it’s a season of biding, of putting both hands on the mug, of feeling that frozen-air tightness under your heart lurch in its unfurling when you get back in from the street. it’s a season of genuine swelling gratitude for the guy sprinting through the blizzard from his accord to your door in a t-shirt to make sure you get your pad kra pow okay. i'm tripping over myself to do errands for neighbors and crosstown friends, reckon it’ll keep us both warm. the clash between cold weather bad moods and rebellious deep-heart muddle-through positivity rages austere and endless like the siege of Orléans in coffee shops and grocery checkout lines. it's a stiff and angular season but we're all facing it with wind-chime eyelashes and bright january smiles, and that particular sort of precious optimism that comes from the first sunny frozen day after a week of gray ones.

i'm a bit at war with my own attitude lately — it's strange to find oneself both in a good place and in need of a new heading. i'm at least almost sure the restlessness is an equal and opposite reaction to the obsidian homeward anchor of 11ºF weather forecasts, so i talk on the phone with friends i'm in love with and we thaw ourselves with DIY knit fantasies of travel and home improvement and motorcycles. we're all holding each other up with freely-dispensed “can’t waits” and deep laughs.