A spell for year's end
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It’s the ninth of the twelve days of the Yuletide, the wild and holy nights, the rough nights, the lost days at the end of the year. And we all need days to get lost, days and nights to throw away to mist and books and dreams and moss and silence. Or days to lose things, misplace your keys and your worries. Days to spend in long conversations with faraway friends or with the dead.
The lost days are for reminiscing, sifting through old journals or sorting your junk drawer. Feeding bread to the birds. Go ahead, burn some things if you’d like. Drift and swim aimlessly through all your stories. Let the flotsam wash up. Torch a sad regret with the flames of your compassionate heart and remember how to laugh. These are the beginning days of the sun’s life.
Gather your strength, gather your mettle. Build your bones and your marrow. I made cinnamon rolls from scratch, mixed hazelnut milk and yeast and melted butter with flour and salt, watched the dough rise. I made my grandmother Moon’s broccoli casserole with homemade mushroom gravy. There’s something about these last meals of the year I relish and savor.
As I savor sitting at the desk in the hush and listening to the little drips as the heavy fog that hung in the trees all morning condenses finally into a light rain.
Let the lost days reign! Let the wild & holy nights have you!
I’ll be riding the waves of Yuletide until they break onto the shore of next year. There will be other days enough then.
I’m not answering emails for the rest of the year, and let this not be a privilege but a goddess given right to be unreachable sometimes. May we all be unreachable sometimes. But may this spell for year’s end find you.
Take care of yourself, friends. Take good deep soulful care. +
Now reading:
Holy the Firm, Annie Dillard
Elderberry Flute Song, Peter Blue Cloud/Aroniawenrate
Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock, Jenny Odell
“After the Deluge: A small town faces down climate disaster,” Gary Greenberg, Harper’s Magazine/December 2024
“Self-Elegies,” a poem written to say goodbye to life, Martha Silano, Poetry Foundation
Really looking forward to our SPELLS community craft & writing life circles on Zoom in 2025. Learn more and join the community here.