Photo Credit: Jaime Martinez

Below is part of a weekly series called What Does This Remind You Of? Learn how you can participate at the bottom of this post! 

This picture immediately reminds me of a book I read not too long ago called New Self, New World by Philip Shepherd. There’s a part where Shepherd talks about how when he was younger, he would repeatedly try and dip his full body nude into a river that was freezing cold. I forget what he was trying to accomplish, having read it so long ago, but since the book was about getting out of the head and more in tune with the self as a whole, I feel like his efforts to dip into the freezing cold were his way of doing just that.

I remember him saying how finally, after a few times, he was able to fully dip himself into the freezing water. He did it by fully embracing the cold, and the earth, and the way his body reacted to it. He did it by not trying to stay warm.

I can’t say I’ve been in freezing temperatures for very long, having been out here in LA all my life, but I have experienced the cold, and I’ve learned sometimes that I get colder because I am trying to stay warm. If I just let myself be cold, it’s almost less of a shock to my body. Taking that notion one step further, sometimes I think of the cold as a precious gift because it comes right from the earth, and I so love the earth…when its weather makes me tremble, I feel it in my bones and try to be relieved that I am able to feel.

This image also gives me vibes of resilience, of becoming one with the earth, of feeling it in every pore. I feel tested when I look at this picture. Challenged. I feel like if the woman in this image can walk nude in ice water, I can take the plunge into similar challenges, and explore different ways of challenging myself, and testing my physical strength and endurance.

It reminds me of doing things you think you cannot do, because they scare the shit out of you. It reminds me of the  different person you have to become when you do scary things, because the regular you can’t come to grips with it. You’ve got to pull out some slimy, writhing, supernatural you buried deep inside, used only for special occasions. And I feel like that supernatural you is the human spirit (which probably definitely isn’t exactly slimy but let’s go with it). That your body is merely your warm and pleasant shell for the time being, aging slowly every day, lovingly reminding you of your physical limitations.

What did you think of this picture? I’ve also got to admit, one of the other things it reminded me of is that movie Frozen. If that girl in the picture is singing, she’s definitely saying, “The cold never bothered me anyway.”

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Monique Muro

Monique is an exceedingly happy human from LA. She runs the blog A Novel Quest, and writes. A lot.

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