nothing but the cold
I sealed my back door with a fleece blanket and piled a knitted one on the bottom in attempt to stop the draught from coming in through the cracks. The vent on my floor almost constantly blows out warm air from the furnace, but it never seems to be enough. My thermostat is set to almost 30C, and it’s relatively comfortable, but here’s the thing about heat: it’s never the right temperature. Sometime it’s too cold, sometimes too hot (and too dry), most of the time it’s warm enough, but never really gets perfect.
I wear woolen stockings underneath my thick jeans, the kind of jeans you don’t wear in the summer, and I have 3 layers of shirt, sweater, whatever, all under my long head-to-toe down-filled jacket. The only thing not covered is the area between my eyebrows and chin. I walk outside and it feels like the back of my eyeballs are frozen over. Open your mouth and you can feel the cold to the inside of your gum. Especially if it’s windy. I never thought one could feel the back of their eyeballs.
Except for the warming-up period during yoga class, I hardly ever sweat in this climate. I can go days without wearing deodorant. My body does not need to get rid of excess heat, because there is none. I take a hot shower twice to three times a day, not to keep clean, but just an excuse to stand in the hot water.
After a while the temperature is only a number. Cold is only a word. What is cold today seems colder than yesterday, but what was cold yesterday seemed colder than the day before. What’s not cold tomorrow would still be cold in comparison to last week. It’s all relative. Word isn’t really enough to describe it.
If you’ve ever touched a huge block of ice in a really cold weather, the kind of weather that would keep that ice from melting, there’s that piercing feeling you could feel through the skin. You go walk outside into the -15C temperature with a windchill of whatever and that piercing feeling is what it feels like. Going outside my door feels like walking inside a big block of non-melting ice.
And whatever there is to do, whatever there is to talk about, the cold eclipses everything. There isn’t anything new. There isn’t anything exciting. There’s just the cold.