No Work ‘Til Spring

Even though I’m still carrying my jacket more often than wearing it, it’s January, and thus, ostensibly Winter. I know by the strange membrane of gray that stretches tight over the sky, in the air, as though I’m looking at the world through a veil of ancient lace. And even though this is California, where things bloom and snow is not legally sanctioned to fall below the mountains, half of the trees are naked or slowly stripping.

And even though it will be 70 degrees on Wednesday, it will be a January 70 degrees, which is to say that the very air is thicker, the rotation of the planet slower, and the urge to burrow inward still a thump, a gnaw; you just might need a little sunblock to go with it.

 January is no time for work. My body rebels against the idea of work in even this paltry simulacrum of winter that we northern Californians get. It’s both bodily and mental, this resistance. After all, the holidays, despite their best efforts every year to be a light and airy celebration, no matter how mild the effort, always leave me feeling as though we’ve done hard labor since Halloween. Maybe it’s just the effort of anticipation. I sleep more, the morning light against my eye so silvery opaque it might still be the middle of the night, and by noon I’m ready to nap.

I can almost feel the hum of my ancestors—my ancient, ancient ancestors—whose alarm clock was the sun, who obeyed the harsh forces of nature as she pressed a firm hand on their backs and said: be still. Conserve energy. Go slow.

I want to go very slow. I don’t want to work—to grind mental gears, or exert physical ones (unless we’re dancing, then that’s another story). I want to fall into my books, my journals. I want to listen to my cells dividing, the sloshing whoosh of blood navigating my veins. I want soft purring animals to curl up next to me, or a warm child will do, and just stay where I am until 70 degrees becomes the 70 degrees of April, and the grey veil is scoured clean by a crisp lemony sunlight, and the trees pull on their robes, and the animal of me hears the call to wake up again, wake up again, and then I will work.

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