MATT McCLUSKEY
FRIEND OF THE GARDEN CREATURE
Comfort is being able to take a break from being inside my own head. Since cross-country skiing has been out this winter, there have been scant opportunities to do that.
Fortunately, gardening season is coming. While my relationship with our Victorian-era house can often be described as love-hate, my feelings towards the gardens we have built around it are pure adoration. Being outside in summer, planting, mulching, watering, trimming, weeding, and weeding some more, is a wonderful comfort. It’s a place where the rest of the world fades and I am immersed in beauty. Rose blooms are still far away, but they have been on my mind as we faithfully put our discarded fish tank water near their roots.
Roses love fish poop! Come by my house in July and you’ll see. The hundreds of tulips we have planted over the years are less of a distant prospect, as they are already assertively poking up through the earth.
I have to admit to being an amateur when it comes to the taxonomy of gardening though I am slowly learning what species flourish best in the North Country and what plants produce the tastiest vegetables in August. I think what excites me most is the design part. What textures and colors would best blend together near that backdrop? Where should I put that treasured rock or new flowering perennial? What is the best spot for a new raised bed?
How shall I imagine that new space I finally cleared of brush? Our cat Clipsie seems to love gardening as much as I do. We have called her the “garden creature” ever since she curled up in our indoor ferns as a kitten. She’ll happily follow me from place to place while I am gardening, keeping me company as I figure out where to put the annuals I acquired in a late June clearance sale or training tomatoes towards the sun. Gardening is a comfort as it gives me time to create, to reflect, to imagine, to admire, and to escape. Clipsie and I are eager to get started.
SILAS TIMM
FULL TIME LIVER OF LIFE
Each step I took was a battle, one after another. The steep trail had no end in sight. I looked up and was crushed by how far I had to go. My body felt heavy and weak as I was fighting my inner thoughts telling me to give up.
I had already been hiking up and skiing down this mountain for two hours and I had just reached the halfway point. Above me was the longest boot pack of the race, causing me to walk straight up the steepest part of the mountain with my skis on my back.
I was competing in the championship for the local skimo series.
Skimo racing includes hiking up and skiing down a mountain on a set course that takes you on multiple laps across the mountain.
Skimo racing also includes extreme fatigue, cold weather, blisters and hardcore competition.
I think it’s the discomfort which makes people love the sport.
The extreme challenges you experience during the race proves that you can endure. Each time you experience suffering and come back into your comfort zone unscathed it makes you more resilient.
When I stepped on top of the podium after a culmination of six races that season, I thought back to them.
I had endured this extreme discomfort and there I stood on the other side with a great accomplishment.
If I had not been willing to experience this discomfort, I would not get to feel this joy and satisfaction of overcoming it.
Knowing I could endure and overcome this made me excited to face my next challenge.
SHIFAN SHAFFE
SHITPOSTER
Without comfort, it’s hard to imagine ourselves. As you come into this world, strength and weakness is also born. You begin your life, and that duality begins a journey towards you.
It moves slowly, but it never stops. Wherever you go, whatever path you take, your strengths and weaknesses follow – never faster, never slower, always coming, but at different directions.
You will run; it will reside. You will rest; it will not.
One day weakness will out speed strength, and when you feel weakness for the first time, your thoughts will linger; you will lose your strength.
And when you do, it will always be the little things that will hold you up; we see that as comfort.
It’s there at our lowest point and reinforces us to reach our highest points.
Without comfort, we lose strength, without strength; we lose ourselves.
Whether comfort is materialistic or non-materialistic, something or someone, we cannot live without it.
Fortis in Latin translates to strength, and confortare means to strengthen.
Following that history, comfort was born through strength.
Maybe comfort is a defense mechanism, one to protect us from our own thoughts.
Regardless, comfort can only occur situationally.
Many people don’t understand the privilege of having comfort, it’s not something that everyone can obtain.
As you sit here comfortably reading this passage, understand that strength will need comfort as much as weakness will need grief.
Take pride in the little things; it protects us from the other side of the same coin.
MATT TAYLOR
BILLS SUPER FAN
Comforts, comforts, comforts, where do I begin.
When I think of my comforts, I think of hanging out with friends. Whether that be in my suite, at Dana or the Pub, or anywhere else that we might be. When we’re all talking and having fun with each other, it’s a great time and I feel comfort. I think of relaxing and watching a TV show, or taking a nap.
I also think of that feeling when I take my first sip of coffee in the morning, and I can feel the caffeine waking me up and getting me ready for the day, or the excitement of finding out that there’s flank steak at Dana, which is definitely the best Dana meal. There’s sitting on the couch and watching my favorite sports teams, the Knicks and the Bills.
When they win it improves my mood until the next game, and it’s definitely a comfort. Going to practice every afternoon and running with my teammates, joking around and laughing as we run all over Canton, I will always cherish those moments. In the end comfort represents many different things for me, and I am grateful to have a life with all these things that bring me comfort.
TAIYARA NUDRAT
GIRL CUT DOWN YOUR SODIUM INTAKE
Comfort to me is biting into a triscuit.
There’s something about that audible crunch and all that salt smeared around the mouth that makes me go all warm or fuzzy.
Don’t ask me why, I don’t know the answer myself.
It should also be noted that the last time I was eating triscuits was while watching the Holdovers, which will, at the very least, take home the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Anyway, I haven’t been actively seeking out anything remotely challenging lately, and you could very well argue that I am being smothered by the weighted blanket of comfort. Even the Sudoku puzzles I solve are in easy mode.
At what point does seeking that much comfort serve as a bandaid to some larger (albeit nonexistent) problem looming over the horizon?
I don’t know, maybe you’ll see the answer to it next week. But back to the subject of comforts, can’t live without them!
I have this ever growing pile of books designated as TBR in my room. I’d probably flip through the pages of one or two every now and then, but at this point, it’s more about their physical presence in the room than anything else.
One time, my heart ached when a friend asked to borrow my copy of “The Master and Margarita,” even though it had been ages since I last read that one.
I ended up concocting situations that left her forgetting to take it back home.
Once everything was done and dusted, I simply put it back in the shelf where it belonged, shining its flashy spine to soothe the nerves.
But I do get the warm and fuzzy feeling in the presence of my book collection, the very same brought on by triscuit popping.
Comforts huh, they bring out the weirdest aspects of human beings!