In Winter

I've seen the oppressing slant of light on a winter afternoon. It's like that old man in the Dickens story, hunched over beneath the bell tower, feeling every strike of The Chimes in his cold, crooked bones. This week I have to put on my coats. Is it pleasurable? I'm not sure. I'm driving cars. Thinking things. Drinking liquids and being warm. In a phrase, things I haven't done.

This is the contrast that I've drawn from being home, but it's really not a contrast, because it's the same earth and the same human beings. Besides, the world is small. Where do you live? I'll find you a friend. It's two two and a half hour flights. 12 hours total from house to house. I counted.

It's a strange thing, thinking about the concept of whether or not to write about multiculturalism. Should it just be an unstated fact? Yesterday I was in Guatemala. Today, I am in the United States. My mind switches as fast as my tongue.

Things here are at least superficially nice. There's certain motions I've really missed. The cold and it's sedentary amigo are not two of them. The caffeine-tapered melancholy mornings are, especially when it moves me to write. What things do you miss?

There's a certain slant of light,
On winter afternoons,
That oppresses, like the weight
Of cathedral tunes.

Heavenly hurt it gives us;
We can find no scar,
But internal difference
Where the meanings are.

None may teach it anything,
'Tis the seal, despair,-
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the air.

When it comes, the landscape listens,
Shadows hold their breath;
When it goes, 't is like the distance
On the look of death.

-Emily Dickinson