Welcome back to Bluezone. Every Sunday, I send out a newsletter like this one or this one. To support my work, you can subscribe or make a donation to support my work, here.
There is something quite comforting about hiding beneath the veil of a winter sky. The blackened horizon from four pm onwards certainly isn’t a cause for rejoice, yet it does provide a sense of anonymity. Beneath the cover of darkness and layers of clothes, I can slip by unnoticed. When the light grows longer and the sun seems to reach higher, I feel unable to conceal, beneath layers of clothing, beneath that dark sky, parts of myself that grew in the comfort of a hibernated home.
It’s a paradox that I can’t quite seem to shake, the comfort in a black sky where melancholy and safety permeate all the same. Winter passes as it always does and if you do it right, you remember the perseverance exercised more than the comfort revelled in. Sure, moments must be enjoyed; coffee sipped near the window’s edge, the crunch of snow beneath your boots, the sharp beauty in the bones of trees. In the midst of it, we become accustomed to the bitter blasts that blow through the land and trudge forward until one morning we hear the birds, the flags hang flaccid, and the outlines of the world are again in place. Winter dissolves like exhales in January air and the phenomena ceases to exist as if it ever were, forgotten or at least never referred to again beneath the welcoming rays of that yellow sun. How curious it seems, that we feel satisfied with the first explanations of new hope in the form of birdsong and bloom. The scientific and the supernatural coalesce to form an invisible joy that spreads through the air as winter turns to spring.
The last few years I have felt a kind of embarrassment, like realising you’re naked in an important moment of a dream, or that you’re dancing in front of a two-way mirror, in that the stretching hours of spring sunlight seem to rob me of parts of myself previously masked in winter’s coat. When spring miraculously arrives, the work put in during winter hours glows alongside blooming flowers. To reap what you sow requires, more than anything, a willingness to look at yourself in the pale mirror of winter’s gloom.
It requires honesty—to see yourself in the season you’re in.
The mirror I see reflects the pencil grey outline of myself in a Paris hotel room. I look wholly ordinary, yet something about the stillness of the moment makes me recognise myself in a sharper outline. Behind me, the curtains hang limp. The streets are deserted and the sky droops low. Despite the temptation of burying my head beneath quilted blankets, I force myself to lace up my shoes and bare the six o’clock chill. Outside, the darkness consumes me all the same. I grin at the black sky like a lunatic donning a dark cloak and figure that delusional enjoyment suits me better than silent suffering. My shoes sound like slaps on the wet river stones as I zigzag across the Pont Neuf bridge onto the south side. A sense of calm spreads over me much denser than the thin comfort of indulgence. A knowingness that the blade was sharpened today. That when spring comes, I’ll be more ready to show myself to the shadow-quenching rays.
Seasons are stark reminders that change is slow but constant. As much as life promises to change, it always takes a whole lot longer than you think it will. The proof of its fleeting future is strewn like Blue’s Clues across the forests. If you listen closely, you may hear whispers of spring in the alacrity of birdsong through spine trees long before the first green sprouts surface. Squalid branches that look stark and miserable to most, hold promises of new leaves in their minuscule nubs. In the midst of our seasonal disorientation, progress is found in the small details of the natural world. In contrast to instant updates and infinite scrolls, the observation of nature offers a much more subtle program of continual change. Indeed, we’d be far better off comparing our inner growth to the steady, seasonal swelling of an oak tree in the forest, than to peculiar, curated avatars on the internet.
As sunlight leaks into my hotel room I notice, in these fleeting hours of privacy between business obligations, a recognition of self amidst the current season. Not just in winter, but in the personal phase I find myself in. A phase of momentum and betting on myself, one of faith and trust, in life. As light defrosts the city rooftops, I feel a quiet resolve—not in where I’m heading but in being. Winter’s gift is this: the chance to pause and grow unseen, like roots below frost-covered soil. Spring will come, as will summer and autumn, as will winter again! Each asks something different of me. But for now, I feel a strange contentment—not in what I’ve achieved or in where I’m going, but simply in being.
-iL.
