sooner or later, one of us must know

It is eight below and the wind is so strong that I feel I can actually use the words, "the wind is howling" and not have it be a complete cliche. We are under a winter wind chill weather advisory for another hour and the wind shakes my window panes and I feel that my room is actually colder than usual because of it.

The landscape of Minnesota winters is difficult now, and though I remember it being difficult as a child, I also remember it being more fun. I used to love shoveling and making tunnels in the large piles of snow that lined our driveway. I remember when we'd have days that school was canceled because of wind chill and we'd make hot chocolate and popcorn and watch movies. My dad would be home from school, we'd play games and do puzzles. I loved those days and tonight, one of the coldest nights that we've had in awhile, I was out and about and eventually decided that I needed to get home. And how as an adult, these kinds of days are not as fun, shoveling is a chore and we don't like to embrace the time that we have at home. In fact, there are days that we fight it - at least I do.

So here I am, thinking rather introspectively about everything as a result of my class and aided by the fact that it is cold out and I have the house to myself. The only sound besides the wind and the cats chasing around the house, is the Writer's Almanac podcast and Mr. Keillor himself reading it. I guess if you have to have background noise and need some company, he's really not a bad person to have around.

And that brings me to my actual point of writing this. My class is called Landscape and Memory and very much is about remembering and making yourself remember things as they relate to the landscape, etc. But I've gotten of on a tangent with that and am thinking about how we choose to not remember things. And how we do that because we repress things that painful. And subsequently, how pain and remembering pain imprisons us in so many ways. We get stuck because of one thing - one small thing that has forever influenced the kind of person we are.

And that interests me. Because sometimes, that builds up and we become difficult for others to read and even difficult for ourselves to understand.

Now it's time for me to hit the hay, since today I joined Lifetime and was a little overzealous with the exercising and I know that tomorrow, I will definitely pay for it.

Hope that you are all staying warm and that the wind, instead of keeping you awake, is lulling you to sleep.

Quote 'o the day:

"Not that I want to teach you to compartmentalize, but it's worked really well for me." -DK, on our first night of class.