Dark meanderings

It’s already seven O’clock in the morning and it’s still too dark to see enough to start my morning animal chores, I’ll wait till just enough light allows me to see the details. The sky is dark and cold with clouds and a light drizzle floats and covers everything, it feels kind of good. Today will be another cloudy dark day. I miss the sun.  

This time of year the pace is different, there is still a lot of work to be done, but things aren’t chasing me any longer. It’s the first winter in five years I haven’t offered a CSA, that’s nice, it’s allowed me to spend time on all the things that usually pile up and frustrate the dickens out of me because I see clearly that things need to get un- piled but don’t have the precious time to do so. So this is pretty sweet. I’m broke but the satisfaction that comes with the precious allowance of time is remarkable. Projects actually have a chance of completion. This half done business is beyond frustrating. 

I’ve noticed something pretty cool as I was kind of checking in with myself this morning, that even through I’m really struggling with the dark layer of clouds (which were also present in New York) I’m doing better then I have in the past. I no doubt have some kind of light deficit disorder although I haven’t really looked into it at any depth or length, I just get weird, not depressed just real dark, melancholy.  The worst time for me is between the hours of 4:30pm and dark after that I’m fine. Maybe because that’s when all the lights go on, I exist in an artificial environment. Heck I don’t know I’ve been living with this for the past twenty years I think. And can you imagine I once lived in Seattle. The difference is between those terrible hours I was in a brightly lit kitchen prepping for the dinner rush. Most of my hours were spent throughout my life in a bright kitchen. But considering all of this I’m not doing too badly.

The animals feel it too, maybe I’m reading too much into it, but it’s a mysterious time of year, So much of the visual landscape changes and the colors are quieter and look lonely. It’s a time for dropping leaves, and going dormant. It’s the time for centering on what’s beneath and inside. It’s hard for us heart pounding animals. Even the birds change a little. It’s hard to succumb to the necessary and inevitable, like nap time for a three year old. Once they give up the fight they are out like a light. I need to find my place within this cycle, make my peace with it.