bittersweet

Its quite a thing to get used to the cold. It is liberating and awakening, on the other hand, it is bitter and merciless.

Moments feel like an eternity as the wind streaks across your face and leaves it feeling alive and dead at the same time, and only when you touch it do you notice that in fact it is stiff and frozen in place. Your hands come out of the warm pockets to write a text message and before you are two words in, you notice that you do not feel how hard you have pressed the button and there is a sense of numbness you keep going, because in some perverse way that numbness feels more alive then anything else. The feeling of not feeling allows you to know that you are real, that you feel. Only when we lose something do we manage to realize how essential it is to our being, to who we are. The cold manages to make me feel more alive then the sun ever could, which is perverse for the sun gives me life, however the cold makes me realize I am alive. There is also an unspoken freedom in it being freezing and you not caring, unzipping the jacket, removing the beanie, spreading your arms and just letting go, letting the cold wash over you and only using your soul to warm your body. Everyone should try this, it is an amazing feeling. Respecting the adversary.

Other times, the cold is lashing at you with such ferocity that it makes you wish you were never alive to feel its misery. It chill's your bones to the point of where you are not sure you are or if you wish to be. It breeds a feeling of isolation from your fellow warriors, as everyone is huddled in bundles appearing as a furry balls from a distance. Getting up to walk to the bakery half awake with that morning breath still in your mouth, despite your best tooth brushing effort, when you know that a warm bed is still an option, is the cruelest moment of the day. The idea, that here you are still in dreamland trying to recall what it was your mind was so fixated on a mere 10 minutes ago as you step outside and, it hits you like a punch to the face, except a punch lasts a moment, the cold is there to stay, stinging you. So you brave it, try to embrace it and thus overcome it, but your mind is not in the same place in the morning as it is in the evening, and you struggle with the beast. Knowing you will prevail, but wondering why is the fight so bitter everyday, why is there a need for it. Where is the acceptance and accord that is reached in the evening in the morning. War.

I make a truce every evening with the cold, we embrace, confess our love for one another and leave the other at that moment. I go into my warm apartment, get under the covers and bask in the warmth. The cold moves on, readying for another fight. When it is time to leave the apartment in the morning, I forget last night, the cold does too, and we are at war once again. Perhaps the peace is reached because we know that we are done with each other for the day. And in recognition of the fight, respect for the adversary causes the truce.War. Respect.