Shunning Reality.

My coworkers are counting down the hours till they get to leave—or, if they’re my boss, they’ve already left, who am I kidding—but I’m still in my pajamas with a big mug of tea, staring out comfortably into the picture windows, watching the delicately falling snow.  The vacation is well deserved, but the closer I get to reality’s impending return, the more depressed I feel.  Today is Thursday.  I leave here on Saturday, and it’s back to the ho-hum, lonely existence of everyday working on Monday.  It makes me feel a bit sick, really. 

 

I wish I could cover my life with the snow, rain down whiteness on my struggles and imperfections.  Rocks and brambles are the peaks and valleys of a temporal, perfect landscape. The trees that in the spring looked scraggly and perhaps not quite complete are, blanketed in their winter niceties, pillars of nobility.

 

But even here, the snow will melt; the sun will again scorch the landscape, and the river will bubble once more.  This idyll will not last, but it will come again. 

 

There’s something really tempting about the snow, but it’s kind of like a mondo-sized chocolate cheesecake.  It’s great to eat two, even three days in a row.  But after that? After that, you’ve just got to move on.  Enjoy it while it’s here, but be ready to go back to normal. Normal sometimes sucks.  It’s bran cereal and whole-grain bread and plenty of raw vegetables.  But you do it for the cheesecake days, which can’t last forever—but they sure deserve to be enjoyed.