White, White Winter

I'm not sure I can remember a winter so snowy. For months there has been a constant veil of white on the ground, and storms that come in waves like the sea, misting the air and dusting the trees with powdered sugar. It seems like there are always snowflakes dancing in the windows. Really the most wonderful year for a winter lover.

It is so cold that I have spent the last three days at home, keeping warm with hot chocolate and my crocheted shawl, reading Angela Carter and watching Legend. What have you darlings been up to?

Photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/casienserio/4253873034/in/faves-30495408@N04/

And Winter Came

It is unmistakeably winter here

Everything is white. The sky is white, the ground is white, the air is white. All is white except the bare brown branches.

The river behind my house is covered with snow, the overhanging branches glancing over the frozen surface. The woods seem naked and empty without leaves to hide behind. The trees grow blurry with strange winter mist, melting together in the distance. It is so cold now that it hurts to go outside. The fields are empty, choppy stocks of grass rising from the snow. I used to look out over those fields as a child and imagine stories and figures there.

Sometimes I still do.



I know I have been terribly absent here in the last few months and I am sorry. I will try to do better!

The Frozen World

I dream of winter. Winter like the winters in fairy tales, where the world is a blanket of white, when the branches are like roses dipped in glass, the windows etched with icy lace, when all sound is muffled in the utter stillness, and in the silence the senses grow heightened to a razor's edge.




Winters that bring thoughts of wrought iron walls hiding snow-white gardens, of glass coffins and endless forests, of nights where the wind howls like wild beasts and the windows rattle in the cold. Winters that whisper of secrets beneath the whiteness, waiting for the ice to thaw and the snow to melt and reveal them to our eyes.




Wintry Inspiration

Books

Clockwork by Phillip Pullman
The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman
The Veil of Snows by Mark Hellprin and Chris Van Allsburg




Music

Bjork - "Aurora"
Bjork - "Frosti"
Emilie Simon - "The Frozen World"
Enya - "Athair ar Meamh"
Enya - "Lothlorien"
Vanessa Carlton - "Half a Week Before the Winter"




Movies

Legend
"Lithium" (Evanescence music video)
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship