Off the Cuff / My Other Journal

Arctic Vortex

          Most of the country is under the influence of an Arctic Vortex. The diagram of it looks like a funnel with the open end at the North Pole and the tube part of the funnel upon the Midwest and NorthEast to Southeast of the USA, which means the cold air is being poured on top of us.

          With flights canceled, schools closed, hospitals treating the people for hypothermia and frostbite, and snow piles up to two feet in places, it is a good time to catch up on one’s reading, under a blanket in front of the fireplace. Of course, I’m dreaming of this, dreaming of the times when I was much younger. Where I am now, way down in South Florida, daytime temperature, despite the bright sun and blue skies, has dipped to 58 and nighttime temps to the 40s. This is the weather I like, not that hot as it usually is. I know it won’t stay like this more than a day, but I'm grateful for this tiny taste of coolness.

          Even though I love the weather here today, I’m dressed just as I would have been, as if I were living in the Northeast, courtesy of my blood thinning medication that makes me feel the chill more than anyone else. Chill or no chill, I still dream of my old home under the snow in moonlight with its tall oaks and two acres of wild backyard. I still feel like the times when I was young and didn’t mind shoveling the snow at all.

          In fact, I didn’t mind the snow one bit…then. Thinking about it, the whole winter memories of once upon a time, "has given my heart a change of mood," as Robert Frost wrote:

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

          I take what I can get from life. I take the sun and the wind and whatever else comes my way, as existence itself is fleeting and free. Anything that I deem to go wrong is nothing but a plot twist in my life. The plot twists of life as an idea is not mine, but I read it online and loved it. Maybe it is the plot twists like the arctic vortex that give our life on earth its zest.

“Blow, blow, thou winter wind.
Thou art not so unkind
As man’s ingratitude;
Thy tooth is not so keen,
Because thou art not seen,
Although thy breath be rude.
Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly:
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:
Then, heigh-ho, the holly!
This life is most jolly.
Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
That dost not bite so nigh
As benefits forgot:
Though thou the waters warp,
Thy sting is not so sharp
As friend remember’d not.
Heigh-ho! sing…”

William Shakespeare
From As You Like It--Act II, Scene 7