12.15.17

“Does it not seem to you at times, when
Twilight walks through the house , that
Right here alongside us is another element,
In which we live quite differently?

(“A Candle Is Brought In”)”
― Innokenty Annensky,

I think my favorite thing about Winter is the Blue Hour.  Even the names of that hour before darkness–twilight, eventide, gloaming, vesper–reveal that we are in ‘another element’.  It can take you out of the flow of time.  Most evenings, it signals for me that it is time to stop for the day.  The fire gets started, I light the lamps, and open the door for the kitties to come in for a little visit.  I like it to be still and quiet, except for the crackle of the fire, and I don’t read or listen to music, but just sit there in a big comfy chair, as the funny sleepy owl pillow stares at me from across the sofa.  I watch the deepening blue as light leaves the sky of another gray and brumous day, feeling how the day is now over, tucked into bed.   There is a sweet melancholy as I find myself going through a bit of reckoning about the day–what I accomplished, what seemed important, what I realize I missed, what I need to let go of.  It feels like an important pause, as Kate McGahan writes in the Lizard from Rainbow Bridge, “It may be just a simple pause within the chaos of life to remind you that there is more to life than the details of living it, working it and paying for it.  It may be a shred of insight or a flash of recognition that comes to you in a fleeting thought or maybe in a dream in the tween times of your own mind.”

It’s an especially necessary respite during the flurry of preparing for Christmas…

“Evenings and mornings represent “the gates” to your inner universe. Taking care of how you enter and exit these “gates” is your primary responsibility; do not give away this power. Once you master it, life will never be the same again.”
― Stan Jacobs, The Dusk And Dawn Master