Winter Blues

It's almost the middle of February. I'm pretty certain this is the worst month of the year (particularly if you live in Michigan), despite it also being the shortest of all twelve months.

It's not uncommon for folks here in the Midwest to develop a series case of the winter blues. Symptoms include an inability to get out of bed in the morning, a desire to "call it a night" at around 9:30pm each night, and an overall lack of motivation in all aspects of life. Sounds wonderful, huh? I'm trying my best to beat it by significantly increasing my vitamin C intake, trying my best to appreciate the beauty of the season (when it's sunny out, the snow does look quite pretty), and reminding myself that after winter must come spring.

I'm still riding, although not as much as I might like. It certainly does require significantly more effort than usual, and as I've recently moved into a new apartment which is a little closer to downtown I've taken to walking more often. After a fresh coating of snow, the roads in downtown Flint aren't great. Many of them aren't even plowed. A lot of residents don't bother to clear the sidewalks either, so most pedestrians resort to walking in the middle of the road. After a rather heavy snow storm last week, my bike was hibernating inside with me. In my new apartment, my bike lives in the bathroom (as it's so freaking huge). Earlier this week I felt he was looking a little neglected, so I cleaned him up and rode him to work.

The ever increasing pile of snow outside is a pretty perfect metaphor for how I feel this month. I'm in the middle of a rather tedious grant writing process to hopefully secure some funds to develop this play I'm currently working on, which is causing me to seriously neglect some other responsibilities (this blog, for example). However, the biggest weight on my shoulders is my Uncle's illness and the fact that his time on Earth is clearly coming to an end far too soon. My parents and I visited the family in the UK over Christmas, and his treatment seemed to be having an impact (he was diagnosed with lymphoma towards the end of last summer). However, as 2011 began, his condition started to gradually decline to the point now where he's simply being made comfortable.

I won't go into all the details of the situation and how bloody awful it is for my aunt and two young cousins, and of course the rest of my family. My parents flew over again last week in order to be there, and while I'm blessed to have some wonderful new neighbors who are very kind to me and good friends who call to check up on me, sitting inside from the cold and simply waiting for the phone call frankly sucks. When the call finally comes, I'll book my flight to join them all but before then I'm still playing the waiting game.

Even though it's incredibly hard to get out of bed and onto my bike during this winter of our discontent, when I am able to manage it I find even the shortest bike ride becomes an incredibly emotional experience. The blinding light reflecting from the snow and the bitterly cold wind slapping my face is a harsh reminder that I am very much alive and incredibly blessed to be so.

In one of my classes (the one where I am working on this collaborative play with students), we recently listened to a short interview from NPR with the actress & writer Anna Deavere Smith. She has often created work from interviewing a variety of people and then takes great care to capture their unique language and character in what becomes a one-woman performance. In this interview, she began talking about the similarities between two "characters" in her most recent piece on health care in the US, and how they were both able to articulate a similar thought, despite speaking in an incredibly different style and manner. The theme they were discussing was the idea of hope and optimism, and I found this brief interview contained exactly what I needed to hear in order to keep me going through February, and whatever will follow next.

So I'll end today with a short quote from this interview, and hope that I too can go beyond the evidence.

Anna Deavere Smith (as Cornel West):

"Hope and optimism are different. Optimism, you look out the window, you say, it looks pretty good out there. Hope says, it doesn't look good at all. Doesn't look good at all. Evidence doesn't look good at all, but I'm going to go beyond the evidence, create new possibilities based on vision, become contagious to allow people to engage in heroic actions. Always against the odds. No guarantee whatsoever. That's hope."