It’s about to be the end of winter break for me; New Year’s Afternoon to be precise. 

 

The clutter of the holidays had descended on my workspace.  The clutter had pushed out the work.  It happens.  It had to change.

 

Detritus of wrapping paper.  Notes of thanks from students, family, friends.  While envelopes to execute and send away.  Books to sort–home or away.

 

It is the book sort that is of particular interest, as a third category emerged.  MLA handbooks, books of philosophy? In the backpack.  Novels on my radar, books for the collection? Double stacked on the shelves, still to be re-sorted.  A select five, however, defied the quick shuttling and sorting.  They seemed too essential, too necessary, or too interesting to quickly push aside.  

 

My first step in getting back on this writing horse is to create a space for its veneration, the respect for the task to give it set and setting.  Set and Setting are set through any number of ways: totems, rituals, practice.  If writing is a practice, a discipline will have those.  The five books amidst my clutter made the cut and sit behind a beautiful Christmas gift full of bitter Jasmine and Orange Tea.  These will go and others will come into this corner, but for now–On New Year’s Day–they sit at the cornerstone.

 

…

 

Is this the obligatory ritual, the part where we reflect on how this seed grew in the world shaded by the post-Election, still-COVID blues?  How cleaning a desk is the reclaiming of order from chaos? Perhaps.  But rituals need a place to grow, and they  need an origin story.  So for New Year’s, carving out space and decluttering are all one in the same.  Clear the area so we can build a fire.

 

…

 

Nurture the sure seeds

Wildness breathes life into dreams

Blossoms built in time.

 

…

 

Winter break, coming to a close.  The return of pre-dawn alarm clocks.  The mind needs a clear space to breathe.  Here, a space hewn choice by choice, word by word, note by note of every Picture at an Exhibition, new habits cultivated build new necessity.