Wondrous Strange

The days between Winter Solstice and New Year's Eve have always had that slightly askew, muddled feeling to me, like someone cut the anchor and set me adrift to float gently toward the horizon. There is an emptiness that is welcome after weeks of frantic preparation for the holidays, a blessing of relief from the holiday ho-ho and commotion. I don't think I'm alone in this feeling, because I've seen that same fleeting look of momentary confusion/fear/lostness on the faces of others in the last few days which elicits the same nervous smile, like we all should be doing something other than playing hooky from Life.

Yet during this time out of time I can feel an urgency also. Within this period when not much seems to be happening on the surface, things are churning and formulating down deep within. It's as if the potential of the New Year is coming together, ready to explode into being at just the right moment when the power peaks. It's synergy, the coming together of many forces into oneness. While I believe reflection and introspection are restoratives for the soul, each New Year's Day I feel as if I've emerged from a dark underground place where my spirit has been hibernating. Blinking, I view the light of day for the first time on a first new day, and it is a extraordinary, magickal thing for me. It is wondrous-strange.

It is not to say we leave on-going responsibility behind. There will always be things we need to lug  through the portal of the New Year with us- things that require our attention so that everyday life as we know it continues. No journey is complete without baggage, but I do believe that we can to some extent control the weight of the load we bare. So often we drag our selves down with unnecessary things and make life ponderous and sullen. That's why the Place of Deep In-Dwelling is important: it's a safe haven to examine our lives and regenerate. Things we no longer need can be left there, where they will eventually fade away like so much compost, and perhaps help better things grow for us in the future.

Our New Year's Eves are spent quietly at home, or celebrating with family and friends. The phenomenon of First Night is interesting to me because we spend the last night of the old year in a Janus frame of mind, cramming  activities into those last few hours that directly contrast our ordinary lives: roaming around watching street performers, going to art and concert venues, going on amusement rides and eating foods we normally would eat- all in the name of having one last good time before the Big Ball drops at midnight. It's as close to celebrating Misrule as most of us dare come, and we end it with a kiss- the single final act of affection and kindness we can manage in those few precious last seconds as we cross over into the Unknown. We toss the confetti into the air (and our cares symbolically with it), shout as loudly as we dare (to frighten away those ever present demons) and drop the balloons from the ceiling ( as a quasi blessing of air, the element of inspiration.)


Then it's over. Life returns as a hopefully better version of what it was before. The champagne glasses are cleared away, the confetti and streamers are swept up, and the remaining balloons popped. We are left in the silence alone with ourselves once again, wondering what direction to take, and if it will be a better choice than the one we made last New Year's Eve.