I should be in bed, but this is the only chance I have to write.
Where did the time go? I thought I would be bored, or lonely, during the holiday stretch, only to discover that it wasn’t long enough.
They say that the days, months, years pass faster, the older you get.
Maybe this means I’m getting old.
Turning over and over in the sky, length after length of whiteness unwound over the earth and shrouded it. The blizzard was alone in the world; it had no rival.
When he climbed down from the window sill Yura’s first impulse was to dress, run outside, and start doing something.
—Doctor Zhivago
When one looks outside their window and sees this, this blanket of purity, what else can one feel but serenity, contentment, and hope?
Snow collected on the grass last night.
This makes me dream of weekend mornings in my living room, tea and a laptop, looking out to a blanket of white. Dolly curled up on the armrest next to me, as she always is. No other contrast feels as cozy.
Ritual dictates that I watch Onegin or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind on the day of the first snowfall, a tribute to winter scenes and warm romance.
This year, I’ll buy myself some skates. I’ll pack a snack and some water. Maybe my camera in case an image catches my fancy.
And this will be my new ritual.
But if, like Queequeg and me in the bed, the tip of your nose or the crown of your head be slightly chilled, why then, indeed in the general consciousness you feel most delightfully and unmistakably warm.
I save the window-opening ritual for Friday nights, after a long, tiring week, when the sweaters are all folded, and the shirts all ironed. Before I go to bed, I turn off the lights, square off my desk, and turn the window crank 220 degrees clockwise. Even though the thermostat is at 23°C, it’s anywhere from -16°C to 5°C outside these nights.
When I wake up at 5:00 a.m., as I usually do, my room is filled with the chilly, snow-smelling air.
I do this only once a week to appreciate it.
I do it on Fridays to enjoy it.
Sometimes, after pulling yourself out of bed instead of calling in late because there’s too much to do, when the walk to work is through ankle-deep snow which is coming down in sheets, you give up on avoiding the puddles because your socks are already soaked through after five minutes, you can barely keep your eyes open from the precipitation and the exhaustion, the cold is giving you a splitting headache, and the only thing keeping you stoic is to concentrate on the music in your ears but your iPod runs out of batteries and this is the start of your week, you have no other choice but to laugh.
This is the view out my window on the night of a snowfall. The bedrooms are in the basement, so I get a subterranean look at my miniature lawn with pine tree, although the garden is now buried under 40cm of snow. There are the Moonlights, deprived of their charges from snow covering their solar panels. There’s the A/C that cost me a month and a half salary.
I sleep with the blinds open in the winter because at night I see more this time of year than in the summer. Snow makes the sky glow an ashen orange, a phenomenon I can’t myself explain. On some nights, it’s too bright to sleep and I have to mask my eyes, peeking out every few minutes to make sure my winter paradise is still out the window until I fall asleep. When I feel especially sentimental, I leave the window open a crack to let in the smell of ice and dry air.
The price of this pleasure is at least three dead in weather related incidents across the province of Ontario.
Cats are always curious in the snow. As they sniff, the touch of their noses melt the snowflakes, and their tongues come out to lick away the moisture. They cautiously walk into it and inspect their paws, wondering how they suddenly became wet.
As for me, I’m comfortable at home with a warm drink and the glow of my monitors. The week has me burned out nowadays, and the weekends have become the only time for me to relax, the only time I can enjoy the sunlight during the shortened winter days. You can always recognize a winter sky by its paleness, causing particularly bright days and orange nights.
Christmas will be here soon. Vacation and trips home and family and the spirit of the season. Fall has come and gone. How does the time pass so quickly? Did I imagine I’d be here, at this stage in life, a year ago? Not at all.
I never realized how much I missed the winter, until the snow started falling.
A strong Alberta clipper will track southeast over southern Ontario today into upstate New York tonight. Snow heavy at times has spread right across the Ottawa Valley into Québec and will continue throughout the day.
Snowfall rates have often been 2 to 4 cm per hour with this very strong clipper.
Freezing rain and ice pellets have moved into the St Lawrence Valley area east of Brockville late this afternoon. A sharp Arctic cold front will blast through the regions this evening as the clipper sails into northern New York state. Temperatures will plunge up to 10 degrees to well below freezing within the first hour after the front goes through. As a result: rain in the regions east of Lake Huron and southeast of Georgian Bay will change suddenly over to snow or flurries with untreated surfaces quickly becoming icy and very slippery.
