Thinking Green Thoughts
As winter wears on, I can’t help but think of summer … spring … green growing things … warmth … flowers … fresh tomatoes from the vine … blueberries fresh off the bush … lily of the valley, just outside my bedroom window, mixed in among the violets …
This is the longest time of year … that span between the holidays and spring. It’s an endless stretch of stark grays and browns … interspersed with patches of cold, frigid white. Absent are the reds, golds, blues and greens of spring and summer … the pristine whites of blackberry blossoms, the evocative red of tiny rosebuds, unfurling their virginal petals to absorb their first taste of sunlight.
This is the long cold empy, when life seems to be on hold, waiting for the sun, warmth and green to make itself felt again - signaling an end to the long bleak, desolate, gray interval.
But what would daisies and apple blossoms be, if I could touch them whenever I felt a need?
What would the feeling of sunlight on my chilled back be, if I never felt the chill of white winter-death running its cold, blue finger along my spine?
What would the smell of lilacs be … if it permeated my winter doldrums … ?
Each of those is special, sought after, dreamed of, hoped for, yearned for … because of their very absense. If they were always there … then in my humanity, I would take them for granted. How sad. Why is it that we only appreciate something once it’s gone?
“Don’t it always seem to go,
That you don’t know what you’ve got
‘Til it’s gone …
They paved paradise,
And put up a parking lot.”
Joni Mitchell
January 22nd, 2006 at 12:49 am
We’re not covered in snow down here, but I feel the same way you do every winter.
A bad case of cabin fever.
January 22nd, 2006 at 9:32 pm
Oh man, the smell of lilacs - here they bloom for about 3-4 weeks only but it’s pure heaven and most of that time I spend with my nose buried in a bunch……
January 23rd, 2006 at 9:46 am
Yesterd it was gray and wet, and like TJ, cabin fever set in. I closed the drapes so I would not accidental glance out and see it. (but that only made matters worst) Today I awoke to sunshine……….happyness returns.
January 23rd, 2006 at 5:19 pm
Really trying hard to keep the “green thoughts” in mind tonight … snow has been falling all day, and our central heat is out. …
It’s going to be a looong winter … *blink!*
.
January 23rd, 2006 at 8:47 pm
Yes, it’s a very strange theory.
The star which we cannot grasp is the brightest and sparkles.
The movie which we’ve missed out is the best movie ever been.
Hugo’s pictures became famous and valuable not until he passed away.
A lost lover is in fact the one who understands me most.
Why…There are too many treasures in life we’ve take for granted, the worth of which we don’t fully realize until they’re pointed out to us in some unexpected way.