Sunsets
Day by day, darkness slunk its way into our days slowly and then all at once. In San Francisco, the sun sweltered and brought heat and warmth into the October days and made the city feel like summer, even among pumpkins and skeleton decorations. Planes flew overhead through clear skies for most of the days. What were seasons here? At the same time, sunset slowly crept earlier and earlier, the days felt shorter and shorter, and then night took a step forward.
I never used to notice the effects of daylight savings time ending and beginning each year. I wonder if it’s because I was younger and the powers of youth let me avoid the sleep problems that I now accrued during each skip. Or maybe it’s the difference in latitude from San Francisco to Atlanta makes enough of a difference of day lengths that my body is more affected out here.
Either way, this past weekend’s “fall back” time change felt like a step directly into wintertime. We’ve started to experience slightly cooler mornings and nights, and sunny days in between. Keeping track of months and seasons is hard in a city where the weather never changes too much, but the later months of the year do feel a little bit different: slightly thicker jackets, a few more sweaters, turning the heat on. My winter memories here are mostly of looking out of bus windows into darkness and traveling home.
This year, I’ve been trying to notice the ways that these past few days have felt different. What can I recognize about this winter that I haven’t before? Every bus I’ve ridden has been more crowded than usual, especially in my commute home from work. The cool winds of the city start to blow around when I start heading home, so the warmth of the bus is a welcome reprieve, even if it means a crowded one. Somehow, with much less personal space than usual, I feel some sort of kinship with my fellow bus-goers, a tenderness for the details that I could find. I think about the very tall man who accidentally bumped someone else with his grocery bag. He apologized multiple times for something that was barely noticeable at all.
There’s a physiological change in us during winter time, as we suddenly need more hours of sleep, as we feel more inclined to move less. I imagine the ancient humans huddling together for warmth to escape the cold. Maybe there was a fire and maybe a meal. What would they do then? Would they sing songs and eat meals and make paintings and revel in each other’s company? Would they feel a stronger impulse to be with each other?
The days grew shorter and I wondered if my energy was dwindling from lack of sunlight. I developed theories about how winter seemed like the perfect season for focusing on creating. In equal measure, my winter desires were aesthetic visions of both shared meals with friends & family and solitary writing among warmly lit stacks of books. I imagined long days of relaxing and thinking and reading and silence, punctuated by occasional winter-y potlucks and holiday dinners.
Before it started to feel like winter, it felt easier to socialize more frequently and all the time, which left less time for solitude and time for writing outside of my weekly letters. Despite the increased time I’ve been putting into Splash, I wonder what other writing I could be doing.
And so, I’m aspiring to find the balance prescribed by my theory: what could be more creative than time split between having conversation-driven meals with people I love and taking the time to reflect on the days that I spend with them?
Maybe we’re meant to do be like the plants and animals in this part from Wintering by Katherine May (via Austin Kleon):
“Plants and animals don’t fight the winter; they don’t pretend it’s not happening and attempt to carry on living the same lives that they lived in the summer. They prepare. They adapt. They perform extraordinary acts of metamorphosis to get them through. Winter is a time of withdrawing from the world, maximising scant resources, carrying out acts of brutal efficiency and vanishing from sight; but that’s where the transformation occurs.”
So perhaps I must prepare to balance the desire for warmth both with and without others. I must adapt to my changing energies, try and match the creative season that I’ve decided my body needs. More and more, I see much of my life as the basis of the creative process. The output is my writing, but the inputs include everything I watch, everything I do. Even as I enjoy my day-to-day, I go for a run but think about how exercise can help my mind work better and inspire my work, I watch movies but think about how every piece of media influences how I think and the words I use.
So, I’ve started being pretentious about what I’m listening and watching lately. I’m trying to listen to music from playlists and albums rather than algorithms. I’ve been reading Plath and Steinbeck instead of the latest National Book Award winner, I’ve been reading older articles that people return to online instead of the most recently published article by a given writer.
And, more of my plans are meals than before. More of my evenings are dedicated to sitting alone in my room. I’m starting to find the balance I need. This could be a winter where I completely metamorphosize.
I just hope that I’ll transform into a better artist, a better writer.
We must do what we can to push back against the genocide in Gaza. Call your US representatives to support de-escalation and a ceasefire and donate to Palestine Children’s Relief Fund for humanitarian aid.
💧 Drops of the Week 💧
PLAYLIST - “I’m a rap fan but these house songs SLAP” - accurate title
POEM - “In Winter” by Michael Ryan - “At four o’clock it’s dark.”
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