The winter solstice re/minds me
We write with darkness.
Pens. Pencils. Markers.
They are filled with inks and lead.
Filled with
All the potential
Of darkness.
With a way
To shape thoughts and feelings
And all those inklings
That are something not quite either or.
Filled with a way to shape our need to expressness
Into or maybe onto
The blinding light
Of the blank page.

It’s not the darkness
That blinds us.
Though it is the darkness
That binds us.

If you ever stumble upon writer’s block
It helps to know
It is a kind of blinding
The blinding light of the ball page
And in the same way looking through dark glasses
Sun glasses
Can get you through the 2 PM light
On a summer day in LA.
Looking through the lens of the darkest parts
Can get your through the blinding light
That causes writer’s block.

And one other holiday thought about potential.
I’ve always believed the Santa thing
Was a metaphorical way
To understand
That we can be in more than one place at one time.
Ala the gurus.
Literally the destroyer of darkness.
And documented.
But let’s face it.
Even being in one place at a time
Is sometimes too much.

But writing can sometimes give me the giddy feeling
That I am more than one place at a time.
Maybe not everywhere all at once etc.
But where I am.
In my seat.
And where I was.
When had that thought.
Experienced that thing.
Or in the place I’ve invented.
And in the future where you are reading.
I can be all those places at once.
Which is not as impressive
As Santa being in every chimney.

Share

The real miracle there
Is not that Santa is everywhere
But that Santa can fly down the birth canal
Without one bit
Of the chimney ash
Getting on his red velvet coat.
Without one bit
Of that dark powder
That fire gives us
To nurture the soil with.
That plants take into themselves
To bloom.
The ink of the earth.

So as we enter that time
Between Xmas and January 1
The taint of the year.
Take it all in.
Soak it up.
Like a fountain pen
Filling from the well.
Take in the dark.
The unresolved.
The incomplete.
The failures.
The hurts.
Take it all in.
And then give it back.
In black ink or blue.
Because this is you.
The part of you
That is your unblocking.

All these harder gifts that life has given you.
Cherish them
An then with black ink
Maybe violet or blue
Give it all back.
Make your dreams come true.

Happy holidays.
Holy wholly and new.

Infinitely Yours,
Beth