This week — between Christmas and New Year’s and a few days beyond – can be anticlimactic after packed and people-full holiday events, can even be, as someone on Twitter once remarked, “strange and timeless and heavy with depression and restlessness,” but that’s not the case for me this year. On the contrary, it seems among the loveliest of weeks. There’s a sense of fulfilment in what’s just happened and no particular obligation left, while the tree twinkles still with its lights and special ornaments, the poinsettia carries on with its remarkably radiant red, and there are leftovers to eat. Even for someone who’s semi-retired, there’s an impression of extra permission in the air: do what you want.
This airiness, this possibility, threads me back to such weeks in my childhood, when the main events of Christmas were done but we had more days free of school and did a puzzle, played games, read for hours, skated. Oh how we skated! Round and round and round the rink, in the bliss of the crisp outdoors and the ecstatic glide of blades on ice.
This week I have a puzzle spread out, and enough to read. I’m thinking about the past and the future. Not exactly making resolutions but assessing. Playing with images of Spirit. (“I take refuge in the shadow of your wings” Ps.57:1) Considering the multiple conflicts and sadnesses in the world.
And then there’s December’s great big decision (don’t laugh): next year’s journal. I’ve done large notebooks, Moleskines and knockoffs, in-between sizes. I’m fussy by now: the paper has to be quality so it doesn’t bleed through with ink on both sides, it has to be narrowly lined. (I’ve also tried unlined.)
I liked this year’s journal book, but can’t find another like it. I have something close though am wary of the coil binding going wonky on me.
At the juncture of a new notebook, I brood about my journaling practice too. Should I go for diary-like, or intermittent random thoughts? How about one of those one-line-a-day attempts? Sounds like a fun challenge but might be like handcuffs for a writer. Gratitude and grump, or just gratitude?
In In The Jaws of the Black Dogs, John Bentley Mays judged his Aunt Candalia’s diaries as “performances of dread, a stalling of death… an attempt to ground herself, if on no more solid ground than the shifting site of writing….”
Mays’ critique stings, for yes, the journals/diaries certainly add up to “the suffocating intimacy of details” over the years, but then again, if I hadn’t noted these quotes when reading his book back in 2007, could I have used them here? At any rate, the new year approaches and I’ve got an (almost decided upon) notebook waiting as pristine and empty as a field of new snow, ready for the first foot marks of the first day to be written over it.
I wish you all a good new year, friends, however you live and mark your field of days. May you be blessed!
Borrowing Bones 
You’ve got me thinking, Dora. I have a shelf full of my diaries and am wondering what to do with them. Writing them was my therapy and they are intimate! Do I want people to read them? Some destroy their diaries before they pass away. I would feel as if I was throwing myself away!
Strangely enough since retirement I haven’t written diary as much, rather I’ve done calendar entries. Not sure why.
Another huge question, Elfrieda. I sometimes think about that too: what to do with them later, that is. I’m guessing your children would advise your keeping them. –Interesting too that your practice has shifted. Wish we could discuss this over coffee!