the longest night
The winter solstice always feels like a demarcation point. A sign in the forest that you are halfway along a very winding and cruel path, but that you are also halfway out. The nights, which feel longer and longer are still just as long, but you know the available daylight is increasing by seconds, then minutes, and soon they start to turn into hours around the end of February when you actually start to notice the lengthening light. I have been staying close to home and letting the agitated tendon in my foot heal, except for a matinee outing for theater this afternoon in the burbs, after which we emerged to twilight and drove back to the city in the dark.
In exactly six months it will be the summer solstice. We had initially intended this to be our wedding day down at the courthouse followed by a fancy dinner for immediate family and friends, then with a party over the weekend, but in recent months amended those plans to just a big party w/ vows exchanged to happen on the day after the solstice to fall on the weekend. But the day will be just as long and warm no doubt as the one before it. There will be forest frolicking and floral cupcakes and a more casual picnic-like vibe. I already have the perfect dress and have small start on invites and favors already. It will be here faster than we know.
In the meantime, this Christmas has felt a bit less festive. For one, I have felt the past couple of years since losing my dad, off balance and out of sorts. Perhaps more than any other time of year, this particular one was about family (or more specifically MY family.) I will see my sister after the holiday briefly for gifts, and that is fun, but the absence of both my mother and father left a hole in reality I am not quite sure how to fill. I could get out my tiny tree, my garlands, wreaths, and stockings, but that low level grief, combined with the dumpster fire shitstorm that is the world this year, seems less sparkly even than the past two. I've wrapped gifts, but instead of under the tree, they are stacked on the shelf behind my desk in all their pretty paper. We've been eating beglittered supermarket cookies, drinking hot cocoa, and the other night, fell asleep listening to Christmas music, but I am not feeling it.
Despite my lack of sprit, we do have the excitement of Les Miz coming Monday--a show I saw when I was 17 last and it quickly because the musical I knew every lyric to and was obsessed with for around a year. So its going to be even more exciting going into it knowing it all by heart. Otherwise, I've been alternating the Wicked movie soundtrack and the Broadway soundtrack to & Juliet, which I am loving more and more, as I write.
I have a lot of writing to do over the next couple of days to free up the holiday and still get paid for my usual amount of freelance work, which will come in handy in January. Plus many things to attend to for both the chapbook series , the shop, and my own poems I am hoping to fit around that work. There will still no doubt be some time for Christmas horror movies and gestures toward at least trying to feel like its a holiday when really it feels more like its just another chilly winter stretch of days when I want to nap a lot.
There are, however, some fun things due around the bend, including the relaunch of my Patreon, another book project that will be here before we know it (possibly by March) and some zines and art experiments I have planned. I don't know about resolutions as we close out the year, but I do have some goals I'd like to set in motion come January 1st, and will share them as soon as I have something like a list.
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