Friday 15 January 2010

Snown

[creative writing]

He couldn't figure out why she had spent four months, four months(!), in the Arctic - summer or winter it didn't matter which. One week of snow in England was enough for him.

But.. but something had happened to her, some deep hibernation of the spirit, staring at the snowscapes, walking or driving through those strange twilight zones in which the sun was barely awake at midday before turning over and going back to sleep again.

He could understand the attractions of a simpler life, a more basic life, just surviving. He could even understand how someone might want to stare at the wall or even at the snow and the sky. But to seek it out, to embrace it still seemed weird.

But there she was now changed for the better(?) by her snow odyssey and he remembered when he had to lean out against the fates to see if he could and would survive.

That was it. The testing of the inner spirit, the tempering of the inner steel. He knew that from old. That which does not destroy me makes me stronger. Modern warriorhood perhaps. I suffer therefore I am.