It was a hard winter. Not just because of the temperatures and the difficult snowfall, and not just because of the political situation (those are real reasons and I’m not discounting them), but because winter is always hard.

It’s not an opinion, or a preference. It’s more hard-wired than that. The world goes dim and sparse, and I grow dim and sparse along with it. People have the effrontery to tell me they love winter, because you can always put on more clothes if you get too cold but you can’t adjust the same way to heat. It’s not a question of temperature. It’s that the world is empty and the universe will eventually turn into an endless abyss of drifting particles.

Oh, I do what I can. I go out every day, and I have plenty of projects to avoid. This winter I re-read a whole bunch of English detective novel series, did crosswords, and scrolled endlessly. I took books out of the library, and returned a number of them unread.

But the sun is getting stronger now.

Yesterday, despite my asthma flare-up, I caught a bus intending to buy a couple of things downtown, but it was the bus that goes all the way to IKEA in South Philadelphia, so I stayed on. About ten Asian ladies with tidy carts got on and jammed the front of the bus; they didn’t speak any English and no matter what the driver yelled, they weren’t moving back, so a lot of passengers gave up and boarded through the back door. Nobody stepped on my feet and no backpacks scraped my face, but it was close. I enjoyed the scene immoderately, because I had a comfortable seat and it was free.

When I got to IKEA, I went to the restaurant, where the line was made up not of Asian ladies with grocery carts but families with small children and double-wide strollers. I had my usual plant balls with mashed potatoes, peas, and extra Swedish jam, because IKEA’s restaurant is custom designed for someone who just wants diner food, and then I wandered around the showrooms and went home. It was a marvelous little outing. I felt quite exuberant.

I’m coughing all the time, and living on cough drops, steroids, Mucinex, seltzer, and tissues, but the world’s tilt has brought the sun higher and stronger, and as we spin through space I might just get around to some of my projects today.