White Chalk, and Other Winters

The internal rotation of autumn

Dear Friends,

In November I catch myself thinking it’s winter. The light rolls in like a morning fog, and in the evening the darkness arrives as if trying to catch the runaway train of afternoon. The clouds assume their shapes; different and the same every day, cottony tentacles reaching towards the ground and grazing the sparkling buildings. On my drive home from work I gaze at the Seattle skyline, lined with florescent cranes that blink red at their highest points.

I used to be scared of winter. As a Pacific Northwest child the seasons affected me, but I was also depressed— plagued by a gauzy sadness that I can now recognize as a product of isolation and neglect.

I can still slip on the gauze and live under that textural darkness, but it no longer scares me. I ran from it for most of my life; I clung to anything that would erase it, until I discovered nothing could.

Over the last eight to ten years I’ve slowly learned how to turn towards that sadness, and allowed myself to turn away …