just swim really really fast

Being very brave about winter but still find myself counting the weeks in my head when stripping off at bath time. Speaking of stripping and water ... our SPCA is on the verge of collapse for lack of funds.

The solution: the annual Polar Bear Swim on July 26th!

How obvious.

Having volunteered to rouse public interest, discovered that people flee like roaches at the mention. Can’t help thinking something more inviting (a hot toddy drinking competition?) would elicit more excitement.

winter dreams the same dream every time

Have the worst flu since, well, since the last time which was years and years ago. I never get sick.

I don't doubt for an instant that this constitutes a stern telegram, or a text message rather, from the universe warning, “All is not well with you, young 'un.”

A recent dunking in the fastrushing River of Luurve, has given my wobbly-legged newborn life a bad dose of total drippiness. Chills, coughing my heart out, chest pain, bouts of weepies...

Who'da thunk it could come to this?

The vexing thing is that three months ago I had earned a certain degree of hard-won emotional equilibrium. Now here I lurch, slugging cough mixture and self medicating with CorenzaC like one undone.

Yet still I'm overcome at times by waves of gratitude for the experience and the deep knowing about which Tom Waits sings so wonderfully,
"You Can Never Hold Back Spring"

winter

Winter came last night. You wake vaguely in the night to a rushing wind. The air chills. Leaves from the oak tree which were green yesterday are suddenly brown and scrambling across the tin roof. In your sleep you sense a new arrival drawing in under cover of night, purposefully setting up camp like a caravan of travelling people. Meanwhile, Summer is slowly dismantling. Down go the gaudy tents. Reluctantly frivolous drapes are torn away. The pipers and dancers and music slows.

For a few weeks the two camps share the landscape. There’s a little of each – some of Winter’s steady chill balances Summer’s giddy fuss. Everyone seems to get along so well. “It’s perfect,” you think, “why don’t they both just stay?”

But the truce never lasts.

There’s always that morning when signs of the night's big fall out lie everywhere like a massacre. The earth is frozen. Plants hang dead. The air is silent in the aftermath. And Summer’s caravan is gone, doing a midnight flit over the pass heading north, abandoning their place to narrow-eyed Winter ones who have no songs.

You know they’ll be back yet you always miss them.

But they haven’t gone yet. A few weeks still.