January

Oh, January, January.

Even though you're not even here yet
I am.

I am in January.

Each year, my sievelike memory forgets just how much I adore you. Your long light.  Your slowdown.  The lens shifts in January and the world around me, in the depths of a southern hemisphere summer, slows down to MY speed.

January.  Where you do two things in a day and that is perfectly acceptable.

January.  Where the creativity flourishes with the stretch.

Thank you.

You know, many count you as the beginning of the year but I'm not so sure those Julians or Gregorians or whoever it was had it right.  January doesn't feel like an appropriate beginning of a year for me any more than July would.  If I had to choose the beginning of a new year (whatever that means, which really isn't a lot to me to be honest) then I would choose one of the equinoxes.  Balance.  Each side of the earth in a beautiful balance of spring and autumn.  Not now.  Not January.

January is no time for backwards and forwards looking, for resolutions.  January is just no time.  Full stop.  Nothing coming after that.  End of long delicious sentence.

January is no time, and a crappy song by that band from the 70's.  January, January.  I simply can't count the number of ways I love you.  Thank you for being the one time of year where the lens is clear for those of us who are speedy snails.   You allow me to rest in my chronically ill unproductivity while my intellect has the opportunity to go wondering and wandering (at least, it's starting to now, now that the evil Bastard of Sinusitis has fled once more).

And that means in January, I am rich even beyond Rothschildian standards.  Rich with light and rich with time and space.

What more could you ask for?