There is room for dreaming in these hours of stillness and pause that fall between the old year and the new — the sleepy days bookended by Christmas and New Year are uniquely empty and lethargic. To me, this is a week for contemplation, a season of slowing down, a moment for creative reflection.
I escape up to my loft room office whenever I can. The desk is piled high with research books for my current big writing project, my notebooks are full of scribbled thoughts, the first draft on my laptop grows gradually longer, and the wall planner behind my desk charts research trips in the new year to come — a tentative network of place names and coloured stars.
Ideas appear to me as I tramp through the woods, shaken down by the rhythm of my feet on the frozen ground. They float into my mind in the moment between sleep and waking, filtered through my dreams. I check maps and weather forecasts, I fold down corners of poetry books, I pick up stones. I follow my curiosity wherever it leads me, seeking what Philip Lopate calls ‘the wonderful, gruesome, uncanny shimmer of the facts as they play out in life.’ During this liminal time, my mind seems to settle and my thoughts begin to crystallise like snowflakes.
Thank you for letting me in to your in-between days. Here’s what I’ve been reading and loving this month: