You may have noticed, dear ones, that blog used to be bright and about a happy-go-angry person, but now it's dark and it's about a sad person. And the jokish new subtitle is, "one man's journey in a land beyond the Sun."
And it is dark here. I said to a friend who was gloomy recently, "You're in a place with no sun and no people. You shouldn't be surprised if you feel kind of sad." And so do I.
But. I thought the land beyond the Sun was Roseburg, Oregon: And I despaired! Because I'm here for a long while.
And then I remembered. The Land Beyond the Sun isn't Roseburg. It isn't even the whole of the Pacific Northwest. The Land Beyond the Sun is Winter!
In particular, it is February. You see, I was thinking to myself: "Goodness I'm a sad one. Have I always been this way?" And then I remembered writing this column for the Pitt News some 3 years ago.
It begins:
Februus was the Etruscan god of death, which is why he's given reign over this time of year.
(I know that, as you're reading this, the month is calling itself March. No matter. Februus' reign extends backward into the last weeks of January and through March all the way to the Equinox. He is a greedy god.)
Think about it. Or rather, feel about it. He's everywhere, now, in this miserable year of our lord, 2005. Look out your window into the sunless streets of Oakland and see him.
The sunless streets of Oakland, 2,000 miles from Oregon. It gets even better:
Februus is come for me. He is all around me now. There will be no Jesus, no Holy Virgin Mary, no patron saint of sadness (I don't know who that would have been anyway) to drive away the Rotten God as he reaches out to close his fist around my heart.
Where is there comfort for us, the forsaken children of the endless nights?
Where indeed, 21-year-old Steve?
Here! of course. Because it was less than a month later that the clouds passed, and look! but we were thinking fanciful thoughts and writing,
There are little worlds underfoot that no one stops to visit. Look beneath your feet. You will see a tiny country of ant kingdoms, spider webs and tiny roads through the grass. When you expand your vision, dense shrubs become bustling metropolitan areas crossed by groundhog, rabbit and fox trails, while dozens of birds go about their busy routine above.
And even Oakland isn't so bad anymore:
Making my way through miserable Oakland on a spring day, I pass trails through bushes, chipmunks and sparrows playing in the grass and ants warring on the sidewalk.
In yards and woods and little places; creek-beds, gardens and between the cracks in the sidewalk; ignored and unnoticed, the World Underfoot remains. It is a resilient place, persisting in spite of industrial poisons and concrete, everywhere a little bit of ground goes unravaged.
You can visit any time you want. To go there one must do only two things: Look to the ground and dream.
And thus Young Steve taught Old Steve wisdom.
We will dwell here for a time, you and I, in the Land Beyond the Sun. But the Sun grows stronger by the day and the days become longer and lighter with him, and Spring will come again and warm rain and flowers, and we'll all go merrily in love down the street humming that e.e. cummings poem that you and I love so much all "wholly to be a fool while Spring is in the world," and cynicism will be forgotten and sorrow too, and we'll know that February will never come again,
(even though he will).
And in the meantime since we're all remembering our College Writer days, why don't we all take a moment and admire the finest hour of my career as a college journalist.
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