Jamie Antonisse

Little things have been driving the seasonal change into my consciousness the last few weeks. The cold feet in the morning, the shadow of a barometric-pressure shift migraine (expertly staved off by Belinda's advice, thank you thank you thank you again Bel), and less subtly, occasional dreams of flaming red maple leaves. All these signs have been whispering what I'm rude enough to shout: Winter. Winter, that hemisphere-wide, scheduled grief, Winter is Coming.

When I first moved to Los Angeles, I assumed that I had left all this "season" nonsense behind. But last year taught me that a change in latitude, east to west, only keeps the thermometer from dropping; it doesn't change the way the December sun slinks sideways through the sky, it doesn't change the stretching shadows at 3 p.m. or the protracted bruise-color of the evening. Everyone deals with the impending shortening in their own manner and time. This year I'm going to try to deal with it now, by pinning down the light/dark division of the calendar life, and charting out a candle path for the coming months.

Now there are three ways to deal with the subjective side of winter (and by that, I mean the burrowing instinct, the drive to depression and the easy onset of exhaustion... but you're all mammals, you all KNOW what I mean better than I can explain it). You can move to the equator. This is the sensible, enlightened response to winter, so it is naturally the least popular. You can make a geographical stand and fight the malaise, as the self-determining entity and a Ford factory of efficiency you are. For most of my formative years I was (in my spiral-notebook-scribbling, homebody sort of way) a firebrand, so I proudly made this determination winter on winter, only to fail spectacularly. Reponse three? Accept that winter is temporarily stronger than you. Bow without kneeling. Work when you can, sleep when you must, making an effort to remember that, just a fistful of pages away, March is survived by April. I've come to see this as the Adult response... and like many of the trappings of the adult world I've reluctantly chosen it because it hurts less. I'll slip into my old "pick yourself up and do something, douche" habits once in awhile, because its easy for option three to turn to self-indulgence and self-pity, and because I hate the idea of giving up. But acceptance of a few engine failures is absolutely necessary: the alternative is a downwards spiral that can turn an afternoon on the couch into a week.

There are upsides to winter, of course. Specifically, the upside is snow, and its analogue, the oases of happiness and clarity that can only exist in a general state of Down. Luckily, even though snow has probably never touched the palm trees of Westwood, I know I can count on a few gorgeous waking moments, a few clear bursts of inspiration, in the dark.

And if not, Mario Galaxy comes out in November. Followed shortly by everything else.