January Knows (Open Book)

What a year indeed.  Thirty days in (or six thousand, one hundred and eighty-four, as referenced in the poem below).  After three months of self-imposed hermiting, cocooning, hibernating... January came in like the proverbial lion (two months early), and it's all just been sensory overload this month.  I feel like a mole coming out of its tunnel into broad daylight; I just want to go back in/down.  Trying to follow L's  recommendation, but there aren't enough Pauses in the world to acclimate me to so much brightness.  Blink.  Blink.  Blink.  Pass the shades, extra UV protection please... 😎

I've been meaning to share that I've fallen down the Northern Exposure rabbithole, now streaming on Amazon Prime.  I was obsessed on its first run, six seasons from 1990-1995 and, although it sometimes feels a bit dated, it's still clever, quirky, soul-filling:  whining Fleischman... Maggie and her opposite-of-Midas-Touch when it comes to boyfriends... Chris in the Morning with his raging pheromones (John Corbett in what I think was his first major role)... Shelley's earrings du jour, etc. etc. etc.  I realized tonight that my new mantra is WWMD (What Would Marilyn Do?).  If you know, you know, right?

P.S.  bonus video:  Today is January 739th by The Holderness Family

SONG:  January Knows by Open Book

BOOK:  Unattended Sorrow: Recovering from Loss and Reviving the Heart by Stephen Levine, Ondrea Levine (Introduction), Mirabai Starr (Foreword)

POEM(S):  Mnemonic by Brian Bilston

Thirty days hath September,

April, June and November.

Unless a leap year is its fate,

February hath twenty-eight.

All the rest hath three days more,

excepting January,

which hath six thousand,

one hundred and eighty-four.

To the New Year by W S. Merwin

With what stillness at last

you appear in the valley

your first sunlight reaching down

to touch the tips of a few

high leaves that do not stir

as though they had not noticed

and did not know you at all

then the voice of a dove calls

from far away in itself

to the hush of the morning

so this is the sound of you

here and now whether or not

anyone hears it this is

where we have come with our age

our knowledge such as it is

and our hopes such as they are

invisible before us

untouched and still possible

QUOTE:  “These memories of happiness are fleeting things, reflections in a stream, glimpsed all broken for a second and then swept away in the current of grief that is our life now. I can't say that I ever feel what it felt like then, when I was happy. But sometimes something will touch the place where that feeling was, a touch as slight and swift as the brush of a moth's wing in the dark.” ~ Geraldine Brooks