Words for the Dark

How slow can you get?

This December feels like stream of consciousness, sleepy and dark. I’ve been giving in. I snooze my alarm each morning until the very last second.

Each morning in my pages I ask myself, where am I in time and space? Winter morning, cold air, melancholy light. I forget the melancholy of the light in December all year until it comes back again to leave me feeling like the day is done at noon. After lunch I could just crawl back into bed with my melancholy feeling and sleep.

I wonder, how slow can I get?

Sometimes I worry about closing the circle of the year, remembering the right steps to release this year and then sow the next. Then I remember that it happens whether I remember or not.

It is too cold to garden but that’s my job so I move stiffly until my body warms up, all except the tip of my nose.

In December it feels good to be tired. I take a bath almost every day. I hunch over the counter eating pomegranates like a squirrel.

The world wants me to move quickly in December. To finish, finish, finish. Get it done before Channukah, Solstice, Christmas, New Years. Make everything special. Remember every detail.

I want to wander through December, half asleep. The earth also wants me to be slow and aimless. The light wants me to stop and look at it, lump in my throat for a reason I can’t remember.

There is power in the no of slowness and the refusal to finish. Let yourself be slow and sleepy. Let yourself be.

All my love,

Kate