Winter Fence PL

Roses Dreaming

Finally, it is January. I breathe a big sigh of relief. Finally, the deep, beautiful, mostly empty month of bare trees and snow squalls and frozen earth and silence. After the rush-gush down the chute from the end of October to the end of December, January is like looking at a bare wall after absorption in a de Kooning…like the sudden hush of a library reading room off a cacophonous city street.

This is the month to take bundled-up walks around five o’clock when the ink-stained clouds and the blue dusk chill the fingers and thrill the soul. I wear hats and mufflers and gloves under wool mittens and breathe the cold air down to my knees and let my toes fend for themselves in thick socks.

I think of something I read once about the cold. The advice was good: not to hunch up or shudder or wrap your arms around yourself to ward it off but rather to breathe, to relax, to let go, to surrender.

This January seems to be a lesson in that, letting go of things no longer useful or beautiful like dresses that don’t delight; books read and forgotten; paper I thought would be used in my work but piles up now in plastic bins; plastic bins because they’re ugly; an angel food cake pan (really!); knicknacks and bric a brac (not charming); striped socks with mended toes; dried-up pens; threadbare potholders; wellies with split soles.

And deeper still…letting go of questions that no longer serve: Am I kind, lovely, smart, resourceful, creative, worthy? Is there enough to go around? Must love be earned? I am paying more attention this month to how I create my life, shape the days, spend the nights. How thoughts can restore well being or undermine it. Living the interesting question: in the end, what is left when you take away what is no longer useful or beautiful or nourishing to the work and to the heart?

January’s gift is the time and the stillness and the uneventfulness to go within and toss out, dust up, rearrange…to bustle about down in the dark cellar or up in the frigid attic. In this landscape of black trees, stark horizons, and crisp, white air, there is no place to hide. Best to show up. Best to surrender. Best to release. Best to listen to what the silence has to say. And pay heed.