A Cold Wind
I know that this is a futile struggle.
Lisbon 2017
Desk Notes explores writing, travel, and literature—with a new issue every Friday.
And now we’ve reached the time of year when the weather acts like a jester, teasing us with hints of sun on still chilly days, coaxing us to wear jackets when it’s surprisingly warm, tricking us into forgetting those same jackets when it’s unsurprisingly cold. Because these are the days when the palettes of two seasons begin to mix: in the early mornings I can spot how grays and purples color the sky, the leftover brushstrokes from a receding winter, but in recent days those colors have blended with new shades, the brilliant oranges that illuminate the sunrise and the first traces of that rich, boundless sky that evokes summertime.
Even the old tree just beyond my back window has started to dress for the warmer weather, though I have to look closely to notice the change. And this is a tree that also expresses the most peculiar sensation of motion, with even the lightest of winds appearing to harass its branches. In the wintertime those branches are nude and seem to shiver from the cold, while the summer winds come with bushy leaves and suggest something more akin to a wave. After a very cold night, the branches might be coated with a thin layer of ice, but I saw this morning how, instead, the branches were merely damp, just like the outside ledge of my back window, where droplets ran along the surface, each one magnifying the morning sun, each one arriving with a polished look, each one a spark of white.
Even though I’m interpreting these droplets through my perceptions, and my words are clouded by the fallibility of those perceptions, the descriptions still feel tangible, for the droplets can wet my fingers, I can feel the moisture against my skin, placing my description in the realm of what’s genuine, truthful, even factual. And my inclination is to separate this tangible category from what’s more abstract, with the roughness of the bark, or the thickness of a branch, different from the realm of concepts and meanings and ideas. Because I know that once I start using words that are just a little bit abstract, and I write about how the weather is a jester, about the palette of colors in the sky, or about how the old tree appears to wave, I’ve stripped some weight from what’s most tangible outside my window, I’ve left the realm of sensations and clouded what’s most vibrant.
But I also know that this is a futile struggle. Our words will always encroach upon what we describe, with the distinction between what’s tangible and what’s abstract not delineated by any clear lines. Every description comes from somewhere, as every sentence has a point of view, and we’re fated to imbue even our most neutral, impersonal language with a hidden perspective. Each word sneaking in a larger, more abstract meaning, almost surreptitiously, until we start forgetting that our words for the weather describe our friends, too, in how we define people as warm, sunny, bright, illuminating, brilliant, chilly, cold, breezy, fiery. It all comes from our remarkable fluency at blending categories. We can mix the concrete and the abstract with the ease of a painter mixing paint. We can disguise how categories coalesce, though we know that all this stirring of colors also influences our descriptions. Awareness of this rather porous border between what we touch and what we think might leave us with a vertiginous sensation, especially because it implies that the only certainty is, in the end, the moment to moment change in our perceptions.
Explore writing, travel, and literature—with a new issue every Friday.
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