Hello fans, friends and lovers…of webcomics,
It’s cold out. Freaking cold. The kind of cold that finds and invades all the cracks and spaces of homes and clothing. Chewbacca, our small dog, can’t walk more than 20 feet at a time before needing to have his paws warmed up. The cold is brutal, in a tear-off-your-face while listening to Mastodon kind of way. Luckily the snow hasn’t been as bad as last year, but, if I remember my faux-folk science correctly, more snow and cloud cover helps to hold in the heat better than clear, dry nights and days.
Winter has a double face for those of us who live through it. The early anticipation of snow is coupled with Christmas adding a layer of cultural nostalgia to the interpretation of the frostbitten white oblivion. This is winter’s first face: Bing Crosby crooning over landscapes of cheery, old American villages blanketed in virginal powder. The second face however…
Once the hangover of New Years wears off, we wake, roll over and see the ugliness of our former lover, who we happily accepted into our hearts while visiting family. The whiteness is now crusted with black and gray from roads and rooftop run off. The next several months will be hard to enjoy when temperatures plummet further from pre-New Years levels to a biting, gnashing beast of the invisible void.
But I’m not the only curmudgeon who feels this way. While I don’t ski, snowboard, nor snowshoe (I really want to do this but don’t have the money to buy a good pair yet), I can appreciate the beauty of winter…from the other side of a warm window. William Blake, that bright-eyed proto-romantic poet, also felt a duality of emotions when contemplating the cold season; although, old Billy B lands on the side of brutality, even monstrosity:
TO WINTER by William Blake
O WINTER! bar thine adamantine doors:
The north is thine; there hast thou built thy dark
Deep-founded habitation. Shake not thy roofs,
Nor bend thy pillars with thine iron car.
He hears me not, but o’er the yawning deep
Rides heavy; his storms are unchain’d, sheathed
In ribbed steel; I dare not lift mine eyes,
For he hath rear’d his scepter o’er the world.
Lo! now the direful monster, whose skin clings
To his strong bones, strides o’er the groaning rocks:
He withers all in silence, and his hand
Unclothes the earth, and freezes up frail life.
He takes his seat upon the cliffs; the mariner
Cries in vain. Poor little wretch! that deal’st
With storms, till heaven smiles, and the monster
Is driv’n yelling to his caves beneath mount Hecla.
It’s a little extreme of a view to think that winter is a devastating monster, but it is fun. Hope you have a warm day.
Love, hugs and coffee mugs,
Sammy C.
