That Cold Now Comes Upon Us All
The fall, my friends, is now upon us. Even though sometimes, some of us, all throughout the winter months, yearn for those sunny days that summer brings; those same some of us, now shine smiles to the earth at the doorstep of winter. The changing of the seasons is one of the most refreshing things I know. It is during the latter end of the endless, cold nights, where we aim our hopes so heavily, so purposefully, toward the prospect of peeling back some of those winter layers, toward the prospect of warm sun on skin. And yet, all in due course of things, after all those cramped and cold nights have taken their toll on us, and that merry sun and smell of grass have accompanied us all these recent months, here, we lovers-of-the-cold, sit, and sweat, and look forward once again to that indescribable consolation that only huddling up warm, in the cold, can bring.
Now, we can sit in front of fires. Forced indoors, betrayed by the wind and the ice outside, we can find that favorite nook, or that old friendly cranny, prop that book between the exposed window of the blanket that drapes our shoulders, and sit and read, and think. The frost on those windows permits just enough of that distorted and blended winter outside to remind us why we’re so warm.
It is in these moments, where we can be industrious in a different sort. As I like to say, we can practice the purely human thing of human things. Forced from yard work, outside projects, and those famous strolls through the city, we can hunker down in special spots and through what we write, think, and read, rebel against the inhospitable world from which we came with weapons pen, thought or page. I say bring it on!
Come cold earth and force me indoors! My hearth and hot coffee will be waiting for me. And as for the stock market? What good would such a post be were she to neglect that which she seems to need to be about? To that end I shall speak as only those who toil in winter camps (of arms) would. That stock market is our adversary, our foe, in a sense. It is that which me must conquer to meet our ends as we have set them out. But she can be tricky. And so these blissful but darkened days ahead, for me, will sometimes be spent in a state of war. Of planning and conspiring, of being as wily as I can come to become.
And now come those cooler nights, one by one…