In the Bleak Midautumn

It is early October. Autumn has come. And I, of course, have been dreaming restlessly - while both awake and asleep - of the coming change of seasons. And while autumn is, indeed, upon us, nowhere in southern Georgia can we sense its presence. Mornings are balmy, evenings warm and calm. The full moon at the end of September was massive and bright, the colour of ripening pumpkins. We receive rain regularly during the week. We are in deep bayou. I even saw a lone wysteria bloom the other day amid a tangle of greenbriar vines and an unkempt mass of azaleas.

I have been playing songs of Christmas, anticipating the coming onslaught of holidays. Christmas songs never cease to delight me, to life me up. They are solemn, they are playful, they are silly. And in spite of the religious sentiment with which they are imbued, I receive their christian foundation like I would any other wishes of good tiding.

Among my favourite Christmas hymns is the poem “In the Bleak Midwinter”, by Christina Rosetti. It was written around 1872 but was not published until well after her death in 1904. I like the first stanza the most. It evokes a sublimely chilly yet stark wintry world:

In the bleak midwinter
Frosty wind made moan
Earth stood hard as iron
Water like a stone
Snow had fallen
Snow on snow
Snow on snow
In the bleak midwinter
Long ago

The Road to Nowhere

The three-year anniversary of my move to the small southern town in which I live recently passed. People have frequently asked me how I ended up in this town. They are particularly puzzled at the fact that I live here once they learn that I left Sydney, Australia, hopped on a plane, and zoomed 14,000 miles across the globe to take up residence here. "Why on earth ...?" they ask, their faces scrunched into a prune of an expression.

Why, indeed.

Let us invoke a well-worn cliché, shall we? The Road of Life. She is long, she is sinuous, she has many surprises in store for us. My road has brought me here. But I don't really regret it. Why? you gasp. Because at the end of that long, sinuous road lay Freedom. Not in some ridiculously nationalistic and oh-so-typically American sense of the word, but in the deeply personal sense. I chose the dregs as a way of getting back to basics, of being myself again. Ah, sweet freedom.

I have celebrated many firsts since my arrival here. Recently I purchased my first computer. I also got my first cellular phone. Last year I paid for my own vacation completely by myself for the first time in my life.

There seems to be a little pattern emerging: this freedom of which I spoke seems to be a financial one, doesn't it? But it's more than that. It's the freedom to be myself at any moment, without apology, without self-consciousness, without remorse. I like who I am becoming, the me that I am re-discovering. And doing this all on my own, with no friends near, has been difficult, but well worth it.