Snow in the background

(Pre-Script: This post pairs best with either the song, "Winter, by Joshua Radin, #29 on the playlist, or the song,"Winter, by Tori Amos, #32 on the playlist, or both. Go down to the playlist, click on one or both songs, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...) (...still waiting...)

From my vantage point, There were low hanging clouds, and above them, snow on the mountain tops. But since both the clouds and the snow are white, it was hard to differentiate between the two. It looked like white mash with a smattering of green specks; mashed potatoes topped with chives.

For the past few weeks, I have been eating as if the government depended on it. As if the Queen declared, "let them eat cake," and I took it on as my personal mission. Freedom for the people. Freedom to eat cake, and have your cake, too, and if you run out of frosting, there is more in the bowl where that came from.

It's hard to sleep when your stomach aches from hunger, and from freedom to overindulge. It's hard to sleep when the same stomach aches for both things simultaneously. But on the hills in the distance, I see snow, and the clouds hang low, so that if you were there on that mountain, all you would see is fog all around, and not landscape, and certainly not the summit, though you may be very close to it. From this distance, it looks like aching beauty. It looks like a metaphor for everything I could never put into words.

But in two hours, the clouds will lift, the snow will begin to melt. Things will be clear that once seemed to blur together. I'm not sure which I like better.

Actually, that's not true. I like the white haze of everything better. I like the uncertain cold, the permission to freeze myself indefinitely, too; freeze away from movement, freeze away from feeling; Numb stillness is pretty. Movement creates sweat. Movement creates. What am I responsible for, and what

do I merely look at from a distance? From what do I walk away, or up towards?

-XOXO,