November.

Life has been quiet and slow. I am entering hibernation, I suppose. Perhaps that’s why the words don’t come–like the pipes have frozen with this weather cooling off overnight and the ideas froze with them. If I sleep with enough blankets, I tell myself, the ideas will thaw out. Any excuse to crawl back in bed will do. I want to lie cocooned in a hundred blankets for a couple of days or weeks…yes, can I become a bear and hibernate? If I were a bear, I might be a panda. They seem cuddly, which is all I’m into right now. I guess that’s a poor choice because they don’t really hibernate, do they? Maybe I’d be a grizzly, if I can ever purposefully channel my ferocity: “NO.” I recorded myself saying something similar outloud fifteen times the other day. I felt fierce. My tolerance for men’s idiocy is, as Lady Gaga puts it — well, there is just no tolerance anymore. Grizzly.

**

So this is what I blame my lack of creativity on. The cold. On Saturday it’s in the 60s and sunny and then, suddenly, rain and snow and the necessity of doing weird dances at the bus stop to keep my butt warm. The trees, too, are preparing for the long haul. I look out my window and see farther than I could before; the trees are balding and their brilliantly vibrant hair now lies crumpled like a colorful quilt on the ground. And I lie curled in my bed, warm, sipping tea, wrapped in a fuzzy blanket, listening, waiting. Waiting for what, I do not know, but my urgency to move has all but disappeared, and the angry burn I stoked in my core all of last year has fallen to an ember that just keeps me warm. I do my yoga and I sometimes swim, and I long for English books to wrap my hands around (how have I only just discovered T.S. Eliot?), but at the bookstore, there are no interesting books in English and the thought of stumbling through Anna Karenina for the first time in German is just, well….puts me to sleep. So I attempt to cook soup and I try to drink less coffee and I do my yoga and I wrestle with the ice freezing up my system, which makes me want to crawl back in bed and melt my tear ducts. But this year the tears do not come as easily as they came last year, so sometimes I conjure up ghosts from the past who come and frighten me enough so I can fill up the rain gauge. I have been wondering–is crying on a regular basis just as important and healthy as laughing on a regular basis? I always feel better after a good cry, especially in the fall. The trees release their leaves; I water the ground around them. It rains a lot this time of year, and I try to eat what’s in season. I have eliminated “shoulds” from my diet. They are not in season, and I expect to lose a lot of dissatisfaction.

**

I wake up earlier and tiptoe to the kitchen. I still have not discovered the secret dance across the floor so as not to wake it angrily in the early morning hours. It croaks, disturbed, “Why are you up? Go back to bed, crazy girl,” and I do wonder what I am doing, but I persist. It groans again and I whisper apologetically. I start boiling water and glance sleepily out the window, seeing mist and no mountains. But then the wind purses its lips and blows the clouds aside, like it’s brushing wispy hair off the mountain’s forehead, and there, blending amidst the white swirl, stands the mountain–frosted deliciously. “Hello, still here.” Evergreen trees poke their heads out in protest, determined not to be hidden–their elegant green fur powdered with snow. The line I read in Eliot flits through my mind: “In the mountains, there you feel free.” In the mountains, there you feel free. I hear the mountain whispering this to me, again and again, every time I look at it. I am certain it is casting some sort of spell because I have got it into my head to go visit it, even though the path outlined in red on the map seems to be laughing at me. Oh it’s ridiculous all right, but now I can’t seem to shake the thought and it fills me with giddy delight. When no one’s looking, I whisper back that I will come in the spring, and I’m suddenly aware I’m grinning stupidly in the kitchen. And my heart, I notice, seems to be beating wildly again. Perhaps that’s why the tears do not come so easily: I’m smiling and thinking of silly things.

**

“But don’t you know,” I cry in protest at the daydreams. “I don’t want this nonsense. I don’t want distractions or half-heartedness or superficiality. I know what I want. I know what I want the next day and the next day and the day after that….” The water has finished boiling. “And listen, I’m not going to stay, not for you or anyone, and I, look, I want to fall in love with your words, with your soul….” I pick up the electric kettle. It reminds me of the one I used to have–the one I left, thinking I’d be back to get it. Somewhere in the distant corner of my mind I hear George Bailey yelling, “Now, you listen to me! I don’t want any plastics, and I don’t want any ground floors, and I don’t want to get married – ever – to anyone! I want to do what I want to do.…” I pour the hot water into my mug. “I know what I’m going to do tomorrow, and the next day, and the next year, and the year after that. I’m shaking the dust of this crummy little town off my feet, and I’m going to see the world!” I hear the scenes play out. In the movie they end up kissing. But in the version I’m thinking of, George shakes the dust of the town and doesn’t come back and Mary finds someone else. I stare at my semi-pathetic decaf coffee and go write.

**

I am an excellent time traveler, but I’m trying to become a bad one. This is probably why I do yoga. Crow pose is suddenly difficult to do these days and I don’t know why but I suddenly don’t trust myself and my feet stay on the ground. I sit in my room at the desk I’ve finally cleaned off and do my morning pages and stare at my wall, where I’ve finally hung my things back up. “Be with those who help your being,” a Rumi poem I wrote down from last October stares at me. “Yes, yes, I know.” “But do you?” it raises its eyebrows and I roll my eyes.

**

I’m convinced if someone cut open my brain they would find a miniature version of me, frantically scribbling notes over a desk, certain that if she does not stop working, the world would cease to spin. She is there dutifully noting as I fall asleep: “Remember to research if you can get your appendix removed as a preventative measure, because what would happen if it burst on a long-haul flight?” And there reminding me when I wake up, “Remember to bring water with you on your walk, in case you get lost so you don’t get dehydrated and die.” Poor thing, she just always needs something to do, and if she has nothing to do, she invents things to do. She’s an overachiever like Hermione — with the same wild hair — but she really just means to be protective. So sometimes I give her tea to calm her down, which I might do today because she is certain that my inability to remember punctuation rules is a clear sign I have a brain tumor. Right. Swim: reset.

**

I am determined not to get sick, which is also the kind of thing I’ve determined can be controlled with pure resolve. And garlic. When in doubt, eat raw garlic. I put garlic in my soup, in my hummus, in my curry, in everything I can. If you think there’s already enough in there, put another clove in. A good motto to live by, I think. If I had a cookbook it would probably have “garlic” in the title. “A garlic a day keeps the doctor away.” Anyways, the reason I have had to decide not to get sick is because I decided that a little bit of rain wasn’t going to get in the way of enjoying the “fresh air” and an “invigorating walk.” Ever trusting in my trusty rain jacket, I reminded myself that, “There’s no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing.” And: “There’s nothing a good scarf can’t protect you against.” And, trusting in the medical advice of Mrs. Bennett: “People do not die of little trifling colds!” With these rousing thoughts, I dragged myself out the door into the pouring rain. Bus drivers gave me pitying looks and one even stopped to let me on, but I avoided eye contact and plodded onward, drenched, comforting myself with thoughts of garlic and hot showers. It began to rain harder but there was a yellow rose poking its head beyond the fence, undeterred by the harsh rain: defiant. I stopped and took a photo.

So far, I am not sick. Just defiant, especially of the weather. Maybe even grizzly.

**