Seasons
Winter
A season of tranquil stillness and stories that breathe fog into the cold air, our winter section gathers writing that leans into the quieter moments of the icy season. Here, you will find pieces that crackle like frost underfoot, glow softly and warmly like the fire, and remind us that even in the coldest months, imagination refuses to hibernate.
I) wintry language
winter exhales its long frigid breath,
blowing everything autumnal
away. into
nothingness.
winter delightedly strips bare leaves,
warmth, and
sonorous chatters of people
who wear woolly scarves with hand-sewn
red mittens,
who spend the night speaking frost.
a child of summer passes
by them, curiously tended by their tone, and asks, “may i ask what language poses
such thrill and .. beauty?” they merely chortle and say
“winter. winter is the language
we speak”
(summer walks away dazed and dazzled).
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II) a serene stillness
God puts His
steady finger to the
lips of the world
and silently
hushes its volume.
i am learning
to love the very
comforting silence,
that dwells only
in wintertime;
perhaps i will
spend the
bleak wintry
days to come
listening to
this silence
(soundless, you say? perhaps you have never heard silence before)
III) Edward White
I, Edward White, a desolate wanderer, trod the very snow that beautifully covers the entirety of the village. My hands and feet are immensely cold and I find myself shivering endlessly, feeling the cold wind whip against me. It does not help that my clothes are of the thinnest cloth and weariest of the whole town. Looking around, I am most obviously the only one in this absurd, mismatched attire – it almost seems as if I am a time traveler that resided in the desert that just coincidentally landed in this foreign place. But worst of all, besides the physical frigidness, there is a blizzard of my own in my mind and heart that somehow makes the outer discomfort a little bit more bearable in comparison. With a mixture of unease, regret, and pain all jumbled together, I am troubled and poisoned by my unfortunate past, which I do not wish to reminisce now. Yet, the coldness both in and out of my body, makes it even harder to forget my traumatic past. My mind so evilly tries to click play on the movie I try so hard to pause, yet the memories reverberate endlessly in my mind.
I am going mad. I surely am. Is there a way to get out of this mental insanity? When can I – if I ever can – ever escape from my past, and from myself? In frustration from not being able to shut my mind from replaying the worst of my past, I angrily form a massive, ugly snowball. I then crudely trample on it. Once every tiny remnant of the snowball is squished, I let out a pained sigh. There is no hope for me after all, and as I think this thought, the wind blows harder and the weather seems to have – if possible – dropped ten degrees further. Perhaps this is nature’s way of signaling to me of my dead end. My sorrowful future seems to already be resolute and sealed.
Having nothing else better to do, I proceed to make another distorted snowball, to be able to release my exasperation on. In one way or another, it gives me a simple sort of satisfaction to be able to be greater than something for once; to possess the ability to be the one crushing something and not the other way around. As I continue to do so, my feet rhythmically pounding and trampling the remnants of snow, I notice a faint outline in the snow that I have not been able to notice before this moment. It is a faint outline of footsteps, presumably coming from snow shoes, sunken quite deep into the vacant white snow. From mere curiosity, I bring my face closer to examine the footsteps. To my surprise, once examined closer, I notice that there are many more that follow. That is, I am viewing a trail. My immediate thought is obviously this: where does this mysterious path lead to?
With some final dignity left in me, I decide – after a few moments of contemplation – that I must undertake this risk and follow the trail. Life could not get any worse, could it? is the thought that carries my will and urges my body to move accordingly to the path.
I continue to walk, placing one foot in front of the other, and soon enough I gain momentum in this repetitious pattern. As I go further along with the trail, the trees thicken, and the sounds distill into mere cricket sounds in the distance. Every step is followed by a tiny huff of air that evaporates smoothly into the atmosphere, just how it came to be in the first place with the air that I breathe in feeling ever so frosty. At one point, I start to notice the footsteps grow closer, as if the person that had walked this path before me had a sudden clearer idea of where to head. Following an endless stretch, the path ends at the mouth of a cave. Its low ceiling and dim depths are illuminated by a fire further deep in the cave. All the coldness that I had previously been enduring seems to dissipate with the vibrance of the distant warmth. What an odd feeling!, I think to myself. I am not accustomed to the crackling fireworks of the fire or any such things relating to warmth, and so I allow myself to indulge in this very foreign feeling for a slight moment. Mistakenly thinking that I am alone, I boldly step closer to the radiating cave. Perhaps it is too greedy of me to claim this loveliness and snugness all for myself? My thoughts and tracks quickly halt, however, the moment I hear faint voices. Slight murmurs and chuckles are evident even from a distance, where I am currently standing.
Walking further into the depths of the cave, the light further brightens. To me, this is a wondrous sort of feeling which I have never come across before. Amidst blueness and whiteness, God has granted my eyes to lay eyes on vibrant hues for once in my life! My steps quickening with eagerness and curiosity, soon enough, I reach a curve. I catch a cursory glance at the people crowded amongst the fire, and I quickly retreat in my steps. I try to rub both of my frozen hands to try and imitate even a tenth of the warmth from the fire, which I only miserably fail. I continue to enviously watch the fire dance, its performance, its embers rising up into the air so elegantly, the warmth so vibrant that the surroundings start to look blurry.
Once I finish staring at the fire with a feeling so ineffable, my eyes naturally move to another detail that piques my attention: a child – only looking to be around six years old – covered in fur-heavy clothing with a hood on, leaning closer to an adult nearby. The child, mischievously and naively grinning at the adult, starts to move his mouth animatedly and rapidly, retelling some sort of story. After a few moments pass – I assume the story that has just been told is of the most humorous – the adult’s stoic frame loosens with vibrant mirth. To me, hearing this laughter was just as inspiring as first seeing the fire in contrast to the complete frigidness outside.
