I feel the cold more with each year that passes and I so I begin to wonder: is this the ultimate state of things–this coldness that saps and slows?
And so I bundle myself in clothes and blankets and sit beneath the machine that blasts warm air and the warmth returns and fills me up. But the cold persists. It traces down my spine and tingles. It lingers in my joints.
The cold is always there. You can feel it on a hot day when the wind touches your perspiration and you shiver. This is no “goose on your grave”, though it is a reminder of sorts about the ever-present cold.
It is pervasive and eternal. It fills empty space such that even the desert at night becomes a frozen wasteland. And the tops of mountains. And the deep, dark forests. And the suburban streets.
Yet, everywhere, life thrives in defiance of the cold. Creatures drift through icy seas and sing songs (which we do not understand) and others huddle together in burrows beneath the earth, as we huddle together in cities and the homeless linger in the corners between buildings where the cold might not reach them.
The cold is always there. And yet, there is another thing that is always there as well. Is it as eternal as the cold? Is it as necessary? Did the two arise together and can one exist without the other, or do they somehow birth each other in some quantum dance of warring polarities?
For your blood is warm, human.
And so is the radiant centre of your Earth.
And so is the radiant centre of your solar system.
However cold it is outside, it is always warm within; remember that and tend to those flames.
Michael Scott Hand 