An ordinary day in winter, in December. Corridors of pine trees on the sidewalks of the city, chopped in service to the feast day turned holy day at solstice time; people scurrying to and fro, carrying bags and bundled up; the early dark punctuated by shoplights, headlights, and now the many and varied lights of the season, cheerful and outlandish.
The bodily confusion persists after the change of the clocks, always leading me to think it is later than it really is.
“Only the closed mind is certain,” went a line in a movie I watched last night. I suppose that’s so, and yet certainty is a thing striven for. The unknown, the unlooked-for can be a source of dread or discomfort, particularly in winter. Probably another bodily reaction—survival. But there is more to life than survival, or there ought to be, anyway. Uncertainty begets exploration, growth.
The days pass now as quickly as in summer, and we arrive one-third through the month leading to a New Year. I’d always wished the changing of the year to happen in summer, but no more. All is motion and doing in summer, and the start of a new year requires some time for reflection, a pause.
A simple snowfall is the prettiest thing in winter. A simple snowfall brings light and calm; the quiet, a stillness. Listen: Autumn in New York, the Bill Charlap Trio. Piano and bass, adagio, only brushes on the drums, and what you hear is a gentle snowfall, or leaves tracing unhurried arcs as they fall to the ground. It’s perfect.
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Here is an alternate version (too cleaned-up):
I did the drawing in the inverse, as you can see from the original scan, below:
e daggar art: THE MUSEUM 