December Considerations

Musings on the twelfth month of 2024

Photo by Jeremy Thomas on Unsplash

All year, our planet turns. It balances on an invisible point and travels around an unmarked path. All year, our planet turns, but in December, the turning becomes visible. In December, I feel the movement that’s typically impossible to discern. I see time slipping away from me, and my fingers scrabble to hold onto that formless eternity. But it’s difficult to orient myself when everything goes on spinning. Difficult, too, to keep time in sight when the weather still feels like September. How can I place myself in time when my skin can’t feel the difference between then and now? Nature is off-balance because humans keep grasping for things that don’t belong to us. Everything keeps twisting and turning, even as we flip a page on the calendar and pretend that time is a straight line.