January
There is a hush that descends in January, a whisper that calls us to rest and reflect. A welcome blanket of snow surrounds the cottage enveloping the early signs of life, reluctant to emerge I feel I have been gifted extra time.
January is for dreamers, you can feel it in the winter air, anticipation soars in the unknown and I’m grateful for the time to breathe it in. My thoughts form loose sketches on a blank canvas soon to be filled with delicate water-coloured moments as I make gentle promises to myself.
I love January for its pondering pace, natural cycles deeply inform my creative process, meaning a slow meander into any given year. My early school reports state “she has a tendency to daydream” a handwritten reproach for what I consider these days to be my force, and so I allow myself to drift and dream.
The past years growth blurs boundaries along the roadside in a tumbling tapestry of time, and I feel assured that this slow start is measured and necessary. January’s palette is contained, faded colours layer in winter shadows, textured and tonal. Skeletal remains of last year’s flowers silhouette in linear light and it’s in this space I find rest and clarity.
The season’s simplicity brings a sense of calm, and its subtleties draw me closer, yet there is an undercurrent of energy, an expanse of possibilities contrasting my contentment in the present, I’ve been considering the duality of January by its name and nature, traditionally the ancient Romans considered winter as a month less period, only in around 500bc were January and February added to reflect the lunar cycle. January, named after a mythical god Janus, this dual natured deity is depicted with two faces one looking back and one looking forward, a god of beginnings and endings.
Understanding this helped me embrace this paradoxical period for all its beauty. So, I pause yet plan, rest yet play, reflect yet dream.
Smudged on the horizon distant hills fade into one another, yet at my feet I find the whole universe in the first snowdrops.
