Friday, December 14, 2012

Wintertime is for Postcards, Too

Just the front of the postcard this time. 


I'm happy that we're receiving some much-needed rain after an incredibly dry year, but it's been non-stop mist, fog, rain, storm up here the past couple of weeks. Looking at this photo of the postcard I received from Sarah T last week -- and then comparing it to other photos of postcards received over the summer -- I note the paleness of my fingers, the (perpetual) sogginess of the lawn,* the morose grey sunlight. Winter is here in all of its central coast, Wuthering Heights, doom & gloom glory --and I love it!-- but boy do we have a long winter ahead of us.

Wintertime is wonderful for its storms and winds and cold and spookiness, the move to insularity, introspection, quiet, and aloneness. But, sometimes, it becomes lonely. In a Stephen King-protagonist-isolated-in-a-snowed-in-cabin/closed-mountain-resort** kind of way.

The academic quarter has come to an end. The past couple of weeks have been long, sleep-deprived, manic and exhausting. I found this postcard in the mailbox late Thursday evening of last week, and it's been brightening up the large pile of unattended mail ever since. Thanks, Sarah T.

* The lawn has become a perpetual mushroom pit of fungal despair. I'm pulling out handfuls of mushrooms on a daily basis.

** MADNESS.