This evening inched even closer to the morning today, and I feel relief in knowing that the inching will reverse course tomorrow. The longest night of the longest year is happening, and today I sat in the yard trying to soak in as much of this short day as I could. 

Carla tucked in beside me on the greying wood of the Adirondack chair, both of us facing the sun tracing across the sky, a line that its own gravity defined. Islands of tan fur on a good dog’s back angled in such a way that hundreds of hairs were breaking down the warming light. Tiny rainbows wavered in my eyes, like I was looking too closely at a tube television—the magic moving pictures distilled into repeating dots of color. 

Everything can be broken down. It’s how we figure out how things work and what things are made of. But I keep breaking down, and I don’t know that I’m any closer to knowing what I’m made of or how I work.

Being uncertain is part of learning though—truly learning. There is of course value in assimilating information and skills from others who have already done the experimenting and want to share it, but coming to know truths that can only be learned through our own experimentation and research within ourselves is a different kind of learning, and one that we don’t have time to put off. We can have goals and aspirations for ourselves and a picture of how we want to move through this life, but these will be a lot harder to actualize if we don’t know how we work and what we’re made of. It would be like wanting to make spaghetti for dinner and just assuming you can because you have a bag of groceries on your counter. What if there are no tomatoes inside? You can go back to the store, or you can call a neighbor to ask if they have any you can borrow...there are ways to do what you want to do, but you have to know what you’re dealing with to get there. 

Having more time with myself over this last year has given me glimpses into things that a busy schedule conveniently kept me from having to sit with for too long. I don’t have anything figured out, but I’m gathering data, and I’ll keep compiling it into song and poetry reports. 

Thank you for being here with us, and we can’t wait to be there with you, wherever you are, when it’s safe. May there be bright spots for each of you despite this dark year.