The Cold Grue

I'd first read the term cold grue in the story Thrawn Janet by Robert Louis Stevenson. It was an arcane term to me, but I knew what it meant the moment I read it. I'd known that feeling since I was a child. It usually arrived in November, when it arrived at all, and lay mostly under the surface of winter, waiting to loom up at certain vulnerable moments - something that seemed almost sentient, a grey existential chill that was not merely cold, but deathly.

The appearance of the cold grue was something I'd come to dread. A rising uneasiness, the sense of something minatory, searching along the ground with the wind. I'd felt it a few notable times in my childhood - the visit to Liberty Hill, a playful seance gone awry that my cousins and I held on Thanksgiving, 1980, and the time surrounding the violent death of my aunt not too long afterward. Every holiday season since has been an exercise in keeping it at bay. 

Having spent my much of my life in Texas, it was something I'd associated with my home state, something that lived in the winter landscape there, so I did not expect to find it the first time I visited northwest Ohio in 2022. But on the second-to-last day of my trip, there it was, drifting toward me in waves as I stood on the steps at the art museum, as ominous and melancholy and as pure in form as I'd ever felt it. 

 

I'd never expected my path in life to lead me to the Midwest, and certainly not to such an unadulterated version of the feeling I'd been hiding from. Perhaps it was just my mood that day, I'd thought. Maybe it was just that I was standing in a sculpture garden. As I'd written in one of those links above, the surreal nature of modern art always did leave me a bit uneasy. Or perhaps it was just a temporary, momentary effect of the weather. 

When I did move here in 2023, it was summer, and there were only the aquarium blue sky and cornfields and the sound of daylight crickets in evidence. The cold grue was far from my mind. I would walk through the swamp preserve in the afternoon, or the marshy edgelands next to the mall, studying wildflowers and cottonwood trees. We visited Lake Erie. Then autumn arrived. 

The grue did not come right away. Gradually, though quicker than I would have imagined, the landscape changed its character. There is no real autumn where I'm from, so to watch it take on color and atmosphere was fascinating. Did you know that leaves will simply fall off of trees, without being blown down by wind after drying up from drought? I didn't, so just to watch them was like standing in fairyland. I was very lonely at the time, but it was beautiful even so. I spent so many evenings out there, learning about my newly adopted home, trying to take my mind off the rest of my life, which had quickly commenced unravelling. I learned about being cold, putting on more and more sweaters every time I went out. The skies became greyer and heavier, the chill wind fluttering the remaining cottonwood leaves. 

Near the center of the swamp preserve is a forest of skinny black ash trees. In summer, they were green, humming with insects, but no sooner had November come the skinny forest had transformed into a leafless, slightly hallucinatory labyrinth. The effect being a bit like a hall of mirrors, if only to reflect the inner self. I always felt uneasy when passing by, but as the fall closed in and the temperature fell, I found myself drawn to the place. There was something familiar down among the ashes, something ominous and melancholy and cold. I was so lonely, so heavy-hearted. The reason I'd moved here had fallen apart. I was unwelcome and unwanted, my future in serious doubt. The cold grue beckoned with frigid fingers down this forlorn path. It came over me with such intensity that day that I realized I was in the center of it, as if it had all come down to this singular point in time. I sat down and spoke to it. 

"What are you?' I said.

"The process of dying" it replied.

"Why are you here?"

"It's the earth's dying season"

"Why have I felt you in so many circumstances, then?"

"Because all deaths are the same to the dead." 

My phone rang. I gathered my things and stood up to walk home, wondering if was still existing in my world at all. 

I've moved on since that day, slowly piecing my life back together, trying to find any remnants of my lost inner light. The cold grue remains, in the autumn wind, in the snow, in the garden that has gone to seed. I'm not so troubled by it anymore, even if I am still haunted. I live in a place with all four seasons now, and have a lot still to learn about spring. 

Far Across the Reach of Space Time

 

The end of August

The Remnants and Revenants of the Great Black Swamp

"Here, she will be trapped in her own illusion, because everything in the woods is exactly as it seems."

Angela Carter ~ the Erl-King

Haunting the remnants of the Great Black Swamp with my collaborator and compatriot, Mere Pseud. 

Wayfarers All

"He rose and descended river-wards once more, then changed his mind and sought the side of the dusty lane.There, lying half-buried in the thick, cool under-hedge that bordered it, he could muse on the metalled road and all the wonderous world that it led to; on all the wayfarers, too, that might have trodden it, and the fortunes and adventures they had gone to seek or found unseeking - out there, beyond..."

From The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

Vespers

After last week's grim visit to the eastward road, I found myself unsettled in a way I could not shake. The place had got into my bones, like a sickness does. The sense of dread grew and grew. Everything felt bad. I began to wonder if my life had any purpose besides fear and sorrow.

Yesterday, I realized I'd had enough. It had to stop. I longed for something, a piece of magic, some undeniable sign that a universe existed beyond this mood.

If a landscape had got me into this, it made sense that a landscape might get me out. I decided to go west this time. Things had always felt a bit friendlier out there. Maybe I could have a chat with the Genius Loci while I was as it. Ask if there was any meaning left in the world.

It was nearly as cold and no less cloudy than it was on the 20th, but somehow the light in that direction looked golden and warm. Perhaps it was a good sign. It was nearly sunset, though, so whatever I'd meant to do must be done quickly. Remote country roads are not the best place to be after dark.

I took a right and headed out on my journey. I wasn't sure how far I was going, but figured I'd know when I got there.

