Winter Storms, Death and Ends

This winter has come with it its first wind storm; albeit a trying, depressing time of year for any living thing it remains one of my favorite times. There is no solace in it, it is not relenting and does not care whether you continue to exist or tip over the knife-edge of homeostasis to die and become persisted by those more fit or of contrapositive luck.

The cold and wind, the rain, they provide no satisfaction. This is not what leads to my appreciation, and indeed for many years I could not appreciate anything they provide. I have had the opportunity to experience wind driven rain while camping on a bed of snow, to know that I faced death in the absence of my ability to find more secure dry shelter. I have experienced what is uncompromisingly romantic about listening to the rain beat down on the roof of a tent, to discover the shelter and warmth it provided and awake my nesting instinct. In a torpor of intellect I have abandoned this to emerge in the angry, savage, world to spend hours building a fire and finally with blue fingers and lips, find warmth; and then the sound of raindrops hitting the trees, the groundcover, then to note them sizzling on the hot fire, joined by the crackling and scents of burning hardwood. Fire allowed me to experience this sensation with the acuity that can only be known to an animal if their basic needs are cared for thus sheltering them from their fomenting anguish of pain, fear, and despair so that their senses can once again focus on the world they are in, aghast with the visage of triumph.

I had the error to think as most do that somehow the trial, its abject tribulation and misery experienced; in order to provide a basic need, a basic physical necessity, somehow made it better than if I had satiated the physical desire that is elicited in the necessity’s absence in a less trying manner. In the years subsequent to my experiences I have come to the express realization of the falsehood of this idea and come to the conclusion that an endorphin released is indeed an endorphin released regardless of how.

Disregard this statement out of hand in any normal context, for the chemicals released when staring into the eyes of a lover may be the same as those elicited by the attack of a mountain lion upon oneself, these however will never feel the same and they in human context can never equate. Simply there is nothing in the sweat of the palms, the racing of the heart, the tamping of breadth of perspective of reality, the drive inwards towards abject profound selfishness absolutely required by uncontrollable physical circumstance.

Albeit selfishness without turpitude there is still nothing in this, and there never can be, not for the social being. For feeling without context, emotion without place in time and space is worthless. Described by death it is not the cat or the cold bringing it, it’s not the loss of self, it is the loss of self with within others. It is the perspective, the knowledge of others continuing existence beyond oneself; providing the context of their own understanding of one’s demise. The intellectual understanding of the loss of information that existed in the flesh and blood that worked soo hard to retain itself finally losing to the inexorable march to entropy. The tiny bit of information in the cold desolate landscape no longer extant to the living as their selfishness narrows their perception so they can see only the information that has been lost, the information which moments ago could provide comfort against all.

The information lives on in the knowledge of the original carried by the surviving but this meta information is poor remit to the original; while it can provide countless things, abject happiness, reminisce comfort, depression, even death, it can never again provide even the smallest modicum of solace the original could easily bear. And once those harboring this meta information too are lost to the cold, only writers and poets search for meaning, which they can only provide through the solicitation of selfishness.

And the ability for this selfishness to allow one to re-open their social aperture, to regain human footing notwithstanding it is worthless too, for without those who have experienced the original even this becomes drab, tattered and worthless in compare. It may for a few moments seem otherwise but it is a mere reflection of one’s temporal and physical position with respect to others. Of intrinsic value for sure but of no reason should it have been borne of that which it was.

A winter storm reminds me of this with its castigatory refrain, played by a learned season it should be experienced shared and in lonesome, with vigor and impossible despair. In this context I find hopelessness in the most joyful moments of my life and great hope in the most desperate and this provides comfort and emotional perch. I thank winter with its fury and relent for teaching me it is not the journey to the end, not in human endeavors, it is the end itself and merely that.