This series – The Dark Months – is about coping, but also about breaking free.
Come with me …
The Dark Months – Sixteen
At this time of year the mornings are dark. So too are the evenings. In between, lies the broken promise of a day; truncated, ill-remembered, untended, forgotten, imprisoned.
Almost, but not quite.
WFH. Those three letters which spell out broken boundaries, calls at all hours, intrusions into your life as cameras roam, and inspect. A transaction which asks for much. And that’s fine. Except when the right to roam is curtailed, when the calls start at 8 with the light and don’t end till 8, well into the dark. And in between; silver screen. Those days are like bathing salt into a wound at this time of year.
The soul struggles in the dark months.
That period between the end of October and the middle of February, three and a bit gruelling months that can seem like a year, is the hardest of all. And in it’s midst, it plays the ghastly trick of renewal, before dissipating into a slurry of broken promises and undelivered sunlight. I hate it. But it’s here.
I have to live with it. You do too. We all do, despite our better judgement.
And fleetingly, every now and then, a window to the world opens up. As it did today.
Finishing a call, I looked up.
A pink sky, undercut with purple and the darkest grey; a hint of pearl and talc tamed the fire. And in its midst, high up, soaring and with no intention of landing, a plane.
Escape.
Written in the sky was a world of possibilities, even if only fleetingly.
