She reached her hand toward me, and I saw her mouth move. Jan-u-ary.”
― Alix E. Harrow,
The Coloured Month
Hello lovely readers, writers, wanderers and wonderers.
February at last, thank goodness… I am entirely relieved. Actually we are galloping along towards the half way mark already, I was left behind baling out water from ditches, mending fences and have only just caught up…
January was never my favourite month and this, January 2024, the worst of all others. Sad days/nights have far outnumbered those with smiles. Words have circled but not in sweet ceremony of a new year filled with hope.
The worst I wrote of here, add to that a minor fracture caused by a rather plump bronze lady who hasn’t moved position in five years other than to dust off her nakedness—don’t ask, next time I’ll turn on a light—that my car suddenly lets more water in than it keeps out, that I caught horrible—resistant to everything—head lice (again) from one of my students and a flu bug which has resulted in a stubborn cough. Not unexpectedly, the load became too burdensome to carry. I buckle under the strain, come to a grinding, debilitating halt, watch helplessly whilst waiting for the storm to pass, then paint on a smile as I tiptoe my way through the debris left in its wake.
I go in search of calm across the hill, my hill, and a little further still to distant hills…
Slowly…
Breathe in, breathe out… but not too deeply, it hurts!
January, good grief you were cruel.
January; days pass with regular, sombre, foggy monotony.
Devoured by endless soupy grey, heavy impenetrable damp fastens in trillions of minute drops to everything, stationary or mobile. A suffocating lethargy bound in muddy winter settles deep into aching bones. Enough rain falls to keep my garden moist for a whole dry summer, if only I could stop it running off down the hill!
Magic, whilst not absent, is too often hidden. Yet this month, amongst all others, bares the stark naked form of natures secrets. Every intricate branch, twig, burr, seed pod and hungry fox visibly trembling. Abandoned nests carried gently all spring and summer in soft lichen covered branches hidden by leaf and flower, lay visible in harsh elements, some surviving, others falling. Buzzards perch thuggish and precarious in ancient oaks, hopeful, hungry, they too wait for fog to thin. The hill feels feral. The habitual silhouetted bare bones of deep winter faint, light holding hands with dark, neither one nor the other really beginning or ending. I join the blur, not intentionally but with an almost obsessional need to see the end of each day, the month. It feels more comfortable than fighting.
I wish I could sleep like Sassy… anywhere.
Alas, sleep evades me...
An inevitable wave of insomnia rips my nights to bloodied shreds. When finally I drift, it is not into peaceful much needed soft oblivion but torturous haunting dreams of meadows streaked in bloodstained forms, animals with human faces carrying torn limbs rampage wildly through spring flowers each with deformed fœtus shaped stamen. A murder of raucous crow swoop, barbarous talons outstretched, taring off flower heads and stamen only to discard them as they fly filling the sky with bloodied petals and unborn shapes. Contrails turn to entrails… I dream of paths in the sky, a map of stars the names of which I’ve never heard of but remember the next day. I walk on my beloved hill but find no peace.
I wake in a deep void, silky obsidian night so complete I can touch it, taste its acrid smoothness.
There is no moon, no stars, no light. No sky—I can always see sky, my shutters are never closed—I cry out into deep nothingness. Bereft.
And the month crawls on… I long for sleep almost as badly as my sheep, the sweet sound of their bleating in the morning, the comforting sight of their woolly, dew soaked backs, grazing, peaceful—whole.
I don’t see my my old hare for the entire month. I search for signs, a form, flattened grass still warm from his brindle fur, a body lying low, black tipped ears, nose twitching upwind. I remember these words ‘try to be small’ - ‘try to be still’, I try… I am mute in the empty space but afraid he is no longer.
Late January; the storm abates, light and brighter days carry pockets of hope.
Tiny signs of spring appear, daffodils shoot their linear leaves from deep under the earth, Catkins wriggle furiously in the east winds, puffs of palest pollen carried to hopeful minute ladies in crimson skirts, eager for fertile dust. Snowdrops too, rows of milk white bells, heads bent, gather in clumps along the bank. It’s all so tantalisingly, excitingly close.
I tidy away the residue of the storm drag out the box marked stamina hidden in the cellar while I wait for the robin to serenade dawn, watching for each to share their own scarlet vibrancy…
Neither were disappointing…
With the joy of relief I watch with tired eyes, listening too, as the tempo changes, gentle colour slowly seeps through my nightmares, sadness, bloodied corpses, grey and gloom vaporise in residual fog. The air feels lighter, other birds join the robin, a thrush, blue tits, meadows larks, blackbirds, the sky rings with sweet chorus. On bare branches of the weeping willow growing in front of the barn, green leaves peek shyly from pale buds, testing for ambient air, the next day more follow, sprays of luminous spring green sway, gentle, comforting.
January 25th; something beautiful is delivered!
Books are special gifts. Books both written and illustrated by a friend from Spain even more so. Especially this month, the worst of the worse Januarys ever.
This book, called Sanctuary sent by a friend I’ve never met—I don’t need to meet her to know that we are kindred souls—is Pipp’s very own book. The book she has deliberated over and worked tirelessly on for almost a year, the one that has taken over every spare moment of her life. A labour of love photographed in myriad colour and form
I wait until I have time to sit, before I open the front cover, knowing before I even pick it up that I will want to devour every detail of calm in the sanctuary she has created. Her passion for nature and light dance through every page. An ode to nature and all her delicate nuances caress the senses. It is indeed, sanctuary.
If you would like a copy of Pipp’s meditative glimpse into the sanctuary of nature, you can email her directly via her home page, just tap below..
While the notes are still high and the air filled with the faintest taste of spring, I shall pack away January into a dark corner of the memories box and wish you all gentle February days. What’s left of them of course…
With love
“To stand together under a sky - that no matter how grey and uncertain - still holds room for butterflies, moths, dragonflies and things we once were too fearful to name; things like whispered hope.”
― Kerri ní Dochartaigh
"I go in search of calm across the hill, my hill, and a little further still to distant hills…"
💚
Beautifully written and illustrated, Susie