Some people love the changing of the seasons.I wish I did. I understand it, but I cannot feel it. I am a desert rat. I cannot bear the cold. It pains me physically.
My mind sees what they love, and visually I relate to it. Yet in truth, I cannot say I love the changing of the seasons.
I shiver and my ears hurt just to think of it.
It's the same as when people asked, “What will you be when you grow up?” Other kids had answers. I was left with only questions. Still then, I knew I wasn’t the only one.
Now too, I know that there are others who don’t want winter to come.
I watch the tiny changes that are calling in the season. I can almost touch the thoughts, the reasons someone would so relish it. My heart wishing to participate, cannot join in the way some do, because my body wants to lay on the rocks sucking up the sun. The thoughts of the impending doom of winter cloud my judgment. I'm too sensitive to the cold to enjoy what nature offers me.
I feel the loss. . . . My eyes feast on the colors of a backlit Autumn. They are dazzled by the glistening white of Winter, my soul wishing I could embrace it. It leaves me feeling lonely like I'm not part of the planet. Someone tell the seaons, please. I am not this way by choice.
Nature’s beauty given freely, without need for my permission.
If I could, I too, would love the changing of the seasons.
—me strauss Letting me be
22 comments:
I'm just the opposite. I cannot stand the heat and would rather be stretched out where it is cold (except for snow). For instance, I totally want to move to Boston but I'd have to find a job which would allow me to come back home during the Winter.
Plus, I don't know what I'd do with changing seasons. In California where I was raised, it's always in the 70s and 80s all year round.
Hey Mojo,
I could certainly handle California. I don't mind 70s. Coming from there, I would think that since you're a CA boy you'd be a Pacific NW kind of guy.
smiles,
Liz
ahhh I'm a seasons girl. I love the warm, the hot, the INSANELY hot and muggy, the cold, the VERY cold, the snow, the rain and all that the four seasons are composed of.
Sure I complain on the days when I'm dripping in sweat just sitting still, and I say I hate the days where I have to shovel 12" of snow and then drive to work...but deep down I need the change, love the change.
Lived in CA for a year...same weather all year...didn't care for it. Lived in other places like CA...didn't care for those places either.
I love my MA and it's four seasons.
(PS: You don't like cold and you live in IL :) You get hit worst than MA in terms of cold weather. I put in a request that you get a slightly warmer winter this year... :))
Thanks Jennifer for your words and for your weather request. I live in Chicago because I like the people, not the cold and snow.
In California I didn't mind the sameness of the weather. I was surprised by how much more time there was to do things. What I minded was how boring the sky was.
For me I liked Austin the best, Wild hill country skies from three weather fronts and no snow to shovel ever.
smiles
Liz
How many weather fronts are there in Chicago, Liz? Seems like O'Hare is the airport we're always getting stuck in due to weather!
Personally, I love the transitional seasons, spring and fall. Spring is so full of anticipation, and fall, for me, is all about relief. Winters are survivable only with timely travel, and summers are survivable because the beach is nearby.
If the wacky almanac is correct, this winter should be warmer than usual, but snowier, too.
There's always a trade-off living near the Great Lakes, isn't there?
Hi 'Zilla,
Ah O'Hare. I was stuck there four days once when I lived in CA. But it's all the same weather. We really only get that windy winter weather from thataway and send it that other way usually. :)
I love the cozy warmth inside in winter. If only I never had to go anywhere.
But this midwestern weather makes midwestern people and I like them.
So what can I do?
Yup, I don't like the changing seasons either. If it could just stay spring and summer.
It's raining as I type this and it's dark. What's so fun in that?
I loved your caroon, btw. It so you :)
Hi Melly,
Good to see you!
I'm with you what fun is it when it's dark and rainy. Spring and summer are times to play.
Glad you like the cartoon. I always wondered what I'd look like shorter . . .
smiles,
liz
one very special kid said to me one day, after two years of chitt-chatt; "the answer doesn't really matter, does it? mostly, it's the questions..." after that, i never saw the kid again, but she recently published a great story.
Rhein,
I like it when you stop by, you always offer something new and smart to think about.
You're right the answers usually don't matter do they?
Good to see you.
Liz
Liz, this is so Liz, so uniquely balanced and honest an espression of dissent about the change of seasons.
I also morn the loss of summer at its heat, its security.
I change personalities with the seasons. I lose my floppy, diffused, spacey, nonchalant summer self and don my busy, focused, bookreading, cat napping, withdrawn self for Fall. Have you tried that?
Hi Garnet,
Thank you for the observations of a friend.
I don't know that I've tried it, but I do think it happens. I hide out in my sweaters and heavy socks and try to ignore the weather as much as I can.
This year we'll do it alone together. :)
smiles,
liz
The breathtaking autumn display of color is there to ease us out of summer and compensate for the bleakness to come in winter. But even then, I love the stark winter scenes, even those without that peaceful blanket of fluffy snow, even the ones that are harsh and dark and frozen where the world appears to have turned all the same shade of grey and then to have died; the trees that hauntingly point skeletal fingers at the sky and mourn.
Even in this, there is a fragile beauty. I could never love spring if I didn't spend the winter in death.
Hi Ned,
Spoken beautifully like the poet you are.
I wish I could revel in the seasons. i hear your joy and passion. It is my body that gets in the way, not my mind.
smiles,
Liz
The cold hurts, as does the approaching of the winter years of my life, sometimes. Most times, not so much do I dread the winter years of my life,
but that cold,
it still hurts,
the body.
I once saw Dick Van Dyke on the Johnny Carson show. He was telling Johnny, something like the following, in reference to the slapstick comedy that he often preformed, “If I had known that my body would hurt like this when I got older, I would never have abused it so badly when I was young.”
Garnet said it well, beautiful and honest Liz, and wow, Ned had me jonesing for winter…and remembering that without the dark we don’t appreciate the light as much.
Hello Lori,
Your thoughts are so deep and endearing. It seems such a connecting thing that we all notice and have such feelings about the seasons changing.
I hear what you are saying about seeing the days go by, getting older, colder. Yet noticing the beauty and the light around us in the words of Garnet, Ned, you, and the others, it makes me feel warmer already.
Liz
Liz:
I love this paragraph: "I watch the tiny changes that are calling in the season. I can almost touch the thoughts, the reasons someone would so relish it. My heart wishing to participate, cannot join in the way some do, because my body wants to lay on the rocks sucking up the sun. The thoughts of the impending doom of winter cloud my judgment. I'm too sensitive to the cold to enjoy what nature offers me."
You recognize the beauty that the change of seasons brings but remain ambivalent as to your ability to participate by accepting the change that has come with it. Do I sense a paradox here?
Scot
Hi Scot,
A paradox from an enigma?
More like a sad reality I think.
Thank you for your ever-thoughtful response to what I write. It gives the words value.
Liz
I put on my coat yesterday for the first time in months, and I realized that fall is here. I am not a cold weather person (the 2 blogs where I refer to snow in profanity can prove it.) Personally I could live by the sea on an island and be happy forever, though eventually I might go insane and miss the snow and leave changes.
hmm something to think about at any rate.
Janus,
If you decide to go live on that island by the see let me know if they have DSL and I might just join you. :) I've lived seven years without snow. I know I can do it.
smiles,
Liz
Well, you know how I feel about Autumn. :o)
Hey, I like fall clothes the best. That has to count for something. :)
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