I love January - it's such a peaceful, quiet month - resolutions and new beginnings or not. After the flushed and glowing, ginger heavy scentedness that seems to hang over the bustle and busy of November and December, this part of the season is filled with the fresh air of comparative blankness. This year, the snow has matched the activity of the calendar beautifully. As the earthy meetings with friends and family (which can start to feel cumulatively complex) finally slowed down and the noise faded away and the calendar cleared, the landscape outside was blurred to simplicity in the white blanketing of snow that has, finally, apparently, come for good. Now, everything's purified and made newborn in pristine white. Now, the cold and ice has come in earnest, driving us indoors, even as the sun is coming back to us more and more, every day, and streaming through the windows - making our home a veritable solarium of bright warmth - its own genial terrarium - while the hard cold presses in from the outside.
I'm not sure if I've been dancing into the new year or dreaming, drifting and floating into it. I do know that this year has started with much more happiness and peace than the last one did and I am deeply glad for that. In the meantime, reading so many posts, lately, it's been a bit bemusing to observe how differently we all react to January. Some of us seem to charge into the new year - robust and energetic - full of gusto and plans. Others of us seem to be introspective and, even, a bit lost in a happy way. I am, definitely, of the latter perspective. No matter how hard I try and plan ahead in December, I slow almost to a misty halt in January.Speaking of dreaming, a couple of you have asked me if I'm planning for my garden, yet, and I must confess, I've had only a brief and vague thought for it as I've made sure that I would receive my seed catalogs, this year. However, the time to plant seeds seems so very, extremely far off - like in another world or era. The magazines are telling me that I want to reorganize my home and, indeed, I have projects started - both in my heart and in earnest (think, 'reorganizing closets and cupboards'! =]) - but, mostly, I'm dreaming of it all. Just dreaming - reading, thinking, thinking, thinking. I'm thinking of beautiful images and ideals while I'm looking through my windows at the beauty outside and loving the way that the light shines back, falling on my half finished projects. Even as night and dark and chill, still, come early, we're snug and cheery inside.....
The frost garden on my bedroom window...
"The quiet in the house echoes the quiet outside, where ice-sheathed bare branches are gilded in the sunshine, and snow has stifled movement, except that marked by the little birds' interwoven tracks..... This day is waning, the wan sun sinking, the fire needing a stir and a poke. And what have I accomplished? My January day, like the forest outside, looks from afar like a snarl of dead ends and broken places - sere, not serene. But I know different, here at the beginning of the year. Things are stirring, however circular my thoughts, just as the sap is rising in the tangled and hidden world outside. The strength, the purpose, and the flowering of the coming months start here, in the depths of winter, and the icebound month of January."~Catherine Calvert for Victoria Magazine, January/February 2010
I'm sorry to the few of you who've heard about this, already.... I have to confess that the quiet of January was violently interrupted for a few days with much shrieking, clamor and waving of excited hands when my "Jack Frost" photo (shared in the middle of the post, up above) - an image taken of the frost on my bedroom window - was selected as an 'editor's choice' on 500px. You can read about it HERE. It was funny how easily and quickly life calmly slipped back into its sleepy ways, again, though. It's, sort of, old news, now - sort of....but very happy and I just wanted to share it with the few of you who wouldn't have heard about it, yet. =]
