I like it spicy, not ICY.

“In the depth of winter I finally learned that there within me--and there within all of us-- lay an invincible summer.” -Albert Camus

Well, I can't say I feel any better coming in after running outside my apartment, kicking the snow, grabbing the ice and breaking it, cursing at the downfall of sleet and ice and everything else that makes the body shiver to the bone. It's got me. Those damn winter blues have driven me to madness (and most certainly not for the last time). I thought about flinging random snowballs as cars passed by, but thought that may be a little too extreme for the moment. Winter drags on and on and on, makes the soul bitter, like DEATH that pervades the exterior somehow takes over the interior, too. I'm angry at you, Winter. Winter brings out his rawness that may have eclipsed past all those "learning, growing, and harvesting" seasons. My own heart has witnessed the most terrifying things just in this past week. The unexpected deaths of patients, children, and the raging, terrifying effects of sexual abuse of an infant. The cruelty of this harsh world seeps into reality, revealing its hidden heartache. Death comes without an itinerary, no need to explain-- just bruise, bruise, bruise the inner heart, again and again. The only friends of compassion to give are my own pitiful tears. I drive home from work crying with Neil Young's "A Heart of Gold" on repeat. Even the baker down the street saw my puffy face and scorched red eyes, and offered a meager solace, "It all gets us sometimes, honey. Keep it trucking." This of course, brought the river of tears back as I shook my head and tried to conceal my weakness as I thought, Basketcase betty--back in town. Death came knocking without their consent. No sense to make of it. Nothing else to offer. Nothing else to give. Only in the fragile, heart-wrenching depravity of death, can a mere glimpse of grace, of life, be found. I hate it, and yet am reawakened amidst it all at the same time. Chesterton, who wrote The Man Who Was Thursday, speaks words that somehow makes sense to my soul. He writes about Syme (the main character), who explains his thoughts on the man who was Sunday and eventually comes to say, "Bad is so bad, that we cannot think good an accident; good is so good, that we feel certain evil could be explained." I know exactly what he means.