Winter At Nine

Night trains are definitely my definition of pleasant. Two hours of sleep on a 10 hour train journey from Vienna to Zurich. I'm not exactly sure where all the time went, but a lot of it sure was dedicated to locking and unlocking the door to my compartment. Indeed, I had the honour of having been assigned the only "bed" within reach of the door lock. Why people like to get up at several different random times during the night still remains a mystery to me, but my responsibility of keeping the mean old meanies out of our compartment - who apparently spray some kind of spray at you and then rob you of all your goods - kept me awake through the night. NEVER accept being given that task, even if at first you feel like some kind of superhero, or guardian angel of your beloved sleeping buddies. It's not worth it, really, especially if you're stuck with people with bizarre sleeping patterns. I even had the visit of an unexpected visitor who mistook our compartment for hers, climbed up the ladder and suddenly realised someone else was in what she thought was her bed. In my skillful 4 o'clock-in-the-morning-German we managed to sort out that she was in the wrong compartment, and that I hadn't in fact been lying in the wrong bed all this time. What a completely random night! After facing my defeat at keeping intruders from infiltrating our sleeping compartment, I finally decided to give up my role as door keeper. At the risk of getting abducted by the big biting bed bugs, I abandoned myself with sweet surrender to the bilssful sound of slumber.

Either my lack of sleep results in my being in a seriously bad mood and in a state of cantankerousness (my new favourite word), or on the other hand, my eyes are constantly filled with laughter tears, caused by the simplest things. Although the line was thinly drawn between the two extremes, the latter case was the category I gracefully fell into this morning - most probably to my brother's great contentment. At the start of our journey back to Geneva from Zurich, the sun hadn't risen yet, nor was it going to break through the thick fog, as I later observed; the snow-covered fields, forests and villages depicted a maginificent black and white scenery before us. The stillness of the morning, echoed through the snow-burried countryside, soothed my soul. Smiles were exchanged with Eloi; our silence conveyed the enchantment and wonder stirring in our souls - God's presence was wonderfully made known to us.

This song by Miranda Stone is the harmony to the melody my soul was singing this morning:

Don't you feel again the glow of knowing you're on holiday? You ran around in your nightclothes like when you were nine, and you don't know what it is that maybe could be coming. Just like Christmas it is, a good surprise for tearing open. No work today only childhood things, no blue sky but happy, happy is: maybe the thrill of what snow was, coming back a little bit. Maybe the thrill of what happy, happy is - Winter at nine.

No one's angry in this morning light, it's almost like the thrill of smashing up your wooden sled, surviving the spill. Barefoot on the Persian rug, I brush my hair until I glow. There is nothing to be done today, no place left to go. No work today only childhood things, no blue sky but happy, happy is: maybe the thrill of what snow was, coming back a little bit. Maybe the thrill of what happy, happy is - Winter at nine.