It's been a while since I've written here, yes I know. I've been somewhat distracted as it were over the past few weeks, shuffling about with my head in a cloud, watching the days slip by swift as quicksilver and twice as difficult to grasp. So much has come and gone--Thanksgiving, the elections, short weekend trips, drinkups and dinners, hellos and farewells--and so much of what has consumed my mind has now been relegated to the dimly lit corners of Remember When. Suddenly I find myself here the last day in November.
It's a strange time of year, a surreal time when shadows are long even at midday's most brilliant, when tourists crowd the city to ogle department store windows, when ice skaters bundle up to glide and tumble and giggle under the golden flags fluttering bright at the Rockefeller rink here in midtown. They're lighting the giant Norway spruce there tonight.
I've been feeling that strange melancholy the shorter days brings. Everything feels so rushed, so hurried, so very when-will-it-all-be-over-so-we-can-get-on-with-our-lives. What is it about these wintering months that makes us so? What is it about now that makes us reflect and become despondent, so homesick even though home is right here right now? What is it that makes us feel--even, and perhaps especially so, in a city pulsating with people to meet and places to go and things to do--so spectacularly alone?
Sometimes, I suppose, we need to press the pause button a bit. Sometimes we just need to take a deep breath. Hold that breath and put on our game faces and keep on plodding along as best we can.
