Excavating The Warmth

By Jonathan Zackor

Ihave recently begun to sleep on a mattress next to the heater in my room. I have been craving the warmth, similar to a cat that picks the spot of sunlight on the living room floor to sleep in. I have been clutching a hot water bottle to my chest, drunk bottomless cups of chamomile tea with honey, lit yellow candles with flowery or vanilla aroma. It seems like a desperate attempt to melt the coldness within myself that has only been hardened in the constant torrent of rejection and resignation. I needed the little extra yellow and orange-y sparks that just were nowhere to be found, except in those moments. I needed the spark of colour in an otherwise colourless, unwelcoming world. I don’t know how it happened. Maybe indeed the winter depression is finally lifting its claws. After another endless night, the sky was in colour. The sun, melting through the clouds, reflecting on the mirror’s surface, breaking into little diamond beams that are endlessly multiplied by your eyes. The once-threatening voices in your head are not wishing you the worst. There is the smell of childhood, of a barbecue in the sun, the quick rainshower afterwards. You can taste the charcoal and petrichor at the tip of your tongue, the feeling of happiness and safety gripping on to your skin, embracing you lovingly. There is a special kind of trust when you stumble across a new song, not knowing what is going to hide behind the corner of the next verse, but listening on. No skipping ahead to the next song because of fear. It is the awkward but sincere smile that you exchange with the random stranger that you meet while continuing on your path, the mutual makingspace for the other on the pathway. If the world does not meet you with kindness and warmth, try your best to find it in yourself. You know that body lotion or the candle or the special canvas that you have hidden away from your everyday eye, waiting for that one moment when it finally feels like you deserve to use it? That special moment is now. Allow yourself to take it, blossom with it. Any moment is special if you decide for it to be. The flicker in you can never be bright enough. The world belongs to you and you belong to the world. I wish you the Sun.

@wagnus photography: