December - time sliding - happy new days.

Because there is never enough.

“But she feared time itself... the dwindling of life; how year by year her share was sliced; how, little the margin that remained was capable any longer of stretching, of absorbing, as in the youthful years, the colours, salts, tones of existence…

Virgina Woolf

The Coloured Month.

Hello dear readers and writers, welcome all wonderful new subscribers - I am delighted and humbled to find you here sharing a few moments with me. Especially that you choose to do so here and now, with these few final words of 2023.

Another year has slipped through days and hours with the speed of a runaway train. Many of them bright, filled with wonderful, notably but not uniquely, here in this fast gathering

Substack Writers

community of inspirational, like minded amazing humans. Others, dulled by difficulties and daily duties undertaken, recently, in so much rain—so much rain—also by a great sense of time running out, of no longer having youth on my side.

But how can I complain?

How can I even think of being ungrateful for the time I have had and that which is yet to come when there is war and bloodshed and the uncountable deaths of innocent human beings too numerous to mention happening every day to families whose children will see not one more day.

I cannot.

But, it does not halt me during those moments of wonder that I cherish and share, to question my right to still be dazzled and astonished, a small token of acknowledgement to show empathy and compassion.

I pray it’s enough…

Whichever mood fastens itself to the day, hold on to it, be that they are glorious or filled with an immovable sadness…

Time is one of the few entities of this life we have no control over, impossible to slow down, as I would dearly love, impossible to fast forward also—thankfully! Meaning, all there really is is the now and in that now an urgent sense of need to make the most of every second because they are so vastly important. If you love life with a passion, if you want it all, the colours, the scents, the music, the words, the laughter and tears, it is indeed a necessity. The minutes are ticking by, towards the new year, new days, new hours, filled with unknown adventures, unknown wonders, unknown peace even, and as I sit here with stoves last embers fading slowly behind sooty glass, I am touched, as I always am on this night, by a mournful melancholy of not knowing all that passed by me without noticing and of never having the possibility to even try once again. Of not having made every second count.

I wanted this edition of The Coloured Month to be filled with the excitement of the festive season, the traditions we’ve all come to know and anticipate, the colour and scents; the richness and extravagances no matter how we celebrate. I wanted it to be a gentle contented stroll into the new year.

I found my words profoundly lacking in sincerity or virtue. No matter how I rearranged them they were wrong.

I am certain also, that these wrong words and lost moments are the reason, too, that there were very few days where my usual long, reflective weekend rambles through field and forest were possible. In this last month of the year, the search for light has been a treasure hunt of necessary cunning without any certainty of uncovering small wonders but, the cache of magic hidden beneath the skulduggery of Mother Natures wicked humour is always worth the hardship of searching. Possibly, even more so when the world holds adversity as a predominant theme.

Looking through the theme…

So I leave you with these words from Mr Ralph Waldo Emerson because I have no more of my own and a short video of the magic moments I held on tight to during December. They were few but all the more beautiful for being so.

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“Write it on your heart
that every day is the best day in the year.
He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day
who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety.

Finish every day and be done with it.
You have done what you could.
Some blunders and absurdities, no doubt crept in.
Forget them as soon as you can, tomorrow is a new day;
begin it well and serenely, with too high a spirit
to be cumbered with your old nonsense.

This new day is too dear,
with its hopes and invitations,
to waste a moment on the yesterdays.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Happy New Year, to each and every one of you, I hope you find kindness, I hope you find peace, and magic because everyone needs a little magic - with love!

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The last of this years Magic on the hill.

I have read so very many brilliant essays/stories/poems/journals in the multitudes of publications here on

Substack Writers

. I am rendered speechless more often than not by the depth of quality and research in every one, deciding which to recommend is almost an impossible task because truly I could site every one.

Enclosed within this little box though you will find many examples of why.

“Same Walk, Different Shoes” is a community writing project I dreamed up to bring together a collective of wonderful writers who all happen to be on the Substack platform. The project is aimed at cultivating empathy, a quality I believe is essential for any good writer…

Ben Wakeman

Same Walk, Different Shoes: Volume I