Structure of January

It's still January, and I feel a heavy gloom like I haven't felt in a long time. Daily I point to the low fog that presses like a damp cloth on the grey streets that line the grey buildings that line the grey skyline. See? I say to myself, how could you not mirror the weather? I point out that indeed it has felt this way before. Surely we are meant to slow down, like down. All I want is to reach for a blanket, a memory, and a sweater. The word burrow and I want to crawl inside of it. I am looking for something to hold me.

I am clawing for something that will give this orb-like season a bit of shape. I admit that I've been sprinting through the last few months, making everything a blur, which has its consequences: I can't see the stagnancy and waiting as clearly, nor can I see what is soft and alive. So lately I've been trying to sit in the stillness and wait. I sit on the floor, catlike in a sunbeam, letting it be enough. I compose the abyss by making everything small and easy: write a sentence, anything I want. Make it silly, or even better, make it worse, we are having [something almost like] fun with this. I go for dinner and leave early. I forgive myself. I forgive myself. I try to forgive myself. I practice being kind.

Structure, when doled out restrictively, militantly. constricts the spirit, smothers the breath, and steals the joy.

Structure, when drawing a border around the vastness to make us feel held, creates a safe container in which we can unravel ourselves.

So, this is where you find me: taking a paintbrush and painting an outline around my morning, around this letter, around the journal I am trying to write in every day, around the movement I offer my body, around the afternoon that feels the vastest and unending of any part of the day, around the feelings I can't find words for, around the plans for February, for March, around all the questions stacking on top of themselves.

I paint around it all, saying, here is a shape, here is a shape, this is a shape, and that.
This is how I make a structure out of the fog. This is how I remember that I am here. This is how I make room for what will come. This is how I see the seasons as they come and go. This is how I make a home in January.