icebox

The only words that I feel like writing these days already have owners and organizers, and I just put them on lease in my respective journals, blogs, and mutterings. I'm trying not to write about things that I only kind of care about, or about what I think will make an interesting story. Also, I'm trying to reduce the amount of "I" posts, i.e. the i'msomusingandmysterioussomeonelovemyemoself posts. Hence my draft to published post count has maintained a consistent 3-1 ratio, and I don't know if that will ever change.

We have a room-sized freezer in our lab where we store miscellaneous life things that we need. The door is huge, the temperature difference is huge, and the first time experience can be daunting (especially when a more experienced lab person pretends like there's no way out once the door closes, a favorite trick of mine). I used to run in and run out immediately, accomplishing my errand before the drastic weather change affected my mental state. But as the days have gotten longer and warmer I relish my time in the coolest place on campus. The regular temperature is 35 degrees F, which feels much colder inside during the summer days. I love the paper thinness of the air, the refreshing familiarity of the cold as it provides respite and preserves the life forces under our care. Once I have stayed in there for a while I am not wrapping myself in my lab coat anymore, and although I see the evidence of the frigid state in the frosted film overtaking everything, I feel comfortable. It's as though I have to reach out and touch something in the room to remind me where I am. It's like I've found an unorthodox home state.

I breath the same paper thin air when I step onto the MARTA train, or when I walk around Wal-Mart, or when I drive around downtown, or when I stay at home long enough. I think there's an inversion of logic here, though: It's possible that these harsh conditions are the normal, but I attempt to insulate myself in 70 degree boxes, an endeavor at which I have notably succeeded. Dashing in and out of this world, staring at it through a window, strategizing an exit plan...that's not the Gospel. Standing still long enough for your heart to break is not the end, either. It seeing the frosted dirt as beautiful, it's praying for the eyes to see this way. It's the ownership of and the covenant with the fat, the loud, the uncouth, the offensive, the ungrateful, the unjustified; these become our kin. It's understanding that God is most glorified, his Spirit is the most preserved in the cold and dry, and we can work the best under these conditions. It's setting up shop so that these harsh truths seep into your skin and alter your definition of beauty, of good news, of home. It's a slow but steady destruction of comfort. It's the yearning for redemption in the end but the ability to see it in the middle, in the in between. It's breathing in shards of ice and pain and breathing out Eternity.