http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/07/winter-over-spring-coming
#Rahawa Haile is an Eritrean-American writer of short stories and essays.
We are done with winter. Now it just needs to be done with us
Rahawa Haile
We’ve survived myriad storm warnings, opportunistic slush and winter hair. Spring has to come soon
Saturday 7 March 2015 14.10 GMT
Spring won’t save us. Spring can, at best, meet our notions of tolerable weather at 38%. And yet.
We are a desperate people this March. They say spring is around the corner. They’ve been saying it for weeks like a feral incantation. That soon, the Do Not Disturb signs dangling from the winter sarcophaguses of the upper class will detach and greet the budding city anew. But they are lying, of course.
Those in the northeast sector of America continue to reel from the loss of Boston: Snow-Veiled City That Was. According to the National Weather Service, this past Wednesday saw 65 million people living under a Winter Storm Warning, a number generally associated with dinosaur extinction
We are officially done with winter, regardless of whether it is done with us.
There comes a point in February where complaining about the season verges on foreplay, the passion and creativity involved gurgling up from someplace primal. And sure, whining about the winter is cliché, but why did this one stick to our ribs for so long? Part of it has to do with underestimating its duration while overestimating our stamina. Over time, even the nominally inert among us were made increasingly aware of their own inertia. As our physical and emotional particles slowed down, it became easier and easier to wonder whether life would ever speed up again or remain a rock salt stream of pajama pants and cold, leftover pizza.
As the active sources of winter fatigue wane in severity (eg chapped lips, static shock, the seasonal grief experienced by natural hair), new, less menacing threats enter the realm of mild irritation. Constantly looking down because one fears slipping on ice becomes occasionally glancing ahead to avoid stepping in excrement. Unattractive boots with excellent traction are traded for sexier boots with questionable soles. The hourly worry one may be developing hypothermia becomes a vague, weekly mental note to check iron levels. While some may long for the muted sensory world of winter – the hushed din and dulled scents of a blanketed metropolis – the city’s signature, ebullient blaring tends to correlate with a welcome uptick in the mercury, summer street garbage be damned.
In New York, the entire winter has been filled with weather advisories, along with freezing rain, decreased blood circulation, sleet, swipes right, unused gym memberships, compromised public transportation infrastructure, depression, lassitude, lonely gloves, too much binge-watching, opportunistic slush of a certain sentience and the first 2,000 words of novels in various states of abandonment.
Anxiety is unbearably efficient at stalling our engines of self-worth, planting worries about a failed year well before its bloom.
As a native Floridian, I am unabashed in my enchantment with frozen precipitation. I want to believe in seasons, the winter in particular, as tangible realities. There lies great comfort in watching water change phases, particularly considering how much of us consists of it. When New Year’s resolutions have long since failed you, it is a small wonder to watch the condensation of one’s breath in cold air, a visible reminder that transformation is possible. New beginnings are possible. In the quiet of winter’s end, you can dragon, too.
Daylight saving time is about to arrive. Life after work can include plans with friends, rather than isolated weeping. Take time to celebrate an end to “Can we reschedule? I sprained my heart tweeting about the snow”. The worst of it is over. The worst of you is over.
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Received on Sat Mar 07 2015 - 14:19:51 EST