heated mittens

Yes, there’s darkness—in this world and in your one, small life—but there is also light streaming in from many directions. Some is coming from so far off, it hasn’t reached you yet. Turn your face to it as often as you can. No darkness deserves your full attention.

Maggie Smith

This was the snow situation three days ago. We had a pleasant walk, the way pensioners amble around the forest and climb a hill to marvel at the view.

It's all gone now, today we are enveloped by a thick mist, just as cold, and the ground is frozen, which makes walking a tad risky. I will gather my inner and outer strength eventually to brace the elements and get a move on, partaking of the sticky foggy air and so on. Yesterday evening we went to a public lecture on democracy and how it can fail and it took me several minutes to warm my fingers so that I could put the key into my bicycle lock. R looked on impatiently and has now ordered an expensive pair of heated mittens that apparently charge via usb stick. 

The lecture was in one of the big lecture theatres at the university, packed to capacity. It was a weird deja vu experience sitting on these fold up seats, wooden desks with that neat groove for the pencil and faint scratched graffiti. And so we listened and were told that democracies are delicate structures and that not everyone likes them. This is because it is not the strongest who wins, but usually the community in the form of majority relationships. And the wheeling and dealing of politicians and lobbyists and that you cannot sue politicians for not delivering on their promises. The positive message for me was the large audience and the mix of ages and the lively discussion at the end.

Cycling home in the cold and dark was another story. Hence the heated mittens.

This weather makes me slow down, not in a nice way. In fact, it makes me feel my age, also not in a nice way.

The strange thing about growing old is that the intimate identification with the here and now is slowly lost; one feels transposed into infinity, more or less alone, no longer in hope or fear, only observing.

Albert Einstein