Nature cleans her house with violent storms and dramatic motions. She tears down old tree limbs, sending them plummeting to the ground (and sometimes somebody’s roof), clears swaths of brush with cutting winds, and fells entire growing seasons of delicate flowers with a single freezing night. She is gorgeously, diabolically ruthless, and decidedly unsentimental about it. Pulling no punches, she delivers her death blows in heartless fashion, seemingly void of compassion.
It’s what I’d mistakenly thought of as ‘The Cleaving’, and there’s some argument to be made that that is what’s happening – a brutal pruning of spent and unproductive objects, things in need of rejuvenation or entire excising or retirement. It’s important to know when to leave the party, and nature always knows. That’s not the actual definition of cleaving, however, which has a deliciously double meaning that can be either a splitting of something, like wood, or the sticking or adhering of something to something else.
If all goes according to Virgo plan, that may be what’s coming up on this new season of ALANILAGAN.com, and for the start of the 23rd year of this online mayhem, there will be our own little cleaving – a splitting off of that which we no longer need, and a holding close of all that remains dear. It will absolutely cut both ways. The excess and rich colors of Mr. Oud’s sumptuous and perfumed finery shall be relegated to memory. In place of that will be a blank canvass, cleared of fussy clutter, sparse of accessories and accoutrements. An expanse of emptiness, an expanse of clarity, a meditative space where I will decide what needs to go, and what needs to remain.
That makes this season sound more ominous than I hope it will be. There is no threat here, there is no danger. What needs to happen will play out as it’s all meant to happen, and there’s no sense in worrying or wondering why or what might be. If this sounds confusing or unclear to you, it is just as confounding to me, and that’s sort of what I want to explore for the next few months – not only here on this blog but in an upcoming project as well. Finding my footing in writing again has brought me back to basics, and putting things down on paper, both literally in a coffeeshop, and proverbially on a personal website, allows for a helpful introspective examination of what’s happened in the past, and what continues to happen. It’s a diary, it’s a therapy session, it’s a messy fucking Broadway show – and it plays out in plain view for anyone who wants to click on over here. A new year of analyses and awesomeness has begun –
Welcome to Winter Obscura… ~ A.
