Beginning

Disjointed, draft, rambling thoughts. I’ll pull this together tomorrow, on the solstice.

We mark time in our lives by events, a check and balance of how we should feel on a given day, at a given point. Christmas and other holidays, anniversaries, birthdays. These things hold some kind of sway over us, even if it’s just an excuse to have time off work, or a reason to show ourselves kindness or sympathy.

The world takes such a different light when autumn settles in. before we know it the sun rises only slightly above the horizon, the development is subtle and slow, but one day we wake up and realize how dark our days are, how the lighted spaces between downtown buildings have disappeared, how the deep shadows of forests form in the morning when a tiny bit of light shines with the rising sun, and remain so until only a few hours later it is engulfed once again in the dark of the earth’s apogee from the sun, and it slides into complete darkness.

This is my favorite day, the one I use to mark my time, my check and balance. To know that the day after the solstice, I will have again come to the other side of the dark, that I have thrived another year, through darkness and the light, even keel.