Since I retired many years ago, January has always been a month of unsettled feelings for me. I usually do some "purging", clearing out and organizing....maybe a way to calm my mind some.
Because in January, my mind fills with possibilities. Maybe my subconscious is trying to me something, I don't know. But my mind gets so filled with things I want to do that I find it difficult to sleep at night.
During the month, I dreamed obsessively about vegetable gardening, building a deeper pond so I can over winter our fish without transferring them into our garage, painting, writing, hand stitching, and reading and researching all of the above. Perhaps I'll blog more about those things in the coming days.
But let's start with the first day of January. The last day of December, and the first day of January were not good ones for me for reasons that I won't go into here. I was struggling emotionally and needed to clear my head. On New Year's Day, I bundled up (it was a very cold and cloudy day) and picked up my camera and went into our postage stamp backyard.
Closing my eyes, I focused on breathing. Breath in deep, exhale slowly. In, out. Repeat.
Eventually my mind calmed a bit and I became aware of the sound. Really, the lack of sound. We live in town on a busy street but there was no traffic. A few birds sang in the forest behind us, but otherwise it was quiet.
I opened my eyes and looked. It was still cold and cloudy but I just stood and looked around. The clouds were moving quickly and for a brief moment there was a break in the clouds and the sun shone through.
I raised my camera and pressed the shutter three times. A few days later, I worked with the images. A few days after that I wrote the verse.
