Gray and brown, everything outside is gray and brown and showing it's bones. I like this time of year for it is honest about things- nothing is hidden in a veil of leaves and flowers, it's all there in plain sight like a face without makeup. Exhausted but honest. Resting, withdrawn from all the busyness of the other seasons, the relentless harvesting and growing and the constant hum of the bees.
I love those things to, but it's nice to rest.
The past month or so I haven't written, no excuses other than the well went dry. This morning though I woke up with gray and brown in my head and I wanted to write- about the way the world is right now, about winter, about bones and quiet and resting. The holidays are different for us again this year- it seems that every year they take on their own glamour, and change around circumstances- I worry about tradition, but it slips away. Last year was a busy whorl of bright lights and colors, the wedding, Christmas and everything to the hilt and beyond. This year is the opposite, a year of bearing in, removing ourselves from the distractions of 'to much' to be with ourselves. Simple things. White candles. Doggies. A cat that snores. Dreaming under the electric blanket and watching endless movies about nothing together while my brain takes a holiday. Grendel is off to his Dad's for Christmas, and Charles's relatives are all off to other places- Christmas day it will be just us and his parents and the great white house. Which is nice, together, a chance to talk and listen and look at old photographs.
It's not that I'm anti-social, it's just that I'm craving stillness. All fall I have had school and work, and while I love those things- I love thinking best of anything mostly- it is the constant need of the students that wears me down. That doesn't sound very kind, but it's true- their need to be taught what to do and what not to- their need for attention and love and all of it. I still have two days with them before break, time for cookies and movies and laughing. Monkey noises. (one of my boys, a senior, makes monkey noises. Someday I'll explain why- I love him and worry about him and he drives me nuts) I'm looking forward to these days but I am looking forward more to long days at home with the manz. Just us, together with the bones of the world all around, us and doggies and a cat that snores.
