Thursday, June 02, 2005
Pulling all the stops and realising you cannot dam the flow
The damp has attached itself to the cold Melbourne air. Yesterday was technically the start of winter and also the next three arduous months. I can feel it in my bones, my jaws firm up and my fingers cannot grip my pen properly. I wake up to an aching body after a night of sleeping all curled-up, in a position dormouse-like.I wear a thick winter coat out and pull the fur-lined hood over my head, hands in my pockets. But I still feel myself shiver when the winds blow. It is perplexing: how can I still feel the chill when I am all huddled up inside my padded third skin? I feel no warmer than if I only had a thin wool cardigan wrapped around me.
I kick and stamp the fallen dried leaves onto the gravel. Others have done likewise, and our combined efforts have firmly pressed them into packs of decomposing paste, all wet and sordid and dead. Leaves grow and fall and die and get swept away. They will never see the sun again. Others take their place and go through that same cycle. This seems like a cycle only to us, for in fact the life of each leaf truly ends when it dies.
At home I boil hot water nearly every hour to fill my tumbler with something simple but good. As I settle down in front of the computer, palms embracing the warm body of my tumbler, I feel content with my immobility. I sip the hot water and then gulp it down when it turns lukewarm and as my cold palms and the air starts eating up its heat.
Any sudden movement by my body causes the cold air to quiver and lick gently against my skin. And suddenly I feel the cold in my bones again. I hurry out to the bathroom and sit gingerly down on the toilet seat, feeling water course out of my body.
Then it is back to the kettle again. Already its metal coil is slowly burning away from all its overwork. I almost feel pity for it. Another round of warm water for my tumbler and the watercloset. I just wonder how much of my life am I going to spend fighting the damp of winter.
lux at 10:38 pm