The earth is saturated. Sodden. Pools of water sit languidly in the tepid January weather. Fields have become ghost lakes. Footpaths, mud caked slopes. A deep yellow light illuminates the bare branches, paints lilac & sepia tones on the sycamores that adorn the Cemetery. Birds chirrup in their nests. The sky is clear as topaz. I walk. Feel the familiar sensation of an internal unfurling: a surge of heat & energy rise from my naval through to the tips of my fingers. There is a fresh fern energy unravelling in my stomach; the animal preparing to leave the nest. The spectacle is one that invokes a profound sense of disorientation & tiredness. This animal is not ready to leave said nest, has barely rested, not sufficiently for it now to be spring. Panic.
Human brain catches up. It is early January. Winter.
To the golden tepid light, I ask can Winter still be Winter when the sensory information of this season speaks in another tongue? How is the sensory stimulus of this moment affecting the internal rhythm of the animal that therefore I am? Rest, the quality of rest I thirst for, is becoming something of an apparition.
The fibres of experience & the layers of memory which have informed the body of what Winter means, are recalibrating, re-contextualising within this moment. The signifiers of Winter: frost, biting winds, white light, crunchy grass. They are being replaced by other symbols: rain, mild humidity, tepidness, mud, flooding. This is the foundation of the bodies confusion; mind is processing & perceiving the differences, which make significant differences to the territory of my understanding of this place. Mind is sense-making the parameters of a new kind of Wintering. Each time Winter arrives, not as Winter but as a milder, wetter twin the mind begins this process of re-identification, calibration & learning. Weaving in the fibres of a different thread.
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