Snowflies,butterflakes.

I realized joy can never be relative. Leafless trees make a city look moribund, but to spot just one evergreen cypress on a street is what joy can be like. A TV show about a community joining hands to feed the homeless on Christmas day, watched by no initial intent, can later manage to move a lot of your inner scaffolding. That is joy. The unexpectedness of snowfall on the most potentially murky day is what joy has come to be, with me..

Butterfly houses always enamored me. A shrine to witness the wondrous transition of a caterpillar into a butterfly. Watch those brittle wings gently struggle to sprout from inside a cocoon. Take the form of an ethereal being, fluttering across the waves of air, swimming in an ocean of carelessness. So, anytime I wanted to block out the ugliness of subjected reality, like the times when you can’t seem to deal with the fact that Christmas can be lonely for some, or that the evergreen cypress (snow-sprinkled) outside your window has to stand in the cold all winter, I imagine a little cloud surrounding me, a cloud of imaginatively invented joy, of self-preservation.

Like a cocoon, it protects me while I momentarily hibernate from that moment. It becomes so easy to close the moment like that, pretend like the moment never befell you, never spun you, never turned you. While I develop wings inside this cocoon to help me lift off this unwanted, unwelcome earth. Like a thousand butterflies, engulfing me, like liquefying skin made of a million wings, a cloud of controlled motion, morphing into my shape, hiding me. Defining me.

And I only found out, on the day that it snowed, that this doesn’t have to be my fantastic vision, conjured by a desultory mind. Snowflakes falling weightlessly, staying afloat for those uncertain yet heavy moments, are like butterflies (both ephemeral). Butterflies made of snow that whirl in concentric flight around me. The whiteness of the snow hiding the murk of the street, of the day. And this time, reality confirmed my little bubble of imagination. It was reality (which we all try so hard to escape, make lame excuses from and cheat with sometimes) that showed me the silken thread woven between her and my imagination. And that was joy to me. Non-relative and simply confirmed.

artiste - Christian Clipart
art title - Butterflies and Christmas snow
image url - here

Unclothed, for once.

So, it's those times when you run out of wine and realize the immenseness of your dependency on it to adjust the dimensions of your gloom. Idiosyncratic gloom. The fullness of the wine in the glass tosses your securities. You know, the way your securities sometimes depend on the purpleness of the winter or the opaqueness of hope. There is an unstated, understood security I have come to find with the presence of wine in my house during winter. Before, I sought that security in the musky smell of my dogs’ bodies as they lay by my feet, sleeping but only narrowly so, always providing me with company as I sailed through the nocturne, all guarded.
I suffer a howling affinity for winter. I like the way it shuffles the order of things inside my carefully draped emotional demeanor. I seem to admire the fact that having wine becomes more of a physiological necessity than just some thoughtless guilty indulgence. The pseudo warmth works (almost) as a temporary substitute to the musky warmth I was otherwise used to. The dryness in the air is easy to associate with when you are replenishing a void. The early sunset makes dealing with the harshness of absence easy. The wait for snow will overshadow the other forms of longing meanwhile.
It becomes easy to long, watching the tiny specks of snow float effortlessly inside the glass globe. It is easy to swim deep into words and songs and poetries during this seasonal metamorphosis. Lyrical intensities don’t seem to fail you. Filled frames seem to do their job. Lowly burning flames on the side table seem to induce warmth of soothing magnitude. The hissing wind through the crevice of my window feels friendly too. Maybe I will let her unravel my robe. I can use a little sliver of winter inside my sealed house with depleting wine tonight. Inside my sealed skin with depleting strength.
When the hands go cold, the blood settles coolly in the center of the heart. Easy to heal. Maybe the skin of the heart grows thicker too. Easy to deal.
I will sail through this nocturne too, all seamless.

image source : http://www.cepolina.com/freephoto/f/nature.water.snow/snow02.bw.jpg


"I'll be your harvester of light, and send it out tonight, so we can start again.." - Winter Song, Sara Bareilles.