xakara

It was peaceful. Cold and still and quiet in a way a city rarely is. The only sound was the patter of rock salt hitting the ground as I spread it along the walkway in front of the store. For the first time in ten days, everything was all right. I was in the moment and the moment was exactly where I wanted to be.

There was no longing to sleep and flee the world. There were no plans to abandon writing and quietly slip from the cyber-eye of those I've come to call friends. I had no doubt in my abilities or concerns that I'd wasted my year on stories no one will ever read. I was just there, with my rock salt and my borrowed gloves made for larger hands than my own.

I'd been seeking comfort through the depression all along, hoping to ride it out until hormones and blood glucose all found balance once more. I sought it in writing, in reading, in physical closeness, in numbness, in sugar, in fullness, in emptiness, and in the knowledge that this too shall pass. But comfort came in quiet, and cold, and rock salt, and borrowed gloves. Sometimes that's just how it works out. It's never about where you look for it, just about where you find it.

The peace brought boldness--as peace often does for me--and I took up the shovel that stronger arms had wielded earlier in the night. I scraped a path along the walkway, watching for any sign of movement, while seeing very little save the emptiness of the surrounding buildings. It was beautiful in its solitude and I began to appreciate the wretched-loveliness of the swamp-like slush and icy snow ready to suck away the footwear of the unprepared who dared to brave it.

I'd changed from my boots to my New Balance walking shoes upon arrival at work and hadn't the heart to change back for my brief excursion into the night. When walkway met sidewalk I was met with snow and ice that hadn't seen a shovel yet and didn't wish to by its resistance to the idea. I was left to chop and scoop and slip and slide along as I hefted snow and created a path for people who did not yet exist but who I knew would inevitably arrive to see me. It was in the breaking of ice and lifting of snow that I went from stillness and peace to action and thought.

I started working on the next book as I worked out scenes of the current one. I didn't mean to, it just happened as it often does while I'm doing something that has nothing to do with writing. I saw the scenes and heard the dialogue and felt the touch of ghostly hands as the cold caressed me but did not steal my warm. I was given titles and character names and childhood hometowns with details none but me shall ever know. I was there in that place that makes me a writer, that place that is an island of sanity surrounded by a world in which I don't belong save for the second Tuesday and every other Wednesday of months ending in R, Y or E.

I was in The Romance as it's come to be called in my head, and although I didn't stay long, it was enough time to know that my Zen is on it's way back. It stands so close that I can feel sweet breath along my neck and the tickle of soft lips brushed up my spine. I can hear the faint laughter of intimate secrets and the scent of clean skin lingers on the air. I am being seduced back into the Worlds Within, and closer to the world around me.

It's just a matter of time.

And it comes all due to a quiet moment, a still night, rock salt and borrowed gloves meant for hands larger than my own. But that is its own truth, its own gentle epiphany, is it not? For whatever I do with my life, with my writing, it is a smaller variation of what it expected of me by The Universe.

It is all a manuevering within borrowed gloves meant for hands bigger than my own, but with which I can still accomplish great and simple things...

Cold Still Ramble Done...

~X