I asked myself, where’s the magic in it? The greyness of Ontario’s winter with dirty salt drenched snow, and the feeling that everything is broken; we are prisoners. But, is it merely a mindset like the spiritual gurus tell me in their optimistic Instagram posts? Can I change the way I see it?
Suppose the cloud covered sky, in its magnificent desolation, is as pale as a fresh snowfall and the haze breathes a veil to shield the distant trees in a weighted sigh, and the tired slush that lines the shoulders wears a gown of virgin pearls, their luster yet to be uncovered.
And is drinking champagne at 2pm a bad thing, or a gateway drug to poetic visions?
What about the wrongly condemned prisoner? I wonder if he or she becomes unsure of their innocence while waiting for their conviction to be overturned; the truth after all, is a strangely tentative thread. If all the evidence led them to prison, do they ever wonder if they actually committed the crime in question and do they grapple with their own verity? Is the truth malleable? And how much are we convinced of our own thoughts?
And prisoners in general (not the quarantined ones of 2020/21), but the ones that find themselves, thanks to various poor choices, incarcerated in orange. What makes some pick up a vocation, a book, a dream, and others a myriad of tattoos and the skill of crafting shives? Perhaps it is what they choose to see.
For someone like me, struggling with loss at this time, what I look at during the day shapes and molds everything from my energy, to my mood, and my interactions with others. Memories become a child’s mobile that turns in front of me, constantly shifting in the breeze of emotion. Switching left, then right to show me each angle of what has departed, what I have lost. Therefore, my focus is what I know, and no amount of intellect can change that image.
So, I am following the advice of the gurus and the gentle souls that guide me to a different plateau. I am learning French, and I study each morning, even though there are days when I miss most of the lesson. I am reading the classics, even though the mobile of loss often catches my eye and I become distracted, and am left with blanks in the story line. I am writing sporadically, and finding much solace in exercise.
I am becoming the model prisoner, determined to find a way through this isolation and personal loss with something other than a penchant for champagne, or a tear drop tattoo.
The mind is a tricky thing that loves to ruminate on something, anything at all, and for those of us who love to cradle our misfortune like a long-lost love, we must fight the urge to see the bleakness of a January afternoon as anything but a work of art in a limited palate. And mid-afternoon, I am sipping champagne in the French tradition of a breast shaped flute, and ignoring the dirt on my kitchen floor, as the melting snow on my back deck leaves shallow, languid puddles that quiver with hopes to freeze.
How I see reality is up to me, and what I choose to cling to is my choice. Soon, the world will turn to reveal something new and exciting, and we just need to hike up our orange jumpsuits, put on some lipstick, drink a little champagne and remember that above the unending greyness of the sky, the stars, the sun and the moon still reside.
