Marching into March
The days grow longer and brighter, although after a stretch of springlike weather the temperatures have plunged again, covering the sidewalks with sheets of ice where, during the thaw, melting snow had formed lakes of water dammed by the snowbanks on either side. With March the strong winds have begun, too, and the trees creak and groan as they sway, sometimes violently, above skating rinks destroyed and yellowed by the cycles of freezing and thawing.
Last week there was a spring storm: thick heavy snow perfect for packing. A population of quirky snowmen sprang up overnight in the yards and parks, from the more predictable bonhommes de neige with carrot noses and French toques to a jazzman with a broken but real brass trumpet cradled on his white shoulder.
On Saturday the sun came out just as I left the apartment, which was fortunate, because the air was cold, and I walked the many blocks stopping occasionally to stoop down and scoop up a handful of perfect snow and pack it into an orb as dense as a baseball that I'd toss from hand to hand for half a block, and then lob at a street sign or tree, remembering how much it hurt, as a child, to receive such a snowball on the back of one's neck, but how impossible it was to resist making and throwing them.
The cold dry air exhilarates the senses but the will seems almost paralyzed. Maybe it's simply unnatural to live here; maybe we need a period of hibernation, like the creatures drowsing in their dens and nests, preparing to give birth in the spring. Instead there's a pile of distractions which reinforce the sense of urgency overlaid with torpor: accounting; tax returns; preparing for the bathroom renovations which will begin next week; friends and family to contact and see; publications to design; articles to edit; a Lenten workshop to teach...along with all the quotidian tasks of meals and shopping and laundry and cleaning up.
My creativity doesn't feel so much arrested as lugubrious, and I gaze at my projects like blurry, distant apparitions in one of those dreams where my legs are heavy and achy and won't carry me where I need to go. In real life, though, it's my mind that feels dull and tired.
On Saturday, alone here with plenty of time, I forced myself to concentrate, and worked through a number of ideas for new drawings. The next day, between singing for the morning Eucharist and Evensong, I went to the art supply store and bought four more large sheets of paper, but they still lie snowy and untouched on my drawing table, a crevasse gaping between us. When I approach the edge and peer in, my distractions and desires stare up at me, chattering like a colony of hungry penguins.
The worst depression of my life happened at this time of year, a few decades ago, so I'm always wary. It's different now though; even with my sense of so much unfinished, so much left to do, and the clock ticking faster, I've learned not to beat myself up. Little by little we move forward toward spring, enduring its fitful reversals, and one day the sap begins to run in the maples. Today, in the neighborhood store, I saw the first tins of this year's syrup, the first pots of maple cream, and a display box of cornets d'erable: tiny ice cream cones hand-packed with soft maple candy, a treat I'd never seen before moving here. I didn't buy any, but maybe tomorrow...
(update: I wrote this a couple of days ago, and now we're in the middle of another big thaw - it's sunny and almost 50 degrees here today; people are out washing their cars on the streets and looking cheerful, and I feel really energized!)
