Tag Archives: winter

Winter’s Coming, and Boy, Is She Pissed!: Everyday Magic, Day 498

Posted on February 12, 2012 | 1 Comment

The sky looks angry, and for good reason. Winter, on route to us since December, got mighty lost on the way and ended up in Budapest by mistake. After many planes, trains and automobiles, she was probably too wiped out to go on to her full destiny/destination. No wonder it’s been in the 40s and 50s (even the 60s) so often this January and February.

All that is about to change. Winter’s coming, and she’s none-too-happy about the delay. Snow — maybe just a smattering, followed by some freezing rain is on its way.

Of course, the snow is supposed to turn to ice at the same time my plane is supposed to leave, but that’s tomorrow. For today, I’ve prepared: I drank a mug of hot cocoa, took a hot bath with eucalyptus salts, dressed myself entirely in fleece (seriously although I didn’t have fleece underwear), and threw some chicken and vegetable in the Schlemmertopf to make us a winter-accommodating feast in 60-90 minutes.

Looking over the edge of this computer to see my purple-fleece-covered toes, and behind them, the cat asleep on the down comforter, I feel very fortunate, and I can only wish others in the path of oncoming winter are adorned in, surrounded with and soon to fed by warmth and light.

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Winter’s Back in Town, Baby!: Everyday Magic, Day 435

Posted on November 3, 2011 | Comments Off

As my friend and good writer Cheryl Unruh wrote, “The warmth that has lingered in September and October gave Kansans a second chance at summer. (Because the first summer was pretty much unusable.)” To say our summer was unusable is true as rain, which, incidentally, we didn’t get much of either.

Fall was payback time though: we’ve had two months of gorgeouso weather: lingering warm days, muted but long-holding leaves in autumnal tones, cool evenings, and lively warm winds just when we needed them. The sky has been largely been bright blue, the temperature usually between 55-80 each day, and the pumpkins happy next to bunches of mums all over town.

That’s why it was such a shock when the temperature plummeted, the long-forgotten rain came, icy in its edges, and Holy Batma!n, even the power went out. Having slept outside again last night — easy with the futon bed, screened-in porch, cat on top of me and dog beside me — I was jarred to discover that last night’s low turned out to be as warm as it would be this day. As the hours unfolded, the mercury dropped, and the walk back to the car mid-afternoon was a different reality than the walk from the car mid-morning. Then the drive to town in high winds and sidewalks gulps of rain. Then the return home, first to my mother-in-law’s home where I found her and my son sitting on the couch, by candlelight, wrapped in blankets. Now the return of light and warmth while outside the reality of winter winks at us through the window, saying something like, “Look who’s back in town, baby!”

“I’m ready for some snow, just a smidgen,” my friend Kris said today as we tried to make our way through too much fish and chips at Free State Brewery (what sensible people eat when the weather takes a sharp turn for the arctic). “You’re going to get your wish,” I told her, then updated her on the weather report that called for a dusting.

So yes, the utter shock of winter, but at the same time, it’s all such a novelty at the moment that all the down or quilted garments and blankets are objects of charm and purpose today, and the sound of furnace kicking on is a kind of calming music.

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Posted in Kansas, Weather

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Will This Winter Never End?: Everyday Magic, Day 252

Posted on March 30, 2011 | 1 Comment

Dear Winter,

I’ve had it with you. Not that I don’t love your snowy fields of peace and pizzazz in late December, the wicked winds that announce how wild the weather can be that come during the blizzards, the first few snow days and the little thaws that punctuate January before the cold fronts return.

But it’s almost April already, and this is overkill. The birds are tired. The squirrels are tired. The dog is tired. And I’m tired of waking up cold, looking outside to see a cloud-saturated cold day and all the little eager blossoming things burnt by the icy nights.

I don’t think I’m being unreasonable here: I willingly accepted it was your game from about mid-November through mid-March. I didn’t put the down coats away early. I paid the propane bills without a fuss. I even scoffed at the little thaw day in Vermont when the icicles started melting, but hey, already, can’t you knock this off?

