Encountering Evening, Winter
The Night is for Letting Go
In the early morning hours I sit in silence and watch the day unfold. From the depths of blue night comes morning dawn, and awe, and surprise, watching the sky change. I fill up the kettle with water, and watch as navy turns to a flat blue, the day a symphony. Dawn is the breath of silence before sound, a morning’s song. Dawn is the quiet, the dark, the soil from which dreams root in and take form. Sunlight enters. I watch the unfolding of the sky show, tuning into time where pink rolls into lilac hues, cascading day from the quiet of dawn. Pink is the sound of the first quivering strings of cello, the space in between bow in the air and resonating strings, then light comes, and full sun shines full against the backdrop of gray buildings, brick and brown red and the day begins; the song is playing out.
Click the stove off and remember the evening prior. A memory of walking. The rhythm of time moving, the minutes and moments where mind melds with body. There, on cold streets, thoughts move from basin of mind to the movement of body, body a channel, a ground, a place to flow into. There, I rhythm with the city, taking grief, hope, anger, into hands held together with creativity, possibility, and acceptance. We are listening to the song of living, walking into night.
Pouring from apartment out into streets. Looking up. The shape of sky I see reveals the evening, blue, and I remember other words I’ve used throughout the year. Indigo, midnight. Words become finger snap, metal crash, catalyst, that draw me up and out of drone of story into song of sky. From there I wonder, craning head up, seeing past the tree line, into awe and surprise, finding three stars, shining. I remember tonglen, breathing in wider, and in a wide mind, remember. An entire world exists beyond the stories of self. In the night there is a constellation, and elsewhere millions of other stars are stories forming and being reformed.
Out of mind, into body, into night, I see, sense, and feel again. I see winter in bare trees. Wind is cupped and cocooned around my eardrums and, inside, a lion roaring. Smell of sugar pours out from nearby bakeries. There are street corners filling with all of us walking, then releasing us to cross. There are piles of apples, citrus, lettuce, stacked. There is hot pomegranate cider in a plastic thimble and I am sipping. My body is instrument to ears and eyes cups, the moment plucked and resonant, grounded and ecstatic, which is to say, balanced, receiving the experience, in grateful dialogue for what the moment is saying.
A day later, and I will look to the way colors whisper and shout and laugh their way into dawn. I will find solace in presence, in sleeping, in the way the season slows, in the way time moves, in slowing down to notice. I will revere in the way a blue day meets with the quietude of clouds, atmosphere rippling out, of which a single hawk flies out and up against. In the night, I learn to give over to the moment. In the morning, I drink up the daylight, and run to clear my mind, exhaling again, and fill my mind with wonder, and possibility, and fill my cup with water, and drink.
To winter, we can say, is to replenish. To seek quietude, and tune in with your inner listening. A plant becoming seed, letting go, and bringing roots in. All energy comes inward, to be stored up, cells, contained. At the root, winter is “time of water”, an inward time, slow, whereby we return to the nature of ourselves. Sleep and solace, go slow, root down, and pour in finding balance between silence of the mind, a slowing body, and the night, restoring. Fold the day and the year closed. Watch as gray daylight becomes dusk. Drink water, remember what restores you. Then wake up, greet the sky of day, and continue.
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