Comfort and cold
Bright winter days, no rain. Time to get outside, time to cocoon indoors.
Check in
Remember
What is within you defines you. The political news may be terrifying, day after day, but nothing should shake our innermost, authentic essence. We are as powerful as we believe we are. We are more powerful than we know.
I used to be confident that truth and justice would prevail, but in today’s climate it’s hard to maintain that view. Yet I can’t step back from wanting these things. I vow to work in my tiny way to foster them.
The time is now
The time is now More than it’s ever been, The hand of justice Firm on my shoulder. Time won’t run backward; I have to face now. Put on my game face And show up.
Winter tracery
On one of my forays, I took a photo of a bicycle rack. I was trying to capture the size of the bike rack, but the Universe instead gave me oblique lines and a celebration of the sun a month after the solstice.
Brrr. Not.
It’s been cold in Portland this week, but cold is relative. Compared with the center of the country, an overnight temperature of 27 F. is not particularly frigid. It’s just cold enough for ice to pose a hazard for the early morning commute.
Except, there is no ice. It hasn’t rained in the last couple of weeks, and no rain is forecast for at least another week out.
Lack of winter rain can be a big problem in a climate like Western Oregon’s, where most of the year’s moisture falls in the winter months. We could be in for a drought.
What’s cold for you?
When I lived in International Falls many decades ago, children didn’t have to go to school if the outside temperature was 20 below.
In today’s Portland, I’ve been venturing out in my power chair on days when the weather is a balmy 30 F. It doesn’t seem cold at all because the sun is bright and there is no wind.
Indoors
During the night, I set the furnace to come on when the temperature dips to 64. For some folks, that’s a high number.
In the 1970s, during a fuel shortage, Jimmy Carter’s administration urged homeowners to keep the thermostat at 65 in the day and 55 at night. Few people do that, although the woman who Substacks as Dish Kitty and lives in Minnesota likes to keep the temperature at 64 and bundle up. More power to her. If you are as sedentary as I, it takes a LOT of bundling up to be comfortable in the mid-60s.
Temperature is relative
Robert refuses to go by the thermostat numbers, insisting that they depend on the time of day, the humidity, etc. He adjusts the heat upstairs, where he hangs out, according to how he feels. Often that is warmer than I keep my space downstairs.
I suspect that when I was a child in Minnesota, the heat in our house, with its inadequate insulation and single-paned windows, probably crept near 80. Thermostats were not very accurate then, so it’s hard to say. Mom was always scolding us to turn down the heat, but she liked it warm, too.
Stop fighting the cold
Somewhere in my 40s or so, I stopped fighting the cold when I went outside. I began to accept it. And once I decided to do that, I wasn’t cold. My coat is adequate. I have a wonderful thick scarf knitted by a friend. I have a wonderful thick hat I knit myself.
Bring on the cold!
Winter sonnet
I don’t know what the title of this poem means. It came to me that way.
Daisies in winter
I see the pavement, sparkling in the rain. Dark branches drip, the crows are huddled fast. Fat drops, light mist, their falling a refrain, A sweet reminder that the best things last. Oh, yes, we humbly set out on the search For why the rain, it raineth every day. Our tears, our wretched trials as we lurch Toward that last godly invoice we must pay. Our sins are numbered on that testament, Many as raindrops, like snow they melt away. Our goodness counts—why should it? In ascent, We hope for balance. Give us peace, we pray. Our hopes mount up, our fears chase them away. We can’t know fate. Let raindrops have their play.
Comfort
I continue to be fascinated with the idea of comfort. Two years ago, I wrote about how I admired a couple based on their 1996 wedding write-up in the New York Times. Having decided that comfort was overrated, the couple, Christopher Robbins and Mel Schneeberger, went in search of adventures, comfort be damned.
In a followup article a decade later, the Times noted:
Their idea of a great vacation was to be dropped off by a pilot in the backcountry of Alaska and picked up three weeks later. “I am not at all interested in being comfortable,” Ms. Schneeberger said at the time. “I always want to think, what's next? When you're comfortable, I think you stop living life with velocity.”
Twenty-nine years later
Mel initially kept her maiden name of Schneeberger, and worked as a lawyer. Later, she assumed her husband’s name, Robbins, and became a motivational speaker.