Maybe you could just give us another 10 degrees of warmth and a little sun? Maybe you can bow gracefully and do a pirouette toward the Southern Hemisphere? Maybe you would say, “Okay, I get it, and I’m out of here”?

Then I could say, “Thank you, have a great journey, and come back with stories to tell us next November.”

Sincerely,

One of your many subjects

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Winter Solstice: 4:22 p.m.

Posted on December 20, 2010 | Comments Off

A poem from my book Landed about just about right now (well, tomorrow afternoon at least). Enjoy the deepness of the dark, which will be both lighter (full moon tonight) and darker (an eclipse).

The blunt air morning-stark,

a glass light that levels everything,

makes me forget my intention for this or that,

the insistent hands home to roost

even if my walk is sodden.

Trees gleam like bronze etchings

rising from the cacophony of

cell phone rings, car tires’ turnings.

The night must have its way

even against the snow geese slightly lost

until they find their rut in the wind.

 

The solstice is a bird with feathers so black

they mirror the buildings, then lift

to land back to this date in time as if time

never left its perch. The motion of breath,

or a wayward finger tapping on the wooden desk

aged by light. The inward turn of stillness,

a slight sway as if standing on a bus, holding

tight to the bar when the wheels mount a sharp corner

and something completely new appears.

Solstice and then the world at this point

flips over, begins arming itself

with light.

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Posted in Poetry

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West Into Winter: Everyday Magic, Day 147

Posted on December 13, 2010 | Comments Off

Coffee in the cup-holder, books to sell piled in the passenger seat, and down coat over layers of clothes (down to the season’s first outing for the cuddle-duds), I headed west early this morning. The sun was bright, the sky clear, and the air void of any warmth whatsoever. I turned up the music, pushed down the gas petal, and flew soon enough past the usual Lawrence-to-Topeka jaunt, then through the northern wrap-highway of Topeka, to where the land begins to ungulate, rise and drop, widen and round: the mythic and present Flint Hills.

I was on my way to give a talk on Jubilee — what we release and learn from, embrace and start fresh and alive with, beginners all of us at each moment — at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Manhattan. Michael, my old friend of 20 years — lost for a while due to the wild weather of both our lives — was the minister of this very fine congregation, and soon enough I would be standing in front of people in a lovely and sacred space, framed by windows leading to woodland and prairie, slope and ridges, soon enough, but for now, I was driving and in that happy-driving-music where space becomes a good friend just as I speed through it.

Easy enough to cultivate such appreciate especially when that space is made of reddened grasses, wide bowls of horizons, blue bright sky, all shining together in the centering of one of the shorter days of the air.

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Winterizing Myself: Everyday Magic, Day 136

Posted on December 1, 2010 | 2 Comments

I found the ultimate zebra-print pajamas at Goodwill, completing my safari winterization outfit, and moreover, allowing me to mix stripes with spots. Given how the first cold nights are moseying on in, interspersed with occasional bouts of 50s temperatured afternoons, it makes sense to mix mammals. Last night, on my way to a wonderful poetry and essay reading with Kevin Rabas (poetry, and really fabulous stuff — check out his award-winning book Lisa’s Flying Electric Piano) and Cheryl Unruh (essays — new book, Flyover People: Life on the Ground in a Rectangular State), I felt that first blast and tweak of deep cold. It was the kind of cold that Cheryl spoke to so well in one of her essays, explaining how it finds every part of us, sneaking up pant legs, and between coat and hat on the back of our necks. Having come through the most slow-motion fall I’ve ever experienced (some of the trees downtown STILL have green leaves, not feathered with Christmas lights), it’s a relief to land in these first throes of winter, knowing what will come next but not how or when it will come. Meanwhile, I have my zebra and leopard flannel and fleece, and all is well in this house.

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