Amsterdam in December

Winter scares and fascinates me at the same time. I fear the overwhelming silence, especially when I'm out in the streets alone (I feel more vulnerable then, stripped of anything that is unique and personal; it's as if the silence could swallow me without warning). Winter brings things back to their innermost selves - it's a season with zero fanfare. Surviving it takes a lot of deep breathing and a lot of letting go. I come from a tropical land when a flower is a flower all year round; Christmas turns into Carnaval turns into June festivities turns into October Holidays, the sun burning our faces all the while - there's no time or space for introspection, on weekends we used to drive 3 hours by car each way just to be in a silent country house, but being such a social people we'd take at least 10 friends to the getaway and have a barbecue. Not even my bedroom was silent - on the hottest days I would sleep with the sound of at least 3 different TVs coming in through the open window.

Winter in the north is like an interminable dive into deep, dark waters. What scares me most is that I never seem to come out of it feeling the same.