Mel’s come full circle on the subject of comfort: From not being interested in comfort, she’s recorded a podcast about . . . comfort. It’s Episode 222, the one called “How to Reset Your Mind for Calm & Control” at the Mel Robbins Podcast.
From the description:
Based in science, Mel will explain how everyday comforts—whether it’s your favorite cozy blanket or your go-to spot on the couch—can actually make you more resilient and help you break through self-sabotage, fear, and resistance.
I reached out to melrobbins.com to comment on Mel’s change in attitude.
“Isn’t it funny how life changes us over time?” her publicist wrote back, “We tend to make more room for balance as we get older, though a part of Mel will always love moving with velocity.”
She’s right. We grow up, we change. Comfort creeps in.
The joy of comfort
I like being comfortable. I like being warm. I like relaxing in my recliner with a flannel-backed quilt tucked around me.
The thing about comfort, though, is that it is too blessed appealing. It’s easy to wear your groove into a rut, overweighted with comfort food, comfort reading (cozy mysteries, no big words), comfort TV.
Enjoy your comfort, but know you need to snap out of it once in a while, to regain your equanimity and remind yourself to strive.
Comfort and creativity
Always remember that good writing does not come from a place of comfort. You have to be scratching itches, to be thinking around corners, to be anticipating the oblique concepts that smash into your straightforward prose.
Good writing is never predictable. You can’t fall into a comfortable rut of adjective-subject-verb. Your mind must be alive to new connections, random thoughts, wordwork and wordplay.
You are in luck, though. One thing about writing from a fresh angle is that you are released from dullness. Your work bristles with new thoughts, images and metaphors. It’s fun to write when you give up being comfortable.
Cold comfort
When my bathroom was updated to accommodate my disability, the plumbers installed a faucet with a handle that controls water temperature. If I take a Navy shower, turning the water on and off as I lather and rinse, I can get the original temperature back without fiddling with the knob. The plumbers calibrated the temperature so that the cold setting was merely tepid. I made them reset the lever to “icy cold” at the far end of its range.
I turn the handle to icy cold at the end of each shower. It’s a shock, and then it’s a revelation. I don’t stay under the cold long. I emerge refreshed and rosy.
A cold shower is a difficult frog to swallow, and it took me years to work up the courage to try it. But once I did, it became a ritual.
Every time I shower I tell myself I don’t have to rinse in cold water. But then I do it anyway. And I am glad I did. Maybe you should try it sometime?
Shocking
Every shower ends this way Cold water on my hair, My shoulders, knees, my butt and back, No skin is spared the spray. Cold water has a strange effect, Not really what you fear, The cold is like a pulsing heat That makes the world come clear.
Writing elsewhere
A creative prompt I wrote about the concept of “rigid” is live at Juke. I think you will enjoy it. It’s short.
Checkout
Winter sun
I captured this image on a journey through a sunny winter landscape. Even though it was close to noon, the slanting winter sun cast an alpenglow on one wing of a house.
Yes, we have some bananas
Within the space of 10 minutes, I came upon two spent banana peels. One was atop a fire hydrant and the other nestled in a supermarket basket. Substack is being difficult; it cut off the top of the banana on the hydrant. But the hydrant has its own charm, even without the banana peel.
And one more . . .
Bad. Dog. Owner.
Someone left this little bag of doggie doo and a tissue on top of a wall for someone else to pick up. What a shitty thing to do.
—Fran
—30—
Until next week
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I like the idea of alpenglow in the winter sun. I have tried it and no, I am still not going to end my showers cold. Lovely post and I enjoyed the reflections on comfort.
I love your meandering creative attentive mind, Fran, and all your reflections here on comfort. I do not like winter anymore after living in warmer climates for much of the past 17 years, first on the island of Malta in the Mediterranean for three years than in Florida (with a brief spell in Maryland between those places). Now that I am off to Barcelona, winter might be a bit cooler than Florida but still not like the New York winters of my childhood or the bitterly cold, dark Swedish winters I endured in the 22 years I lived there (Sweden has many charms; its long dark winters are not one of them).
Although there is a great Swedish idiom you would appreciate: Det finns inget dåligt väder, bara dåliga kläder! Translation: There’s no bad weather, only bad clothing.
I appreciated your poetry, the inclusion of the little story of Mel Robbins and the idea of "living with velocity," (great phrase) and especially the section on writers and comfort. There is much here in this post to lend comfort!