The International Writers Magazine: Seasons Archive

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A Chill to Make You Think • M. Blake The cold comes as the leaves turn and drop, the seasonal change. This kind of cold is expected. This isn’t the same cold that can show up any day of the year, inside, the troubling chill, a shiver inducing hint of passing time, all things temporary, a passing on and away. Perhaps foreshadowing the cold grave.

Everything freezes in these ice pick sharp moments, everything as clear as that glowing winter horizon at sunset. A sudden sense of mortality brushes your throat with a finger and you swallow hard, your eyes wide and powerless under nature’s pull.

It comes even in the warm and hot seasons, and is no respecter of latitudes. It can go up and down your spine on a baking beach, or shadow your face as you pour summer sweat on a mountain top. It can slap you in the puss when you see a half rotted carcass on the trail or roadside.

You, like everyone, strive for a basic and essential warmth, clawing your way up the broad and impersonal sides of life, scratching (and perhaps a little desperately) at your days, another feisty animal turning the trick in the conscious hours, pushing that cold clarity away with routine activity. You might even thrill to what is, every day, a potential “victory” – of sorts. It is the striving, and the possible results, that keep you going, sometimes to the point of basking in the glow of your achievements. Until those times when, like a boxer with your gloves raised (a triumph of the human spirit), unsuspecting, a cold, direct, undeniable blow takes your wind away, bringing a cold sweat, and with relief, you gratefully accept the fact that you have only been staggered, temporarily, that you can still recover (reach deep for yet another flurry), and that you haven’t been taken out – yet.

© M. Blake December 2006 

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