January

 I'm really meant to be registering for a new health plan online information presentation (what a mouthful) right now, but as I sat down to get to it, some books on my worktable fell over.  I looked around and found this little iron owl to put in place.  Better.

It's a simple fix, I know, but it signifies what January has always been for me.  Putting things in place, collating, weeding out unnecessaries, shapeshifting my environment.   Sometimes I re-place things, then re-place them back to their original spot, as if the movement were a kind of verification.  Sometimes, like yesterday's sudden impulse to rearrange the handmade, disaster strikes...a ceramic angel, the gift of a friend, dislodges, falls, and is decapitated.  But mostly these efforts make some peace with my way of living.

Since it's my birth month, executive orders are supposedly the order I live by, but I find that the rest of the year (with the exception of maybe September, that old beginning-school-year thing) my talents for executing aren't so much in evidence.  That's okay.  Pushing things around doesn't have to be a year-round sport.

Plus, it seems that I will be moving myself in a few months...back to my own house, as Joseph and Alexander have found one nearby...right next door, in fact.  So this month's mindset has been useful in pre-organizing Things That Have To Be Done.  There's quite a lot, in fact...some kitchen and bath renovation, new windows, the back yard to make into something besides a sea of ivy and spindly trees.  But plans take shape, and it's actually exciting to make lists of the ideas and materials to make them happen, and to search among the available experts to effect them.  I'm in the mood for change.

There is, of course, the dust of debris to look forward to...from change itself, from expunging, from rebuilding.  It isn't pleasant when you are in the middle of it, but it's a pathway and I, at least in these ways, find it a challenge I look forward to.  Even the inevitable surprises and adjustments (and re-adjustments) that come with the territory of changing anything.  It turns out to be my forte any month of the year.

I'll keep you posted as things shape up.  I'm accepting all manner of renovation advice, if you care to contribute.

Be well, all.  Take care. Now on to that health thing...

Winter

  

Walking out today, it feels like spring...freshly opened air, clear vision.

But it's winter, even on such a day that feels like a reprieve, a gift we can enjoy while we can.  We think of spring as hope...new growth, returning warmth, the freedom of the burgeoning outdoors after the huddle of icy months.  No wonder I am more buoyant.

Seasons have each their own personalities, though once in a while they indulge in a little alter-ego play.

Summer, those few months that used to mean children unfettered by time and school, is followed by Fall, the break from the oppressive heat, pretty colors against a deepening landscape, the breeze still light, still welcome.  We dress in sweaters and wrap ourselves in pumpkin festivals.

Illusions, all.

It's winter that holds the truth...trees bared of their fluttering decor, bone-chilling mornings, darkness that descends before our days are done.

Winter is the season of reality.  Nothing hidden except the roots of things to come.  We see ourselves as we are, unadorned, undistracted by dalliances, delusions.  We hunt, as does all of nature, for sustenance.

Around us, the foundation and structures that hold us in place become clear...the iced immobility of ground, the many-fingered limbs stark against impenetrable sky, abandoned nests (no longer safe from preying eyes) tangled in them, the outlines of crevices, once softened by glare, now sharpened by shadow.  Sunlight, slanted, stays long enough to give us new perspectives.

We may be lucky enough to hide from the cold, but not from ourselves.  Plainness is the virtue to hold to.  We face what we need to learn and to know.  To think about what is worth keeping, and what must pass on, or go.

Lying fallow, we do what we can to repair the damages of delusion and over-bearance.  We prepare to grow.

Who we are

 

?