Optimism in the Face of the Blizzard

 

Out courtyard looked like this today at 1:10PM . Notice the drifts over the benches!

 

The prompt for today's Daily Post was:  How do you fuel the fires of optimism?

 

 

 

I took this from my window at 8AM today.  It is now 3:47 PM, and much more snow has fallen.   The weather people predict two to three feet, and with the wind, the drifts are already that high. I am by nature an optimistic person, assuming good will of everyone to the point of foolishness and gullibility.  I have lived with some suspicious, negative women ( yes, even in the convent they dwell!) and they have made me even more determined to be optimistic. Right now we are having a crisis between the faculty and administration at my university which has spilled out in leaked emails to the national media, and some of my friends are sending me outraged emails and phone calls.  I think they’ve gone off the deep end in emotional reactions; I think everything will turn out alright in the end.  But as I look out the window at the blizzard provided by nature, I can’t help feeling inundated by the blizzard of rage and blame.  I’m only a bystander in this, but I feel the raging snowstorm. It’s hard for me to be my optimistic self this afternoon. So here’s a poem I wrote a long time ago, during the blizzard of 1979:   Blizzard   The deaf snow speaks in sign like a prophet. His fingers remark the landscape swiftly, stolidly. They say This time I am serious. He cups his thick hand on the birdsnest, he levels the driveways, leans on the trees, pulls the sky down to the earth – nebulae swirl by the second story windows. This time I am serious. This time you will hear me.
photo of our courtyard taken in our last blizzard, five years ago.  I think this one is worse.