Elsewhere the snow and freezing rain will pull out of the regions this evening as the clipper and sharp Arctic cold front moves into northern New England and southern Québec. Snowfall amounts of 15 to 20 cm are likely in the snowsqualls along with whiteout conditions from blowing snow.
Dangerous travelling conditions are expected due to very low to at times nil visibility in heavy snow blowing snow and icy conditions. All travellers should exercise extreme caution and adjust plans accordingly.
My most vivid memories of the spring are from high school. About a month before exams began, every guy would start spending a minimum of thirty minutes looking out the window every day. On the southern side of the main building would be a small football field, and two soccer fields, as well as the tennis courts, hockey rink, and large swimming pool. Three more fields used for various other sports, such as lacrosse, cricket, and field hockey, could be seen on the western side. At the north was the baseball diamond, as well as the small pool, and more tennis courts. The main gates of the school property, what many considered a triumphant walk away from the main building after a day with no spares, was at the east.
What male teenager would be thinking about anything but running through the wooden halls, throwing off their tie, and rolling in the lusciously green, well-manicured grass? In a school with a lack of females, no less. Add to the fact that a significant portion of alumni pride is put into a well-funded sports programme, and the result was classes of boys bottling testosterone, encouraged by teacher and coach alike to be released in the form of physical activity. (I find sports metephors very useful for making veiled sexual references.)
I could see it in every one of them, how difficult it would become to concentrate in class, instead of imagining how the hours after school were to be spent. But it was never like that for me. While everyone else was waiting for the fields to thaw, I’d be waiting for the snow the fall. It’s days like these that make it hard for me to concentrate.
All I want to do is stay at home wrapped in a blanket, watch the snow collect, and write.
Anyway, what I was trying to say is that I’ve been really moody lately. Extremely moody. Almost on an emotional level.
Another post-breakup phase. I go through this for a few months after breaking up with someone, but it only started to hit me recently. Funny how I’ve only now had enough relationships to actually realize this. I look at my monthly archives from the beginning of the blog and most of them begin with some emotional, confused line. In fact, this entire blog started as a way to vent these post break-up thoughts and feelings, until it became something more than that. Now I’m falling back into that trap. I’m starting to do stupid shit again, things I wish I didn’t do, afterwards.
Every day, in my head, I plan out my entries for the next week. Yet, every time I sit down to type, I’m never in the mood to write. It’s just the same shit, over and over again.
The difference is that this time I know what to do. I’ve been looking for too much meaning in too little.
I want to get out. For the first time in my life, I’m sick of this winter. I want to sit in the sun. I want to be amongst others.
I want to lay on the track, feel hot steel screaming at me
Expose the bones on my back, let me show you what I mean.
A shot of the rear entrance of Social, a restaurant I’ve only dined in once, but have passed by, wishing I was inside, many times. I like how the mood in the shot is warm, against the implied cold from the Christmas lights. One could sit here at any time of year and soak up the serenity, where a song by Sigur Rós (at night, when it’s comfortably crowded) is as relevant as a song by Edith Piaff (particularly in the fall, when the skies are grey) is as relevant as a song by Iron And Wine (during the early days of summer, when it’s still cool in the evening).
It feels barren today. It’s cold outside, but there’s no wind and the air is still. Everything is so unforgiving and largo e pianissimo sempre.
Usually, my playlists are very carefully planned, and aside from a few organized by genre, are based on emotion and experience. However, there was there was one morning when I got up, and found myself outside on a chilly fall day, with everything was covered in an early winter frost. Past the buildings and the trees, a wall of cloud hung over the river, fazing stark whites through pale reds, coloured by the early sun.
This playlist was inspired by that single morning. The music is a mix of two moods; the first is a relaxed and beat-oriented, while the other is more dreamy and floaty. I recommend it for long trips by bus during the fall-winter transition. The bus really is the best way to pay attention to the landscape and the changing sky.
Portishead — Glory Box
Portishead — It’s A Fire
Portishead — Mysterons
Portishead — Roads
DJ Clue — Exclusive New Shit (feat. Nature)
Nas — Gotta Love It
Dido — Aria
Pinback — Loro
The Fugees — Ready Or Not
Xzibit — Carry The Weight
DNTEL — Why I’m So Unhappy
Cardigans — Explode
Band Of Bees — Punchbag
Modest Mouse — The World At Large
Bel Canto — Capio
Radiohead — Everything In Its Right Place
Radiohead — Motion Picture Soundtrack
Radiohead — No Surprizes
Sigur Rós — Ágætis Byrjun
Omni Trio — Higher Ground
Sylver — In Your Eyes
Dune — Winter Kills
