between the rock and the cold, cold sea

The Royal Canal is frozen. Solid.

This is my 0.O face, people.



New Square, Trinity College Dublin.

College is white, and covered in frozen bits. Slippery frozen bits, where the snow has melted just enough to puddle and freeze again. I nearly landed on my arse three times walking from the gate to the library, and once only my fingers kept it from happening in an embarrassing splay-footed manner.

To those of you for whom many centimetres of snow is an expected annual occurence, no doubt this is small potatoes. Me, I'm still in utter shock. What happened to my country? Who put this white blanket over everything? Why isn't it raining?

There is frozen precipitation coming from the sky, and snow from Wednesday still on the skylights of the library. I'm boggled, dear friends. Abso-fricking-lutely boggled.

I don't normally live in Winter. This is still too weird for me.

400 words on the thesis. If I get another 350 tonight, I'll have 8K, which means I could have a draft in as little as eight more days. *is optimist*

It's been snowing here. Big fluffy sticky flakes. There is snow on the cricket field. And I was crazy enough to come into college today: well, I guess I won't be doing any window-shopping after I go to the gym, that's for sure.

Listen, guys, do you think Cananda would be so kind as to take back its weather now, please? I'm starting to worry about fluctuations in the Gulf Stream and the possibility that this is only the harbinger of worse things to come.

Right, enough whining about the weather. Time to go get a chocolate bar to stave off starvation, go to the gym (no climbing, alas, since I'll probably be too early to actually see people there) and flee home in time to get a lift up from the station.

I'm at 7K on the thesis draft, out of a 12K minimum. It's still looking doable.

I'm also coming down with something, curse it, but I suppose that's unavoidable about this time of year. Although we seem to living in an alternate universe where Ireland gets extended Actual Winter: going on for more than two weeks of freezingness, and forecast says it'll last at least another week. This seems unnatural to me. Also, despite the snow, the novelty value has quite worn off.

But I suppose there are worse ways to start the year than with snow. 2010, people. I'm still a little amazed I've lived this long.

Tomorrow, I'll see if I have enough courage to go outside. It'd be nice to go to town to climb, but I think I need another of these Polartec fleecy jumpers, because Normal Weather seems to have gone abroad for the holidays.

There is snow here. Fluffy, white, powderish snow covering everything, under a bright sun. The temperature is a balmy -1 Celsius, and the windchill may get up to -6, and we may have more snow tomorrow.

I'm really starting to wonder what happened to the (recent) normal December-January weather of lashing rain and howling wind and days and days of nothing but grey cloud overhead. It hasn't frozen - and lasted - in December since I was what, fourteen? And our snow normally comes in late January or February here in the lowlands, if it comes at all.

Well, at least 2009 probably won't be the warmest year on record now, at least.

I'm going to get my camera, my boots, a scarf from the seldom-used pile in the cupboard, my jacket, and possibly a second pair of trousers, and go down the beach to see what the world looks like from there. Snow! It's weird, and strangely cool.

Happy New Year, guys. Love you all.

I swear, sometimes I think this thesis is going to drive me mad.

First it was -- and still is -- the problem of half the scholarship being in French. Then there was -- and still is -- the nagging frustration of having so many pieces, so few of which slot together neatly. And now, of course, is the frustration of having so far yet to go to construct a theoretical framework into which to fit the pieces which I do have.

And I can finish this draft in twelve or fourteen days. There'll be a goddamned lot of [cite] in there, but I can push it up over the 12K mark before January 18th. That's the goal. Assuming I can get my hands on Grant's Hellenistic Religion and Kockelmann's Praising the Goddess at some point shortly thereafter, I might actually have a thesis.

---

But I'm not going to go mad. Despite the fact that this is heading on for the third week of actual winter, and it's too cold to spend any time outdoors, and I want my temperate rain back so I can go for a proper run. Because the world is full of wonder. Even when it's bloody cold.

"The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep."

This is what the best parts of my town look like.

It's not much, but sometimes it's all mine.

We are fragile, stubborn, transient things.

---

I walked up the north strand this afternoon. A chill pale light suffusing everything, from the tattered clouds to the steel sea, misting into the distances. The inrushing waves foamed very white as they spent themselves on the damp sand, and underfoot, ice smeared the rocks, making them cold and treacherous. The smell of seaweed and brine and the fishy smell of the harbour hung on the still air.

I forget, you know, that we live overlaid on history, walking on the bones of our past. The hulk of the Napoleonic Martello tower on the headland, black in the fading light, the fields that have been fields far longer than anyone recalls, the stoney reconstructed edifice of Bremore Castle, scaffolded beyond the playing fields, the stone cairn near the tumbled seventeenth-century pier, in the lee of Bremore Head, the headland where the pair of 5000 year old passage tombs mound themselves in grassy humps, and stare eternally north over the sea. The quality of silence, broken only by the crunch of boots on icy shingle.

But we do. The past is beside us always, a heartbeat, a corner, a sidelong glance away.

---

The government wants to build a port on that land, an unnecessary development if ever there was one, and so fields and sea and cairn and pier may themselves all fall to history, swallowed by the future. And so the future overlays the past, layer after layer: wiping away, burying, uncovering, reusing, treasuring, destroying.

What use is the past, if we cannot touch it? What value has the past to the future? Do mere objects, memories, footprints of the nameless, voiceless, dead: do they have worth, in and of themselves?

I believe they do, but I'm a historian by preference. I'm prejudiced that way.

---

The fire's lighting in the hearth, the cat's sleeping on the couch, and I've done work on my thesis for virtue's sake. Tonight it will freeze again, Perhaps tomorrow I'll wander into town, browse teas and books, contemplate the heart of winter and how very good it is to be able to be inside, and warm.

The sun came back with a vengeance, as I emerged to the bright shining light (the one I hadn't seen for at least a week) this morning.

Weather was perfect, mild and bright and smelling clean, and I got a bucketload of photocopying done in the library. (The strange-smelling bush outside the Arts Block thinks it's spring, for the fourth time this year.) Optimism, I have it. Right now I'm sitting in a computer room snacking on a muffin in preparation for going climbing. Perhaps there will be someone there to belay: the excitement of new routes brought climbers by the dozen in August, so I'm hoping.

I should go do that now. Perhaps I can get in a short jog after.

(Sunshine makes me an optimist. I like it.)

Shortest day. Longest night. Happy Solstice, and roll on spring.

The weather is mild, though the daylight was fleeting: 11 degrees Celsius, rain, and lowering grey clouds that lifted just enough when I went out for a walk on the beach earlier to do the scudding storm-cloud thing and show a tiny strip of blue.

It was a long walk. I managed five minutes worth of jogging, despite the wheeze in my throat and this tired cough. I don't get out enough, nor spend enough time under the sky. It improves many things, including my mood.

Dinner was melt-in-the-mouth ham, mash potatoes and carrots and parsnips. I have a coal fire and a stoned cat, if he'll ever come back inside. Now I must dig motivation out from somewhere and file college paper, if I want to get on track, ever.