Revelations from winter

One minute ago I had a gamut of thoughts and they immediately left my brain when I heard Gustav, one of my dogs, relentlessly chewing on a piece of rubber. After chasing him throughout the house, forcing his mouth open and disgustingly reaching in to grab this foreign object out of his fighting mouth I sat back down at my computer with empty head space.

So here we go again. My second blog in the history of my blog. This is monumental for me. A second blog may just make me an official blogger? No.

What I was thinking about winter is: Ew!!

It's gray and lonely and not at all, on any level, fun to drive in (especially when one commutes from South Haven to Grand Rapids such as I do everyday). Salt is everywhere. As much as my poor car doesn't like salt, I am doubly sure my poor pup's paws dislike it even more. I have pondered buying them little snow booties but thought twice when I realized I could be the obnoxious dog lady that dresses her Lab/Golden/Pit mixes in foo foo dog sweaters and buys them doggie boutique biscuits. No, I couldn't possibly do that to them (the booties that is). The lack of greenery or birds singing or crickets out my window on a quiet summer evening is nearly too much to bear.

Shocker: Winter may quite possibly be one of my favorite seasons. Eeeeeee!!! I know, am I crazy?! Here's why. I connect to the season's metaphorically. In the summer I am active and sunny and happy. In the winter I am melancholy in a way that opens me up to pieces of myself that are seemingly lost, or the parts, perhaps, I need to "die" to, in the same way that nature has to die to be reborn again in the spring. Enduring a winter makes spring in all of its infantile beauty seem so wonderful! Would I really appreciate that beauty if I didn't go through a season of gray? Maybe it's the same way with humanity. Maybe sometimes we have to experience pain, loss and suffering to appreciate all of the good and wonderful things in our lives. Or maybe spring is just a simple reminder that the gray won't last forever. That there is hope, and hope is enough to get us through, moment by moment, those periods of darkness. Maybe the seasons, for humans, is a way for us to let go and start anew. Maybe?

Who knows, I am just wondering aloud. I have to sit here and think about these things, otherwise winter will BEAT me down! And believe me, waking up everyday at 6:00a.m.-ish to walk Walter and Gustav when the whole world is fast asleep, and it's cold, windy and wintery outside (and I mean COLD), causes me to really think about winter. And note that I love these little guys so much that I would get up at 3:00a.m. and walk them in a blizzard to Greenland and back!

Winter near Lake Michigan is quite extraordinary! It will be hard to leave this simple, slow wintry pace of living when I move back to Grand Rapids (giving up the fireplace will be the most difficult). I finally put an offer in on a small white house on a quiet street very close to downtown, just minutes from work. Obviously this isn't the ideal place for me since I want a house with acreage and a beehive along with a couple of goats and chickens running around, and room for a barn where I can have a horse and rescue lots of dogs. BUT it's a good stepping stone for me. I can still have a garden (I will have to learn how to plant things and buy all of the necessary gardening tools), and possibly an urban chicken, and it will teach me a little bit about home owning since I literally know nothing. I will also have to learn how to start a lawn mower (it's really not my fault that my dad was anal about straight lines in the grass when I was a kid!).



But I digress. After many attempts to placate my disdain for winter, my conclusion is this: Winter is not bad.

Learning to Fly

"Well some say life, will beat you down. Break your heart, steal your crown. So I've started out, for God knows where. I guess I'll know when I get there. I'm learning to fly, around the clouds."

I've dubbed this blog Reveries due to my ability to over-think, over-analyze, and introspect everything.
I strive for the capacity to connect to the world via sensory experiences. Music evokes life in me and takes me away to another world. I see nature and often times melt at its magnanimous beauty. Today I saw the color Red everywhere juxtaposed against a beautiful snowy backdrop and I stood in awe. I am learning to appreciate and crave good, wholesome organic food. The kind that makes me feel like a better person both emotionally and physically (which trust me, is good for everyone who knows me). Our vast world seems, at times, infinitely broken, and I am one person searching out ways to fix it with the limited resources allotted to me.

This is a journey. Sometimes a frustrating one, and sometimes so beautiful and wonderful it literally wows me into speechlessness.

At the ripe old age of 31, it feels like I should have all this, this being everything, figured out. Some days I run solely on routine: the day-in, day-out method of living. And then I take a step back and wonder what I'm doing, and why I'm doing it. It's good to wonder. A lot. In my case, there is an excessive amount of wondering happening in the old noggin. It's exhausting being me sometimes. Walk a day in my head and you'll come out as if you were ice skating, upside down, on sand and seashells. Yeah, I know.

I am not the same person I was a year ago, 5 years, and certainly not 10 years ago. I tend to change at such a rapid pace that even the mini-micro machine man on speed couldn't keep up with me.

I want to be a poet, writer, artist, singer, (not athlete), conservationist, salsa dancer, tour guide in Italy, business woman who saves dying children in Africa and stray dogs out of my backyard. I am, of course, none of those things (especially the singer part), but at least if I write about it, it's out there, and that brings me one step closer to action. Sometimes our words have more power than we'll ever know. Let's hope that's the case here.

I hope you join me as I learn to fly.