Crossing over into December
I sit here writing in front of a large window. It’s snowing, pretty profusely. On a clear day, I can see the Shuswap lake from where I am. Though today, I cannot tell sky from fog from lake. It’s all white out there.
It’s been a full week since we moved back here, this little town which feels like where it all first started for us when we first arrived here in BC.
Yesterday, we took a little trip out to the nearest moderately-sized town some twenty minutes drive away. A little bummed out, as usual, about the non-blueness of the skies. It was wet and dreary and when we finally found a place to park we also found an outdoor market. A market! A market is a delightful way to make everything right, it seems. There was good ol Santa Claus, a fair amount of people milling about, a variety of stalls peddling fresh farm produce, cheese, coffee, crafty things like bags and knits and candles and soaps. Well you get the picture. Suddenly a change of scene, a lifting of moods. The sky’s as grey and the brownish slush still lines the curbs, but the spirits now lifted feels receptive and porous to receiving goodness. Meandering through an outdoor market is one of my favourite things to do. We left with a modest slab of extra-aged gouda cheese tucked away carefully in my coat pocket (:
We popped into our usual cafe. Well, usual in the sense that every time we want coffee in this town, that’s where we head. It’s been at least a year since I set foot in here. We found a seat all the way at the back and kind of drifted in an out of conversation and people-watching. I’ve got a good view of the whole space. The warm lights, soft conversation. Snow falling outside and christmas tunes inside. It felt real good in the moment. I don’t know what to say except that I felt really good, contented, at peace, at ease.
I remember how growing up, films or scenes of wintry days would come on on the television around Christmas day, so in that sense I do have a certain imagination of what this time of the year in some parts of the world are like, despite sitting in the sweltering heat and heavy humidity of a tropical southeast asian island. That moment — that scene in the cafe and how I was feeling got me thinking: this is what Christmas feels like.
It’s a great feeling, seeing and being around people when we’ve been inside the whole week eh? J said. This — moderating our distance with social things, beings, formalities — is a common theme that often comes up in conversation.
I guess that’s true. And I half-guessed and half-pushed my own theory, that maybe, just maybe, we are meant to be around humans and when we are, these are opportunities to (re)calibrate and tune our frequencies. Tune towards what and away from what? Don’t know. I’m not close to chasing answers down on this one, though i’ll hold that theory loosely in the meantime.