The Short Good Day
The Shortest Day Of the Year brought me the most light I’ve felt in years
The Shortest Day Of the Year brought me the most light I’ve felt in years.
The winter solstice marks greater darkness but for the first time in half a decade, my life has a brightness and a sweetness. This moment is made of many parts.
It did not brush away the charcoal, it was highlighted with lighter pastels. I marveled at a solstice sunrise, as the rough became smooth, and the smooth took on new edges.
It did not betray bitter notes, it has been made more palatable. The solstice sunset was a twist of flavors, a grown-up candy cane. Like “Vanilla Sky” if you know, you know.
I have things to look forward to, which consume my energies, a harmony for my trinity of heart, mind, and spirit. I feel good, for the first time in years.
You see, this day was the final medical appointment for my mother for the year.
She felt her strongest in some ways, in years. There is a string of test results that come with each ping but the doctor would call if there was “something”. So far, fingers crossed, a sweet silence follows. Her face was fuller, as was her heart.
And the writing has come alive, as I hoped it would. It has found friends.
Last year, I wrote a letter to myself, “Looking Back From The Future”, dated “December 31, 2023”, about something I had to write, “Retrieve”, with a “draft finished, Blues Brothers’ mobile style… right before it has to be taken to the garage”. I finished the last two-thirds of it in thirty days. Blues Brothers-mobile at the end of the movie is right.
My most recent email on this page was a month ago, but I have been posting drafts daily.
I have been writing but not emailing readers this past month, so that I could immerse myself in “Retrieve”, even as my friend Dylan edits the first words, in “Box Of Stars”. It’s all one work, “The Nested Boxes”, in a journey of inversion from the future to the past.
I began the year with how it ends, and wrote it down to myself, and for you last year.
It really began after we lost Dad, almost three years ago. The words came. Hundreds of thousands of words, of worlds of the future and the past, all tied to the present. It feels a strange incomplete conceit when I describe it. All I can say is the words came.
I dreamed of Dad two weeks ago.
He was as I remembered him before things went wrong. It was the first time he did not look as he did when he got sick and we were taking care of him, 24/7, while the world outside lost itself. Dad was “himself”, if you know what I mean.
In the dream, it was morning, and I was about to brush my teeth, and there he was standing before me, looking like he was before “everything”, as if it was 2018. I told Dad that I loved him and that I was proud of him, and I hugged him. I wished he could have stayed longer, just a bit for a chat.
For now, I need a bit of time to read, and begin hoping, and following through, as I begin to look back from December 31, 2024.
Again, I have written the ending before the beginning.
December 31, 2024
2024.
What a year.
Unexpected. Some good. Some bad. Some disappointments. Some nice surprises.
Some great days. I wish I could put those wins in a jar to turn bad days into good ones.
Some of those hopes, looking back, it’s funny.
How the hell did I not see “that” coming when it did? Why the F did I worry so much about that thing that felt like such an awful something? A bad habit of filling in the blind spots with worries from undone and unresolved things. It takes up all the room for all the good things I did do, got done, and happened. I almost lost sight of it.
Every year.
What did I want at the beginning of the year?
Let’s see.
What was on the wish list last year?
The writing of course.
“Box Of Stars” lives!
“Harvest” expanded the universe of “Box Of Stars” in unexpected ways by going earlier.
“Retrieve” was the origin story which led to Harvest and Box of Stars.
“Release”, which last year “had no name, showed up before the leaves turned” is done! It was the first-half to “Retrieve’s” second-half. It connects to “Retrieve”, “Harvest”, and “Box Of Stars” like the final part of a nested box. It arrived by spring, like new life.
You spent time with your friends, Jim, Mike, and Dylan, and good things happened. You made magic, and people wonder “how did they do that?”. You tell them, and they don’t believe you but you keep doing “the thing that gets us to the thing”.
You remember that it began because there was a pause in the stars falling, so you could breathe again, and you began a tally of the changes in the sky and the world.
Every word written marked a star fallen from an endless sky.
Some meet and greets. A different sweetness than solitude.
All those works that went through “hit send”, even when it didn’t feel like great at first, felt good after. Even if it broke an axle, it worked out, it’s still out there.
All those people who did things you admired, something they wrote, made, or did. You told them how much it meant.
This includes the people who signed up for the Substack, at times half-fed (so few emails) and yet over-gorged (archive), who were promised visions “From The Future”.
More books shelved between the bookends, more stories stored between the ears.
There is someone, and she is important. It’ll work out but that comes in 2025.
I left out so much.
2024 was such a year.
I hope everyone else’s 2024 worked out the way they hoped.
The music that brought so many words to life. More songs come in 2024, more words.
I found this post so incredibly moving. Wishing you and your loved ones a wonderful 2024.
I have begun dreaming that my mother is here with us, and is a warm comforting feeling. She died 13 years ago.
I am very happy for you. The solstice returning to light