The Artist Date is a dream-child of Julia Cameron, helping readers learn how to become a better writer. We’ve discussed her book, The Artist’s Way, and highly recommend both the book and the weekly date. An Artist Date can be life-changing. It can open your creativity like nothing else. Today, we sit on the dock to ponder the dark.
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Here in Florida, winter means putting on a fleece jacket, a hat and warm socks if I go walking on the beach. Our winter, such as it is on this channel island, is gray, misty and windy. The wind is the worst. If you try and paddle out into Mosquito Lagoon you will most likely never leave dockside, which is why I have taken up residence on my favorite dock this day.
My knees are tight to my chest as I survey the cold, gray water and deserted beach. The wind is beating the waves into froth on their way into shore. Most people are either home or taking part in post-Thanksgiving shopping. Not even the birds are stirring today. I am sitting on the dock with a murky, weak sun that never comes out from behind the heavy cloud cover. Today it will completely disappear far earlier than seems right. I am wondering what it is about the darkest part of the year that seems to frighten or discomfort people.
The fear of the dark and the cold made sense when humans had reason to fear starvation or freezing to death. Ancient people brought evergreens into their homes and temples as symbols of life in the depths of winter—nature’s promise that life would continue somehow. Feasting in the darkest part of the year around the time of the winter solstice was their way of celebrating the end of the brutal cold, short days of winter and the hopeful arrival of warmer, longer days of spring.
I sit on my dock and wonder about modern people’s need to light their houses brighter than last year, their drive to eat themselves into stupors and hoard more things that will bore them in a matter of weeks. Are we still reacting to a fear of the dark at some primal level? Is there some part of us that believes the sun might not come up tomorrow morning? That must seem silly to the modern mind as it hides the last piece of pie. I wonder what would happen if we could actually be quiet and make peace with the dark for a time, so we could really appreciate what the returning of the light and warmer days might mean.
The muted sun is sinking lower and the sky growing darker as I think about my simple traditions for the weeks ahead. A good part of my holiday season will be spent watching migrating birds coming in to nest (herons, pelicans, roseate spoonbills, wood storks, and geese). I will read Dylan Thomas’ “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” with a cup of tea and a chocolate truffle on a china dish, as I do every holiday season. The children in my life will appear at various points to visit. And throughout it all, the stars will wheel above me (Orion, Lynx, and Cassiopeia), and the ocean will ebb and flow.
Image by VinothChandar. Used with permission. Post by Kathryn Neel.
How to become a better writer? Browse Artist Dates for inspiration, then head out on your own.
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Read a poem a day, become a better poet. In December, we’re exploring the theme Night.
- Eating and Drinking Poems: WendellBerry’s “Fall” - October 24, 2014
- Eating & Drinking Poems: Dorianne Laux’s “A Short History of the Apple” - September 12, 2014
- Eating and Drinking Poems: May Swenson’s “Strawberrying” - August 8, 2014
L. L. Barkat says
I want to do that. I want to become a better writer through the power of: “a cup of tea and a chocolate truffle on a china dish” and reading beautiful things 🙂
Maureen Doallas says
Lovely essay, Kathryn. I found a poem in it.
The Dark Discomfort
Winter is walking
on my favorite beach.
I take up residence
on the dock, knees
tight to chest, survey
the sky the sun
means to leave
post-Thanksgiving gray.
Shore birds disappear
behind a cloud cover
of heavy fleece, quiet
somehow a primal fear
of the dark discomfort.
Not even the pelicans
and herons go shopping
for the last piece
of life the wind deserted
on cold, murky waves.
I wonder at nature’s promise
of warmer, longer days,
make peace with time
spent watching the light
as a channel of stars —
Lynx, Orion, Cassiopeia —
lights my way home,
hopeful this holiday season.
Megan Willome says
Maureen, that’s fantastic!
Marcy Terwilliger says
I really enjoyed your article, gray days of rain and no sun can really stroke the south in winter. After the holidays I always have a visit with my Oncology Doctor who I love dearly. It’s a day without sunshine in a clean sterile room with IV bags hung from chairs. Different faces, different stories every year, someone always makes you feel blessed because their story is grime. This year I’ve decided to skip that IV bag, it has awful side effects. Besides feeling like you have the flu it puts me into a great depression. One year I cried everyday for three weeks over nothing and then it just went away. These are gray days when you never leave your chair or bed. So this year I want something better, this year I look forward to brighter days that will carry me into the New Year. No poem from me today, just honest, open feelings about gray days.
Kathryn Neel says
Yes, gray days take many forms. I’m glad you are planning for brighter days of spring.
Elizabeth W. Marshall says
What a beautiful whisper, a soft rallying cry to simplify. There is such a calm in grey. The neutral, the natural, the monochromatic beauty. Your words are a soothing balm. And I want to wiggle my nose and land right there. In the middle of your restful Artist’s Date. We as a Christmas people would do well to seek more natural beauty, and to be at peace in the grey’s. This is lovely. And watching the migrating birds, sigh, a favorite way to just abide and enjoy the ebb and flow of patterns in creation.
Kathryn Neel says
🙂
Kathryn Neel says
Maureen,
You will laugh, before it was an Artist Date it was a poem, like most everything I write. I really love your version though!
Maureen Doallas says
Well, I want to read your version.
Thank you for the kind words and the inspiration.
Marcy Terwilliger says
I came back and read your thoughts again so I wrote a bit of a poem about where you had been.
Gray wet sand,
pressed down hard.
Sky meets ocean
all in one blur.
Dampness, you can
smell it.
Winter at the “Sunshine State.”
Water dark and rough,
the sea tumbles up things
from it’s belly, some great,
some small.
No echo’s of laughter,
No bright colored kites.
Just seagulls circle above my head,
looking for a bite.
Smelling dead fish and
smelling wet sand.
Cold wind slaps my face,
think I’ll just turn around.