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Notes from Below Sea Level
And the World Keeps Spinning Along
I can barely get moving this morning. The cats are competing for food, acting like kittens now that the chill has creeped in during the night, and I had to put heat on for the first time this season. Just to get the nip out of the air, but homes down here on the Gulf Coast weren’t made for this humid cold and it seeps into the bones of the house and creates this bubble of ice that is fended off only by a pile of quilts and a cup of hot coffee. In other words, my body is telling me to stay put while my mind is straining against my sedentary nature to get me moving. The tension of a wintery morning that harkens back to when I was a child and the only heat in the house was a single gas-fired heater set up in the ancient fireplace.
Add long periods of darkness from shortened days and you can etch out my mood these past few weeks. This morning, I noticed a thin spider web running from the top edge of my bedside table’s lampshade to the finial: a single strand of silk that looked old and abandoned. More than just a commentary on my housecleaning acumen, it reminded me of my pension for retreating into myself during these first few weeks of my winter doldrums. These are the days I guard against melancholy and inactivity, against the urge to bundle up under blankets and stave off the sunrise and the day ahead. Not so much depression as lack of fortitude or courage and a feeling that the world will do just fine without my input. And, of course, it will—but then I get that niggling sense that this world “needs” my input (it doesn’t) and I eventually get moving. My own fiction of self-importance.
So, I’m dripping my second cup of coffee and moving to the patio to enjoy what is left of the night’s silence and the fragile peace that is endemic to small bayou towns on the Louisiana coast—perhaps the only real treasure to be found in the backwaters of this place. I’m not sure if my take is mentally healthy, but I do find comfort in the simple things when it seems the larger world is in chaos. That single strand of webbing, the empty fruit bowl under my patio table that signals the shy possum visited last night, the way the smoke from my cigarette rises slowly and with purpose before catching the gentle breeze and sailing off beyond the glow of my computer screen.
But this myopic tendency won’t last much longer. I am already making a list of what ingredients I need for the pecan pie I’m making for Thanksgiving and looking forward to seeing my fourth-born nephew that will be visiting from Tennessee for the first time in five years. I have a good feeling about the upcoming holidays (not always the case with me) and am optimistic about the fractured schedule that is work between Thanksgiving and New Years. For now, though, I am going to shut this computer down and enjoy the dregs of this coffee cup and (as silly as it sounds) contemplate the miserly reach of the sodium lamp of the streetlight at the end of this road.
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Be well, be kind, and appreciate the love you have in your life.
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Grab your coffee or tea and join us, please.
What's on your mind this morning?
