The Underworld and Me: A Bad Match

I was reading an old blog post earlier in which I said how much I like the changing of the seasons, and I have liked it for most of my life. Well, some process has taken its course and altered my perception, because I no longer do.

In a physical sense, life is about walking round and round the annual cycle, each footfall bringing us one step nearer to the next season on the wheel. Apart from the inevitability, there’s a certain balance about that progression. But I no longer perceive the balance. I’ve now become hopelessly fixated on winter being the dominant season.

I’ve said before that I’ve come to have an abiding hatred of winter with its cold, its low light, its disturbingly long shadows at noon, that damned white stuff which makes movement hazardous as well as killing birds, animals, and even humans occasionally, and its unfailing habit of producing all manner of discomfort and inconvenience. But here’s the interesting fact: This fixation means that winter is the only season with which I feel truly and consistently connected.

In spring I feel only a passing awareness of the new colour appearing in the ground and the fact that my steps are taking me towards summer. In summer I’m aware of the life and fecundity of the high season – and I make a point of reporting it on the blog – but I’m equally conscious of the fact that autumn is only a short way along the road. And when I arrive at autumn I’m not entirely blind to the colour and mellow fruitfulness, but the feeling is always accompanied by a sense of high anxiety that I am shortly to be sent back again into the frigid darkness of the underworld.

And then winter bites and I’m almost manically aware of every shiver, every snowflake, every patch of ice on the road, every skeletal tree clothed in hoar frost, and the growl of every cold wind rampaging across the landscape and sometimes invading my living space. For three, four, or five months, winter is the whole of my existence. The rest of the year is a pleasant but very short dream.

This is bad, isn’t it? This is negative. But it has me in its grip now and I haven’t a clue how to get rid of it. I wonder whether anybody else feels the same way.

I will keep trying to make objective and positive posts on this blog, though, as occasion permits. Here’s hoping for a fresh window on a wonderful world.

But meanwhile, a note about snow scenes…

I saw an advert on the TV today in which happy people were cavorting happily in a pretty, snowy landscape (because snowy landscapes are pretty and joy-giving, right? Right. And they’re connected in the public consciousness with Christmas, which was the point of the advert.)

This particular pretty, snowy landscape was there to promote the message that now is the time for all happy people to reach for their wallets, their cheque books, their cards, their phones, and their smart watches, and range far and wide to find ways of spending at least what they can afford – and even what they can’t – on keeping the wheels of the free market economy turning smoothly. And then all will be for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

And then I saw a news report about a large number of people in Cumbria being trapped in their vehicles for up to nineteen hours without sustenance in some situation caused by the heavy snow which fell overnight. So much for the prettiness of snowy landscapes. This was the reality. So it appears I’m not the only one feeling the dark and chilly atmosphere of Hades at the moment.