I am thawing.
It creeps in slowly — but no less disruptive for it.
Like a voice piercing the silence at the end of Shavasana.
Now, bring your awareness back into the space. Invite some gentle movement into your body. Wiggle your fingers, your toes. Make small circles with your wrists and ankles.
Movement returns, awkward and tentative, frost still clinging to the joints.
Limbs stiff from stasis. Caught in between.
In limbo.
Thawing leaves a mess in its wake.
Water seeping into unexpected corners, the energy once frozen now defrosting, escaping in uneven bursts.
Puddles of emotion pooling.
Half-formed thoughts scatter, unable to find a vessel, dripping down cold, hard glass.
Unpredictable. Not linear. Some parts remain frigid, patient. Others rush to liquid.
In a hurry to transform from hard and brittle to soft and fluid.
Forgetting that it is, that it will still be, water.
Wrenched from the freezer. Misshapen with the imprint of whatever was pressed against it.
An ice cube tray. Peas, perhaps.
Left, now, to defrost in a bowl. Or a bag. Unspecified liquid pooling underneath.
Chaos mode. A button I never pressed, but often wondered about.
The Chaos Defrost setting on microwaves uses random microwave pulses to evenly raise the temperature of the oven, which helps defrost food more evenly and quickly.
Introducing randomness to restore order.
The paradox of it all.
I am thawing, chaotically.
I don’t even have a microwave anymore.
O, that this too too solid flesh would melt
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
— Hamlet
The dance between chaos and control.
At the mercy of random pulses, yet there’s a rhythm, a system at play.
Call it healing, change, growth — it’s orchestrated in the same unpredictable way.
The universe has its way of defrosting us, of dealing out the chaos to restore balance.
And then, dew.
The peaceful descent.
Early spring mornings when the light catches droplets that form on the half-frozen foliage, softening at the edges.
It settles quietly, imperceptibly, yet it transforms the very essence of a scene.
Dew denies boundaries, and defies rigid structures, leaving everything more fluid, more familiar, more… soggy.
My timings are off. Mind drifting ahead to those February mornings when daylight starts to creep in early enough.
The air feels wet and heavy.
The desire to dissolve, to transition from icy solid to something softer, warmer.
Still, water.
February isn’t far now, I suppose.
A world of dew is, yes,
a world of dew,
but even so
— Kobayashi Issa
It starts at the edges.
A blush of pink returns to the surface while the core remains frozen.
Time locked. Thoughts suspended.
But the wiggle of a finger, the click of a toe.
A return to movement, to feeling, to being.
Not all at once, but in fragments, in puddles, in dewdrops.
The thaw is never clean, but still, necessary.
What does it feel like? Tentative. Painful, even.
But a sure sign of life returning.
Slowly, slowly.
How far can you push it?
Gorgeous, ‘a peaceful descent’ 😘💗