an ode to winter light
Winter is coming.
Most mornings, I rise before the sun. The long, velvety blanket of night still laid over the sky.
I patter into the murky kitchen, fill a stove-top kettle, ignite the burner, watch the blue flames dance, lick the steel with heat. I dig out matches from a drawer to light candles. I despise the sterile blue LEDs that make my home feel like a laboratory. The candles form cozy pools of illumination around the house, both defying and defining the darkness1. Glowing light piercing through the black morning, I marvel at the delicious contrasts.
Lost in thought and a flickering candle flame, I hear a meow. Then, another.
While the kettle heats, I let Oliver, our tabby, who’s needier than an infant, out the side door. The cold of the morning air is like a splash of water to my face. Oliver races into the yard as soon as the door opens a crack. I step out, barefoot, onto the armor stones. Reach my arms as far above my head as possible, fingers outstretched, the vertebrae in my spine popping and cracking, gasps of relief. Hungering for the clarity of the cold air, I take a deep inhale. Then let it out, breath merging with the sky. Savor the expansive silence. The cogs of capitalism and commerce have not yet begun to whir. My feet begin to numb.
I walk back inside.
Water the lipstick red poinsettias perched on the windowsill. The kettle begins its soft whistle that gradually climbs in pitch. I turn off the flame. Caress three heaping tablespoons of West Coast dark roast coffee into a french press. I sit at our kitchen island, with the french press and the deep-blue mug I bought at a Christmas church bazaar, for $7.50, from an older woman whose daughter got her into pottery to keep busy. It’s heavy and handmade and perfectly imperfect. I crack open my battered leather journal, leaf through the pages. Writing by candlelight, I’m transported to a grainier, grittier time.
I sip my coffee. The mellow heat from the clay mug kisses my cupped hands, warming the stiffness from my fingers. My ego is always quietest in the morning.
This time of year, the days are short and nights are cold. I can feel it in my bones.
Winter is coming.
At dawn, morning light begins to slip in front of the stars. The blanket of night lifts, fading into a featureless gray sheet of sky that looks as if it wanted to snow but can’t quite work up the energy.
I blow all the candles out.
In Scandinavia, I read, candles are an everyday accessory in the winter. Lit early and left to burn through the gray mornings and into the dreary afternoons. Not for their light. But for the warmth and life and saturation they bring into the home.
These days, 5pm feels no different than the dead of night.
Winter is coming.
It’s a grim, transitional time of year.
The dull beauty of autumn passed. The blood red leaves of September wilted into October’s flurry of yellow and ochre and brown. Trees are bony and bare, naked without their fiery fall foliage. The majesty of snow has not yet arrived.
Like the season, I know I can’t go backward, but it doesn’t quite feel like I can move on either.
Autumn is the last burst of vibrancy. The flailing kick, as life rages against the dying of the light2. But now, the earth has heaved its final breath. A slow frosty death settles in. Everything is so lifeless. Monotone. Bland.
It’s up to me to “make my own sunshine,” as my great grandmother would say.
The baton has been passed.
Winter is coming.
As a Canadian, my identity is wrapped up in the robes of winter.
I remember how much I like the cold, and Toronto when it snows, and crisp pale blue skies, and chilly walks lit by the golden glow of Christmas trees in front windows, and coming home to the sensation of warmth flooding in, thawing my frozen face.
I remember how much I like homemade hot chocolate, and how people smile on the subway, and hockey games, and board games, and 1,000 piece puzzles, and thick socks, and thicker blankets, and my favorite fleece I forgot I owned, and ice skates, and curling up in an armchair to read everything I haven’t gotten around to, and gingerbread, and bundling up, and dressing down, and conversations that carry dusk into dawn.
I was raised out in the cold3.
Winter is coming.
This is the slow season.
The world seems to become sleepy and sedated. Settled, perhaps. I tire early, sleep late. I can feel winter’s tug on my mind, my body. The invitation to work less and rest more. To retreat, ruminate, contemplate. Reflect on my year, review my progress. Try to look back, figure out how I got to the spot on my timeline I now stand firmly on.
I wonder, if I attuned to nature’s rhythms, just how seasonal my life could get?
Back home at my desk, I look out the window. Under the gentle and sparkling winter sun, white flakes of snow begin to drift down.
It is December.
And winter is here.
If you liked this, you may enjoy my short piece on my love for lighted windows.
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👋 what i’ve been up to:
I spent the week settling back in at home. Whenever I change locations, I must be mindful of the grooves I carve in the first few weeks, as I’ll spend the rest of the time simply falling into them.
Spotify wrapped highlights: top 0.5% for Noah Kahan, Bach was my 5th favorite artist, I’m supposed to move to Victoria and apparently I’m dark lol (… yeah tell me something i don’t know spotify). What’s yours ?
On Friday, I went to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra performing Tchaikovsky’s original ballet score for The Sleeping Beauty. “Sublime”.
Saturday I’m getting my unrestricted firearms license (for hunting). My long-term goal is to be able to procure my own meat.
✍️ quote i’m pondering:
Writer, photographer and programmer Simon Sarris on his secret to a good morning:
"The secret to waking up is to wake up way earlier than you have to.
When you have 1-2 hours where you can just sit there calmly, drinking coffee, and not be rushed, you feel ten times better.
Later on, you can work on being productive in the morning too, if you please."
❓ question i’m asking:
From American poet Mary Oliver:
Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it life?
📸 photo of the week:
Flying out of Bariloche over a Patagonia mountain range as the sun sets.
No filter…
Thank you for reading!
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You got all my love,
Tommy
inspired by Anne Frank who said, “Look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness.”
inspired by the poem “Do not go gentle into that good night” by Dylan Thomas, who was my grandfather’s favourite poet, with a verse from that poem on his gravestone.
forgive my northern attitude, i was raised on little light (also my #1 listened to song in 2023)
Such beautiful writing. You paint such a vivid picture I can’t help but feeling like I’m living within the imagery you describe. I enjoyed every word of this piece. Thanks for sharing your work brother.
This is like a well-prepared reduction sauce, with the careful and precise essential elements of winter having been boiled down to a rich assault on my senses. You may have just single-handedly reset my system to the proper rhythm of the season.