Perfect Stillness

Feb 6 2018

The subtraction of heat;

degree by degree

all the way down

to absolute zero.

So cold is defined by absence;

the default state

of a dark universe

where energy wanes, and motion slows,

like struggling through

a viscous liquid

thickening as it cools.

Until all movement is stilled

and the last vibration stops.

We are warm objects

who feel the rate of cooling

more than the cold;

the layer of heat

that thinly clings to skin,

a cutting wind

strips quickly away;

the body heat

that radiates off

into wide open sky

and the deep black of night.

But I can feel the weight

of frozen air

pouring over the sill,

pooling out

and piling higher.

The substance of cold

that seems much more than absence.

The window, open a crack

in the arctic high

like an act of purification;

the cooking odours

and garbage bins

and animal scents,

the sweat, and sex, and bodily stench

overheated, and unrefreshed

we've been re-breathing, again and again,

replaced

by clean astringent air.

The field of vision shrinks

the light fades

the world settles.

Like the frigid layer of air

that sits against the floor

with its compact weight.

Like the constituents of matter, that concentrate

as they slow and slow

and shed their latent heat.

A portent

of the fullness of time,

when the universe is at its lowest state

of perfectly realized stillness.

So in the grip of winter

breathe deeply, think slowly

and ground yourself.

When, like absolute zero,

life is simplified

to its elemental needs.

When, like the flawless lens

of that wide open sky,

knife-edge survival

concentrates the mind

and clarifies meaning.

When, like the cooling molecules

whose dampened vibrations

no longer push them apart,

we huddle closer, in cold;

the force of repulsion softening

the fear of “the other” constrained.

What I'm trying to capture her is the sense of stillness of winter, when the world seems to move more slowly, and when the cold conveys a feeling of permanence, contraction, and weight. It's as if we're a few degrees closer to the end of time, when the universe will wind down toward absolute zero, and when the law of entropy decrees that everything will flatten down into a cold, dense, uniform state of stillness.

So there are the physics of cooling rates, the condensation of matter, and that there is no such thing as “cold”, but rather the absence of heat.

And there is also the distillation of things down to the essentials, when we are so much more aware of survival and contingency and elemental forces.

These ideas come together in the final stanza, where we become cooling molecules whose weakening force of repulsion is a metaphor for the necessity of interdependence and community in a challenging environment.