The Cleansing and the Cold

I have been meaning to write for a week now. It kept getting put off somehow, between the below-freezing weather keeping me wrapped in my bedsheets and the slight depression that comes with becoming entirely nocturnal. Honestly, I rarely see the sun most days. It has gotten to the point where I am barely functioning, every part of me screaming out that I need to put everything else aside and simply write. It is, after all, the only way I stay sane. And it's cheaper than therapy.
First things first. The computer has returned from the altar of the gods that is Apple Technical Support, and not only did they manage to fix the seemingly dead-time-to-go-to-the-scrapheap logic board, they did so without needing to erase my hard drive. I had been worried and upset about losing all my files, as the crash was so bad that I'd been unable to back anything up prior to sending it off to them. I was certain it was all lost: the music, the writing, the pictures. Gone. Tears were shed, and I prepared myself mentally and emotionally to move on and just let go of all that history and memory.
Which is amusing in a way, as it directly ties into the themes of my novel. The question of memory and dream. What would you be without your past? Without your memories? I felt I was about to find out, in some small way. Being that I have a terrible memory, sometimes pictures and songs are the only things that keep my past, whether it's true or not, alive.
But it was not to be. The Apple Gods preserved it all, and I have again been given a chance to change my foolish ways (read: buy an external hard drive and back the motherfucker up. Yes sir, on it). When I saw that it was all there, I simply stared, slack-jawed, for a moment, and then proceeded to put on the New Pornographer's Twin Cinema at full volume and dance flailingly around the room with joyous abandon.
I have not looked at or touched the novel in a few weeks. It is good to get some distance from it, but I am getting anxious about the whole rewrite process. The month of November was such a flurry of producivity that I feel almost as if I'm going into some sort of withdrawal now, doing nothing. I get up and make myself cup after cup of tea and check my email and go to work and go home and drink wine and get myself off and then sleep. The days blur together.
Thank (whom? I suppose it'd be inappropriate to thank God, being an atheist. How about Amanda Palmer? Yes, that'll do just fine).
Thank Amanda Palmer that I am a Cancer and have the ability to pull myself out of depression with relative ease. If I were a superhero, it would be my special power. To see with total clarity what needs to be done to restore hope and joy and sanity, and then to set about doing it. I almost always know what to do. Perhaps it's my instincts, perhaps intuition. But I like to think it's really my good ol' Crab Sense kicking in.
There will be more writing, for starters. Still letting the novel cool off, but in the meantime I will work on new projects. I am also writing songs and playing guitar every day. The one difficulty with that is that it is usually around 50 degrees in my house, and cold fingers combined with steel strings = pain pain pain. Damn my lost calluses. I'll get them back eventually.
I will start to meditate again and I will keep riding my bicycle and start to eat more than just chocolate and cheese, as much as I enjoy being able to make the Ween reference. It's just not healthy. I will go out for drinks with friends more often. During November I saw no one. Always writing the book. I turned down invites and became quite the recluse. This will now change.
And behind everything else is the girl. The girl from the story. The girl I dream about. She is out there, behind every thought and probably underneath every creative impulse I have these days. Who knows what will happen? Right now there is hardly anything to speak of between us. But I can feel the potential. I can feel that if I just have patience, and keep living and playing and writing and dancing at Embers on Wednesday nights, that things might just work out. Don't ask me why or how. I just feel it.
Winter is here. The season of forgetting and of cleansing. We pile on layers, like animals growing extra coats of skin. The cold is brutal and utterly beautiful as well. It reminds us that we still feel, for better or for worse.
Of course, I still want to lock myself into my bed with an unending supply of soup and grilled cheese sandwiches and watch Babylon 5 and Eddie Izzard concert films until it warms up a bit. Until spring wakes from its bed of leaves and insects and saunters down to put an end to all the ice.

Until then, if you're still down, you can always listen to this song.