I Am Not Ready, But the Color's Here

Gray, in anticipation of white. This rumpled landscape swathed in a colorless season. Darkness outweighs lightness for a few more hesitant weeks. A time when I have to push myself, stretch beyond self-imposed boundaries, the confines of warmth and comfort, go seeking sustenance in a still and quiet world. My least favorite time of year, when it is so hard to remember that this dormancy is temporary. In a momentary lull, I read for pleasure - how long has it been? - nourish my soul with language and metaphor and image:

I'm looking for summer, but I can't find how or where it begins. Is it a prick of light, the spark from a horseshoe striking rock as I ride into the mountains? Can it be found in the green eruption of a leaf? It's my obsession, you see, to seek origins...That's how summer is: no past or future but all present tense, long twilights like vandals, breaking into new days.

-Gretel Ehrlich, Islands, The Universe, Home

Z says: "You like to watch snow through the window."
I say:    "Yes. I like snow without the cold."

Until the light returns, I must ask myself this question, over and over, until I have accepted the answer: Isn't one's true abode any wild place, any fire storm or night of discontent?