Every year around this time, I feel ugly. The glowing tan of summer is wearing off, my sun-streaked hair is coming in a dun brown at my scalp. Fall's preening display has succumbed to a barren brown landscape; puddles freeze over and the rivers develop icy sheens upon which the lingering waterfowl sit with their naked webbed feet, making me wish I were cold-blooded. The novely of breaking out my fall fashions has worn off as I wear the same handful of sweaters over and over again.
We haven't had our first snow yet, and for the most part, it's actually been rather blue-skied and warm here--relatively speaking. Still, the ugliness of the late fall/early winter season gets to me--a sea of Packers gear and blaze orange, dead deer strapped to vehicles, Christmas trees lashed to car roofs somehow incongruent in the snow-free landscape.
But then--but then. I come to accept the quiet and the indoors. I focus on the little things that have been overwhelmed since the bacchanal summer arrived. I get out the music that makes me reflect and dream on the beauty of the world, such my classical Spanish guitar and Latin harp albums. I notice, and appreciate, the interior--the interior of the mind and soul, the interior of living spaces, the interior of nature where many creatures lie dormant under ice and snow. I come to admire the unique pattern in which the steam rises from my coffee cup; I take in the beauty of people's attempts to celebrate the holidays without the rush and spending--the handwritten card, the visit, the late night discussion in a German bar over a warm winter drink, decorating a tree, hanging stockings...and I focus on these things until beauty blossoms from the feelings of ugliness...this is winter's mandala.
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