It’s one thing to remember it as a fact: “Winter can be wondrous.”
But immediately my crabby inner voice counters with “Yeah, yeah, and bitter cold, too, and a nuisance. Not my favorite. ” And just like that, I think away “wondrous,” burying it beneath winter’s more tangible features as shivers run down my arms.
Then one day snowflakes the size of dimes begin to fall and they keep on falling until the ground and every twig on every tree is covered with them. And the kid in me makes me put on my boots and jacket and climb the hill to get a look at the scene from within it.
And I realize that “wondrous” is breathing all around me.
I’m hibernating. In spurts. None of them as long as I’d like.
It’s winter, the time for turning inward, living on the stored, nutritious fat I gathered over the summer. Examining it, this thick, luxuriant heap of experiences, seeing what contributions each made to my being.
I am declaring myself an Elder now and claiming all the rights and privileges of that status.
I give myself permission to do whatever I want.
I’m finding this current segment of my journey to be the most intriguing one so far, despite the fact I’m well experienced in multi-faceted endeavors. – Once I designed a business card that described me as an “Adept Generalist.” I have sometimes gone by the handle “Susan Manyhats.” – But this time “multi-faceted” doesn’t touch it. Everything’s layers deep now and convoluted and whizzing past at breakneck speed.
Nevertheless, it is winter. Whether the calendar says so or not. And I am curled in a warm room, gazing out my window, letting my mind wander, making up stories about what I hear and see. I decided I’ll share snippets of my dreams and musings. And this is that project’s start.
I don’t know what it will become. It may disappear with the dawn.
But here it is, for now, a record of the dreams I entertain as I gaze from my tree house window.
* * *
An Excerpt from my Journal
12/05/24 10:55 am
Don’t give up hope, I tell myself. The 250th birthday of the USA happens in ’26. Celebrations are being planned in detail even now. Players are moving into place.
It could turn out to be a reclaiming of the true virtues of humanity – a new Renaissance! How splendid would that be!
It’s possible, I suppose, despite the odds. And a girl’s allowed to dream.
All that we need is a great sweeping away of the falsehoods and delusions.
That’s all.
Everything depends on how that unfolds. Literally. Everything.
It’s all or nothing. And there’s no predicting which way it will go.
What an astonishing time to be here as a witness!
Interlude
When I turned on the plant light for the grandmother spider plant in the eastern corner of the living room, an impulse to play Christmas carols on the keyboard arose, and I obeyed it, and it was wonderful. I hadn’t played so much as a single tune in months. I decide that I’m going to have to do it more often.
The carols carried me back across decades, acting as the soundtrack of a movie of Christmases past, each one precious and touching. It’s a truly powerful time. And inescapable. Whole new dimensions of reality emerge; previously unnoticed veils float away. The imagined becomes real, and things you never even dreamed manifest as well.
“The Thing Itself”
11:30 am Bannon’s on. I’ll catch this last half hour. He’s going to discuss where he thinks we are and what we need to do between now and Jan 21.
“This is the main event,” he says. “This is the thing itself.”
