On Winter's Reign and an Old Puzzle

Finally we are experiencing again what Winter’s Reign could mean. Half a meter of thick, fat pure white snow, this morning. And it kept snowing more. Around midday a slight sun broke through. I tried to feel how it would be on the snowcovered balcony. Keep the door closed! Its really freezing. But after lunch I dared to put on Willemiens old rubber boots.. And with a small shovel I started to dig my way out and down the staircase.
The next hour and a half I kept digging and shoveling. The Car still is almost invisible by a huge pack of white mass. Maybe tomorrow I can try to dig him out. But the Public Snowplower has added Mountains snow around. Perhaps, and only if the sun will shine. I did free the sidewalk, one track only, and I can walk to the feedingspots for the birds on my gardenslippers. I was out of breath but I felt satisfied.
And after a hot shower and dry clothes I enscanced myself on the couch with hot mint tea to Phone with Mischa on her second freezing walkingadventure through the dunes. She was still shivering. And then, just as wanted to sink down in a nap, my old friend Leonie.called. We know each other from the time we were six. So we really meet in conversation, in true friendship, speaking and listening from our hearts. She lost her husband thirty years ago in an heartattack.  She knew Willemien very well. We have much to share and to learn in wisdom of old age.
Again today there was no chance to get to the cemetary. We’ll see tomorrow again.  But at least my reading of Thomas Merton’s  Zen and the Birds of Appetite has brought an amazing  insight. Lateron I will tell about his very broad and deep insight in his essay on The New Conscioussness (1967). Finally here I’m so happy and relieved to find in his brillant essay  that last jiggsaw piece I had been searching for after I left my Academic carreer – weary of the fruitless, steadyly distracting and escalating, repetitious conflicts tearing apart the Faculty into factions.
I still had doubts about the rightness of my motivs to quit  Now, thanks to Willemien and Thomas Merton I definitely feel at peace with that lifechanging decision. Why? Could I explain that a bit more in detail? Well that will be another very long story. And when I start telling Mischa about these learnings, she mostly will cut me short. So why would I bore you?