There was a time when this road was almost as familiar as my own. Childhood friends lived here once. Old signs still marked the place of lovers' meetings. But that was long ago, and the memories of it squeezed my heart. So much time passed, so many people gone. There's a certain loneliness that comes to a tourist spot when the season is over, a sort of silence, and this road is no exception.

In all the times I'd come, there is one day that stands out in my mind. It was all autumn silence then, too, the mist, the color, the leaves and the rocks. Even the river was hushed. I was suffering a broken heart that day, the kind that never really mends. The radio was playing Peter Murphy's Cuts You Up and suddenly it all made sense. A haunted hour and a haunted song. I'd never forgotten it.

This came to mind as I was driving, that teenage heartsick ache. Time seemed to slide out from under me. I didn't intend to be maudlin, but suddenly I was desperate to hear that song again. It was the right sort of day for it. But unless I could call music from the air, it wasn't likely to happen. 30 year old alt-rock doesn't have much place on the radio.

At the fork in the road, I took another right. Here was the stone gate at the first crossing, marking where Susan used to live. There was the winding drive that once lead to Melissa's home. We used to hang out there, Missy and Teal and me. We'd sit on the river bank, the canyon echoing laughter.

I was beginning to feel overwhelmed. The whole point in coming here had been to quietly listen to the landscape, but the further I drove, the more I was stricken with old memories - this house, that cliff, that bend in the road. I was losing the thread.

The sun was going down. I pulled into a gravel lay-by to park and walked down to the water. As I did, the red leaf of a sycamore floated down and seemed to hover motionless in front of me far longer than it should have. I thought, well, then, this must be the place.

 

I sat and listened, and watched the sunset colors on the water. All was peaceful. I saw no visions nor heard any voices, only the sound of the river. Still, I did not feel alone. Then somehow I knew it was time to go, so I got up and -somewhat regretful to leave - went back to the car.

When I got in, I don't have to tell you what song was playing on the radio, do I? That it was Cuts You Up by Peter Murphy? Because of course it was, and you may have seen it coming but it was an complete and utter shock to me. And that's how I knew, with absolute certainty, that my strange, silent prayer for meaning had been heard.

Maybe it seems like a little thing, but it was much more than enough. 

Sometimes it's enough to know that someone is listening.

The Summer Of Ill Luck

The season is coming to an end, and while I try to count my blessings, there's no denying it's been a summer of ill luck. One of those times when things are just wrong.

It started in the spring, really, or maybe even in winter, but it was the summer when this oppressive atmosphere - a sort of emotional miasma, you might call it - reached its fullness and refused to budge. Perhaps it began as early as last year, when the hurricanes hit and so many were left to suffer. In a way, it's felt like hurricane weather ever since.

Whatever the reason, I can sense the stirrings of desperation beneath the roiling uncertainty. The hippies have a term for it - bad vibes.

Which isn't to say there was no beauty, or nothing good. Even hard times offer their moments of softness, if you look closely enough.

Here are a few pictures to (hopefully) prove my point.

There is a quote from Yoko Ono  - "The sky is always there for me, while my life  has been going through many, many changes.When I look up at the sky, it gives me a nice feeling, like looking at an old friend."

This is how I'm trying to think of things. No matter what happens, the sky - one way or another - will always be with us.

In the meantime, we await a happier season.

The Goddess Of Thorns

It's occurred to me to wonder - many times since I've been back here, in fact - f there is a goddess of this place.

If there is, I can only conclude that she must be a goddess of thorns, spines and stones.

Firewheels And Cat Claws

While I was out hunting for storm clouds this evening, I came across this clutch of firewheels hidden inside a cat's claw acacia.

They reminded me of treasure in old fairy tales, all wrapped up in thorns.

Witchgrass

Witchgrass blowing in the breeze. A sign of the summer to be.

In the Underwood

In the thicket near the bluff, among all the dead wood and cacti, these delicate blue flowers appeared.

Blue curls (Phacelia congesta)
Wildflower org

Spirit Of The Water

When it's been raining for a while, the sides of the road fill with water, like little flood-meadows.One morning after a particularly wet few days, I dreamt that I went to look at one of these puddles, and saw a golden koi rise to the surface.

I didn't know what it meant, but it felt lucky somehow. After all, what else could a golden koi mean?

The next day, I happened to be next to a murky pond. I didn't imagine there was any living thing there, but suddenly a golden koi rose to the surface, much like the dream.

It's not clear if that week was any luckier than usual, but I felt an uncommon peace surround me.

I suppose luck is in the eye of the beholder.

Widow's Tears

A stand of Widow's Tears has sprung up in the garden, a testament to how wet this Spring has been.

On a vaguely related note, last night I heard a chuck-will's-widow in the woods, by far the earliest in the year I've ever heard one. Their call is the quintessential sound of a summer night.

Widows were the theme of the day, it seems.

Will O' Wisp

A will o' wisp dancing over a field.

More information about will o' wisps here and here.

In the Evening

Evening was coming on when I waked down the road to look at the mountain laurels. The blossoms have finally arrived in full force. 

The proper name of the tree is actually Texas mountain laurel, 

Dermatophyllum secundiflorum, otherwise known as Texas mescalbean, frijolito or frijolillo.

There must be a dozen trees growing wild on this street alone. Their grape soda scent hangs heavy in the air.  The effect seems slightly surreal to me, and indeed, it's said that Native Americans used their seeds as a hallucinogen.

As a child I was intrigued by the red seeds that littered the rocky ground and took a lick of one. It made  me feel very strange. Mind you, I wouldn't do that today. Apparently all parts of the plant are quite toxic.

The color is lovely, though. Shades of twilight in a flower.