The Ghost of Warmth

The blue wool sweater my father wore in the winter of 1998 is gone, unravelled into a pile of yarn that no longer holds the shape of his shoulders. It was a heavy, scratchy thing, smelling of damp earth and tobacco, but it was the only thing that kept the North Sea wind from reaching his skin. When I think of that winter, I do not see the snow or the grey horizon; I see the way he would pull his collar up, trying to trap a summer that had long since packed its bags and left. We spend so much of our lives trying to manufacture heat in places where the cold has already settled in. We paint over the frost with memories of golden light, pretending that if we look hard enough, we can force the sun to stay. But what happens when the warmth is only a trick of the light, a thin veil draped over a shivering world? Does the cold feel any less sharp once the illusion fades?

Hugo Baptista has captured this fragile tension in his image titled Scheveningen Dune. He invites us to stand in the biting wind and wonder if the glow we see is a promise or merely a memory. Does the warmth in this scene feel like a comfort to you, or does it make the silence feel even colder?