It’s been a minute.

My writing brain has been in hibernation. Not turned off, just sleeping, and we know that the sleeping brain is still working, even if it’s in disjointed images.

I’ve been happily hurtling through the fall rhythm of teaching at three different places, performing in Canopy’s fall repertory show, and preparing my trapeze students to perform in their own winter shows. Time has blurred as it does.

The world’s tragedies never stop; they just fade in and out of clarity in our own personal focus, our individual realms of loss and mourning. A friend of mine died recently. I don’t know how much I’ll ever write about that. Writing has always helped me sort out personal pain, but Laura wasn’t just my own friend; she was beloved by a large community. This grief was both private and enormously shared, and my friends have held each other close as we traveled through it, and still do.

And here we are, the holidays packed away. I can’t help feeling a creeping grimness tugging at the edges. It doesn’t help that the nation is on the brink of plunging into political dark ages, and the natural world outside is stark, gray.

I’ve never minded the darkness of winter. I’ve embraced it in the way I embraced Richard Scarry illustrations as a child. I want to be cozy. I want to burrow under a blanket with a book while it snows outside, even though it never snows here. (The image below is of the endpapers from the Scarry-illustrated “A Story a Day, 365 Stories and Rhymes.” I’d stare at it endlessly as a child, memorizing every perfect detail. It makes me happy even now.)

The inclination is there, but it doesn’t feel safe now to hibernate too much.

So I’ll light some fires and make some tea. I’ll knit and read and try to find my writing brain again, wake her up. I’ll find comfort and strength with my loved ones, and we’ll band together to face the oncoming dark.