Winter Mysticism: Ways to practice imagination offline

5 embodied things I (or you) might like to explore and feel this month

Happy day four of Get Off Your Phone February, where together we pull away each thread of web we feel trapped by to our screens.

Winter mysticism is the phrase I made a few years ago to describe a set of ideas I was slowly collecting to enjoy the dark and cold months of the year—not just December, but even through until March. I have always lived somewhere frigid, with all four seasons delightfully present. The other three seasons have been easier, more obvious to love. Over the years, with the help of the idea of Hygge, the book Wintering, and many more collected between Mary Oliver and the accidental poets of Tumblr, the winter has become a season of interiority and imagination. I look forward to it, as I look forward to the ocean’s mist in summer and the crisp oranges of the fall. It has, from sustained attention, become something real and meaningful to me.

On this day of Get Off Your Phone February, I share with you 5 ways to spend time off of your phone this month. As much as possible, they are also tied to this time of year in the northern hemisphere and to late winter.

1. Gather by the fire in the hearth—even in your modern apartment.

Many have stated that the kitchen is the heart of the home. In winter, and prior to central heating and cooling, the kitchen and hearth were also the heat of the home, and never does that matter more than when we are coming in from cold conditions. This month cooking whenever and whatever possible, and standing by a warm stove or stirring a hot pot adds to my idea of staying close to the center of things.

2. Let tea and a novel tuck you in each night.

It may simply be how romantic and admirable I view those who have a very orderly, peaceful night routine that I want to prioritize this, but in my own experience with morning routines and making my coffee a slow moment in the day, I’ve started actually slowing on purpose to end the day with a mug of peppermint tea and the same good book. My favorite reflection on this is from the wonderful poem “Tea” by Leila Chatti, which you can find in full here.

“Five times a day, I make tea. I do this
because I like the warmth in my hands, like the feeling
of self-directed kindness. I’m not used to it—
warmth and kindness, both—so I create my own
when I can. It’s easy.”

3. Make your mundane memories into something.

For me, this used to look like TikToks, and I enjoyed making them for a long time as an invitation towards making little moments special, and capturing a photo or two of them. I enjoy even more my Substack practice of this now, where perhaps one or two photos a day are used over the course of a week of writing, and act as anchors of reflection at time for my writing here. I junk journal, sketch, or commonplace journal my days, and I aim only for more days than not. For you, it could be a hand-craft of your choice, a journal, a recipe, plating your dinner in a special way, learning a dance to music. But what can you make from what you already have—physically and mentally?

4. Let a point of nature exist as an equal being in your life.

I recently re-read Braiding Sweetgrass, and I am always re-reading Mary Oliver’s poetry. In the dark season, loneliness can often overtake solitude as our predominant understanding of what quiet spaces mean. It is a remarkably less lonely world to live in if not only human beings are what get to have a soul, an aliveness, a something worthwhile of noticing without trying to own. I moved a year ago for many reasons from one part of Boston to another, but one big reason was the ability to be near the Charles River each day. It’s beautiful at any given moment, and this was my wish to live by it, but what I’ve learned over the last 6 months is how it has become an active being in my day-to-day life. How the snow melts into it, then freezes it over. How the trails become more or less active, and how people gather around it as animals return or leave for seasons. The river is, in many ways, another sort of person to me (yes, I know how dirty the Charles also is—I don’t ask people to be perfect to be loved so why should I start with nature?)

The spring will soon be here, and change throughout nature will be obvious. See if you might notice one small space now in the un-blooming, so that the texture of its transformation will be even more remarkable in busy season.

5. Pursue something awkward and challenging, but that you have always aspired towards.

Last fall, I took a novel writing workshop. Earlier this winter, I took a culinary class. I felt awkward at both, and over the weeks, the discomfort of being around new people in a setting I did not know felt like an irritation. At the next interval, it became less fearsome, and by the end, I was connected to these people and these creative practices. I still am to both, and I am grateful to past me for pushing through the harder part of learning so I can have both the beginning of skill and little communities I now get to live out.

Summer remains far away. Imagine what you’d like to be more in the practice of doing by then, and see if there is a way in your community, with a friend, or by yourself to spend some of the remaining slow time building a gift for future you. The time of winter will come to an end eventually, but how you use it is still a question you have agency over.

Thank you, as always, for your attention, and I shall see you tomorrow.

xx, Margaret of Bad Art Every Day