More Weather

So, we had a sunny day that wasn't freezing cold.  It started out cloudy, following rain last night and I did pack around my big golf umbrella feeling a little bit like a dork because I didn't know who to believe.  To enhance the dork chic of my dear little brolly, as I like to call it, is a good winding of grey duct tape on the handle, which nearly got broken off when I accidentally had to force the door open that it had fallen against.  I used the last of my duct tape and had to purchase a new roll.  Duct tap, as I mentioned to the smiling checkout clerk in the Kerrisdale London Drugs, is one of the great symbols of Western civilization.  In a future blog post I might write about the other great symbols.

As I walked over the Cambie Street Bridge on my way to work this morning the sun showed through the clouds and the water below became a pale limpid turquoise.  I have noticed more snowdrops coming into bloom.  I don't care if it is mid January.  Spring is on its way. 

It has remained sunny all day today.  I counsel newcomers from warm countries to embrace the cold weather here and to spend as much time outside during daylight hours as possible.  There are a couple of reasons for this.  One is vitamin D absorption,  I don't know if it is possible during winter months but if you are getting a lot of winter sun on your face and the top of your head (easy for me, being quite bald) it could make a difference.  Oops, my apologies, Gentle Reader.  I just consulted with Uncle Google and there is an article in the Toronto Sun that states that after October the angle of the sun is such that the body does not manufacture vitamin anything until the spring time.  Buy supplements, or drink fortified milk.  Lots of it.  I hope your conscience is okay.  Those poor cows are not treated at all nice but sometimes just in order to get by one has to hang one's conscience out to dry.  The rhyming is unintentional by the way.

The other reason is that we need daylight, lots of it, if we want to do well and flourish as functioning human beings.  We are day critters, Gentle Reader.  Never mind that the weather is shitty.  It's daylight.  Go outside and play.  That lovely natural daylight will stimulate our dear little brains to produce those lovely happy hormones that keep us light footed and buoyant and all the less likely to practice our swan dive when walking over the bridge.  Leave your personal listening device at home (yes, Gentle Reader, I did just write that!) and listen to your environment.  What do you hear? Besides traffic and blasting horns and police and ambulance sirens, jack hammers, and other construction racket.  And the chatter of idiots and children screeching till your nose bleeds and your brains begin to flow from your ears.  Okay, step away from the traffic.  Don't play in it and please hie thee to a quiet side street.  Now listen.  What do you hear?  I think it's called a bird.  Yes, there's a crow, and over there a Steller's Jay https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0S3NhhV1js
How about a red shafted flicker: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQmlp4jzcyg.  Even in January the house finches begin to sing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWMYCrA4OIs.  You will see tree trunks festooned in gleaming green moss and adorned with licorice ferns.  The ferns by the way are edible and were a favourite vegetable harvested for millennia by our aboriginal forbears.  They are quite delicious by the way.  I have tried them. The naked branches of the trees will be shining with hues of brilliant copper, silver, platinum and gold.

Winter can be a time of beauty, though unlike the vulgar displays of summer and spring (my favourite season by the way), it is a subtle and hidden beauty and you have to seek it out, look for it, watch and listen for it.  Soon you will not have to try so hard, you will develop the senses to summon immediately forth this gentle beauty of winter.  You will have no regrets Gentle Reader.