Seeing this simple scene has stirred something inexplicable in me. Seeing this concealed part of the world brings me to hold onto a new glimmer of hope that perhaps life is not all bleak as it seems during the wintertime. Viewing this makes me feel as if the confinements trapping my heart and mind all this time in its constant remembrance of the terrible past, has finally been loosened. The child and adult’s laughter, combined with the chatter of the other members of the community surrounding the fire, fills my soul, a tune as sweet as a nightingale’s melancholic cry at night.
My thoughts distill themselves into this one thought: how grateful am I to have coincidentally stumbled across those footsteps! Otherwise, I would not have been able to experience such an experience. Forget being a traveler; I feel as if I had just come across from a grand voyage through mountain tops and riversides, through experiencing this one foreign emotion as unfamiliar to me as a naive child’s knowledge of the world.
It is powerful to think that I have left another pair of footsteps as well. Perhaps someone else will follow mine and allow themselves to experience this warmth never felt elsewhere before.
IV) an Ephemeral beauty
The crisp festive air engulfs me in a momentary daze. I look out to see the darkness slowly blanketing the city with sparkling Christmas lights here and there. It’s an oddly comforting sight to watch over from the tenth floor up. My family and I are at a buffet late at night and we are busy savoring all the food there is to consume. Plates and plates of various kinds of foods – crab, oysters, beef wellington and ribs, dessert – are waiting to be picked up. Behind the counters are chefs and waiters that kindly await, giving identical smiles to the people around them.
Of course, those smiles are probably mere acts of polite manners that they are “required” to do to seem friendly enough so that people would come back to eat here again. Yet, somehow in this moment even those smiles feel authentic. As if these people are voluntarily here and that they are genuinely smiling at us because they like to see families gather for this special holiday.
It’s Christmas after all.
Around the time dinner is over, it’s approximately nine thirteen. We’re settling in our car to head back home and we’re full to the point of “we can’t eat anything for a good forty eight hours from now”; which is an odd kind of feeling because no matter how stuffed I feel, how great is it that I get to experience this fullness in the first place? After eating whatever delicious food I wanted?
The first several minutes of driving are quiet moments of nothingness – just thoughts and thoughts whirling into more nothingness. My mom, brother, and I are in the backseat collecting our thoughts and reflecting on this day with much meaning and religious purpose; and my dad driving in the front seat, steering the wheel every now and then for a turn. Upon approaching the Hangang river, I ask if we can let all the windows down for a moment. My brother suggests that we should play music on the car speaker. I watch the window on my right side slowly roll down. A whoosh of frosty air comes at me gleefully, as if it’s been waiting this whole time to do just that. I swipe away my bangs that are covering my face and shift my focus to the view.
It’s awfully beautiful.
I see the light sliver of a dimly shining moon amidst the now very darkened sky, and the waves that gently lap, illuminating the not so evident but present moon, nonetheless. The whole city is asleep yet also humming with this excitement that seems to be reverberating louder with each beat of the music that is playing. The music seems like it’s playing in the “background” because somehow with everything, the view is now my central focus. I press my forehead against the window and I continue to watch the cityscape. I watch the buildings pass by in a blur, as if I’m watching a film reel that is sped up. I try to focus on one part of the city to look at, yet it doesn’t last seconds because before I know it, it’s gone; farther in the back where it’s no longer within my peripheral vision. And with all the sentimental, high emotions that get to you late at this time of night, I’m reminded that life is like that too sometimes, in the fact that memories you want to keep on holding to are only yours to hold onto for a small fracture of time.
V) For Emma, Forever Ago
Album Review
This album was sung by Justin Vernon – most commonly known as Bon Iver – and includes themes of isolation, heartbreak, and healing. All of the songs were written and recorded in near-total isolation in a faraway cabin in Wisconsin from 2006-2007. As these were recorded during the wintertime, the songs beautifully reflect the introspective and stillness of the cold season.
The minimal acoustic guitar that is played in the background of the songs combined with Vernon’s fragile, wistful vocals creates a sense of emptiness and melancholy. This atmosphere makes the lyrics blend in with the subtle instrumentals, exposing the singer’s ache and emotions, like a breath in the cold air. The occasional pauses in the notes also better emphasizes the album’s starkness, gradually hinting on the singer’s pensiveness and moments of reflection to come.
Amidst all the singing about sorrow, however, subtly woven into the lyrics of the songs are moments of growth that the singer tries to speak out about. In other words, solitude and pain is transformed into purposeful reflection. Thus, instead of fearing isolation, the singer sings about embracing it. This can be seen in the slight differences in lyrics and tone comparing the first few songs of the album to the last few songs. Songs such as Flume and Skinny Love – the earlier songs that appear in the album – are strictly based on withdrawal and emotional confusion, where the lyrics are spoken in fragments. However, moving further down in the list, songs such as Re:Stacks – the last song on the album – emphasizes more on the reflection aspect of the process. Vernon sings, “Everything that happens is from now on” and also sings later on, “It’s the sound of the unlocking/and the lift away/Your love will be/Safe with me”. All of these lyrics support the greater theme of embracing coldness and heartbreak with a more understanding and thoughtful approach.
In the end, this album teaches people a lesson that winter is a time of contemplation and reflection, where people are forced to embrace their emotions with honesty. Instead of continually running away from them, winter invites people a space to sit with discomfort that gradually turns into healing.
Credits
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Literary works by Yumi
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Images sourced from Wix and Pinterest
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Design and layout by Jasmine