All is Melting: A Reflection on Wintry Paradoxical States

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All is Melting.

My heart. 
My mind. 
The world around me.

​Winter lives up to her barren and somber reputation,
but Oh,
how I welcome the melancholic mirror.

In a previous post,  I told of my spirit sprouting from the years within its brumal cocoon. As I emerge, the season is winter, but the season has not adsorbed me. I can serenely take in my hiemal surroundings without becoming them. 
Winter is a sister ​​to commune with,

in contemplation, solitude, and dolefulness
--  of the nourishing kind.

She does not have to equate to a barren condition of the heart,
but is a reflection, a time of reflection, a time of evolution.

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And what a time of evolution it has been.

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Paradox
describes my previous wintry half decade. 

Simultaneously 
stripped&
filled;
contorted
&disentangled;
looted of identity&
​integrated into a truer sense of self;

enveloped by unconditional love,
&at times,
​reminiscent over the conditional genre.

There is healing in this paradox. 

​ The Tao Te Ching reminds me of this​, coincidentally, through the symbol of water: 

"Nothing in the world
is as soft and yielding as water.
Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible,

nothing can surpass it.
The soft overcomes the hard;
the gentle overcomes the rigid..."
​(chapter 78)

And yet, in the right conditions, even the gentlest of waters
become hard, inflexible, and ridged.
That hardened state serves her higher purpose:
to preserve,
to still,
to solidify.
Her obstinance makes way for contemplation, solitude, and dolefulness
-- of the nourishing kind.
And when she returns to the gentle coursing,
she "nourishes all things without trying".
                                                       (Tao Te Ching, chapter 8)

​In my frozen state,
I am able to nourish myself.
In my fluid state,
I am able to nourish others.
Both states are needed
for the other state to be possible.
Both states are needed
to evolve and to heal.

​&for now,

All is melting.
Not fully frozen, nor fully fluid: something in-between.
As my winter sister breaks down her iciness, I commune with her in the act.
​She is a reflection of my own process of thawing.
​

My eyes begin
to crack.
My spirit bubbles
with motion,
as the dissolving parts become
a current, flowing
towards the ignored and
desolate; soaking
in, to quench thirsts,
​and to satiate my need to
quench.
My mind dripping
with possibilities once
forgotten.
My heart splashing
about in the puddles
of liberation from the long-term
hardened state.

​And those persistent
​hardened shards 
cradle those fragments 
that are rightfully not ready to flow. ​​

​
​Whichever hardened, fluid, or paradoxical state
you find yourself in this season, my dears,
may this time be your companion, and your mirror,
to your own evolution and healing. 
​

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