Winter Calm in the Middle of a Pandemic

There has been no shortage of winter posts in the history of this blog. Which makes sense because Edmonton, at latitude 53 is pretty firmly a winter city. I’ve always loved the lessons that winter offers up and living in Edmonton means we have a fairly lengthy interval to ponder them. I’ve been wondering about how our usual winter lessons might change or be adapted during this pandemic. I typically enjoy the slower pace of winter, the cocooning, the hibernating, the holing up. I enjoy being a recluse. I enjoy the cozy bits. The hygge, the getting down to lagom. But what else can we take from this season? We could do worse than to listen to Wendell Berry:

Suppose we did our work
like the snow, quietly, quietly.
leaving nothing out.
—Wendell Berry

I have a lot of work that I want and need to attend to this winter, including reading a large stack of books I’ve collected and only had the mental energy and attention span to dip into in a cursory fashion. Of course the more I dip, the more my attention span grows, so that’s a lesson and a reminder to myself right there. One book I have been loving is Index Cards by Moyra Davey. I have half of it underlined and the other half dog-eared, but I still want to spend more time with it when I’m more alert. There is a piece where she quotes Dalie Giroux, saying “Give the whole planet a one-year sabbatical…” and “dares us to imagine what that would be like. An echo of Vallières can be heard here — his desire for a society where all people, during their time on earth, could be free to experience their “maximum joy and jouissance.”

Of course this pandemic is nothing like a sabbatical at all. For many, it’s a time of extreme stress and a complete restructuring of the workplace. And that’s just those of us who are lucky and privileged enough to still be working. Right now we’re all just focusing on US politics (even in Canada), (even though the politics in my home province are just about as bad, a complete rubbish heap), and that’s understandable. I keep telling myself, I need a winter plan, a plan to get through, no matter what. I need some new winter mantras. (Quietly, quietly).

A book I have read about but haven’t (yet) read is Benadette Mayer’s Midwinter Day. In Attention Equals Life, Andrew Epstein quotes Mayer: “I had an idea to write a book that would…prove the day like the dream has everything in it.” He says the book, “responds to the questions facing all women writers who are mothers: how can you be both woman and artist? When do you find time to write? “All day long” is the book’s defiant answer.” As I was reading this, I was thinking about how there is yes, the day, and then there is winter. And winter, too, like a dream, has everything in it. And I’m wondering how to get maximum joy out of this season, which is not time off, or a sabbatical, not at all. But maybe it’s an interval of regrouping, a rest from the social aspect of life. Our obligations are different. Lessened, in many cases. We have an out. We can let ourselves off the hook. We can hibernate with impunity.

This winter, whatever happens, I want to feel it all, including the joy. But whatever else has to be endured, we’ll endure.

The Feist song, I feel it all, keeps popping into my head, which isn’t precisely about this, but still.

I’m looking forward to finding the calm and the radiance in winter, once again. As Kevin Hart says in a poem,

“There is a radiance inside the winter woods
                    That calls each soul by name…”

So here’s to the beginning of winter. It might not seem like the most hopeful of seasons to some, but to me it is. There’s hope in letting things rest, letting things settle. To look for radiance in a minimalist landscape. To remember and forget simultaneously that spring is also coming, it’s there, in the distance.

Meanwhile, I’ve shared this pretty much everywhere else, but I’ve recently had some good news: that my publisher Palimpsest Press will be taking on my “angel book” titled Everything Affects Everyone. (I currently love the title, but that could always change in the editing process). It’s to come out in about a year from now, which in the land of Canadian publishing is in fact very soon! In the meantime, you could support me and Palimpsest by ordering previous books. (Though I also know if you’re a longtime reader of this blog, you’ve probably already done so, and thank you for that!) Perhaps they’d make a good holiday gift though? :)

So thanks for reading and I send you good wishes for some winter calm, but also joy! also radiance!