Seasonal drifting

December's gradual dazzle with words from Anne Carson, Diane di Prima, and Audre Lorde

Róbert Berény, Girl reading on sofa, 1906

I’ve been expecting the darkness.

Rather than dreaming of longer days, I’ve learned to embrace the disorientation of a darkened living room that at five o’clock months earlier, would have been filled with light. I welcome the string of weeks where the sun unceremoniously melts into the horizon by four in the afternoon, and doesn’t return for over twelve hours. As someone who operates best when the sun is shining, I used to reach for the solstice, look forward to the return of longer days. But in recent years, I’ve learned to embrace this extended twilight.

There’s the initial shock to nervous system when the light disappears: feeling tired, restless, depleted. A handful of hours that used to be sun drenched—how to spend them now? There’s only so much one can do once the darkness arrives. Read, of course, steer away from screens of any sort. Light a candle. Go for a night walk.

The murk of these late November, early December days—insular, temporal—are like an annual storm we must weather, or at least that’s how it’s come to feel. Inherently, storms are meant to be feared: they are unpredictable, after all, subject to volatile change. Though I have to remind myself that this seasonal darkness is not unpredictable: we know precisely when it will arrive, and when it will end. The days will gradually increase. Soon the light will return. Until then, we drift.

From left: Jacques Chapiro, Young woman reading, 1925, Christian Krohg, Oda with lamp, 1879, Milton Avery, Landscape, 1953, text from Linda Pastan’s poem December 18: For M