The sky is a dome of light, tinged peach, tinged purple. Dawn is always forthcoming if we can ride the night out long enough. I wake up early and light a candle. It is the quite hour, before the world has turned and sleep still settles on the hills like an innocent child, dreaming still of a better world.

We all need a place to dream, and to rest. We need a place to make sense, gather resources, build the life, harvest the life. But that is coming. First the space for sleeping, then dreaming. First the dark.

November finds its rhythms in the dark hours. Light hatched only in sketches. It is in the dark where dreams are born, twisting around a body seeking its internal bear. To hibernate in today’s world of always on, always bright, where even the dark has been overshadowed by the commercial bling of Black Friday. How about:

Less Friday

Sleep Friday

A Friday to use up the last throws of the autumnal harvest before the need for more.

Dream Friday

Soon it will be the season of giving, of festivities, but for now still, this is the season for turning inwards, turning to the dream buried in the places only the dark can touch.

Take a deep breath. We have entered The Dark Times. This is a time and place when the already weak systems which hold things together begin not just to crack, but to fall apart. The bridges that united us are visibly failing. Across the ocean, a man so vile and so dangerous will continue to call for the infrastructure of our humanity to be torn apart. He will be tearing down rights: of access to healthcare, to travel, to democratic privileges, to any semblance of balanced judicial process. He will be dismantling freedoms too, of speech, of movement, of choice. It’s called misogyny. Soon it may more widely be called others things like fascism, violence, collapse. On this side of the ocean, I am grateful for the ocean, and that my own vote did not have to be in direct defence against such darkness.

Yet. Yet. For there is always yet.