Happy February 6!

I just wanted to start by saying that I love this blog. It has been a treat every day. Yesterday, I listened to the song from Nomi's post about 500 times. If you haven't listened, I recommend skipping my whole entry for Nomi's, immediately. Sometimes, friends just so come through.

How is it possible that a year has gone by already since the last February project? This has been the fastest year of my life— and the year when the most has happened. Since last year, nothing is the same: I’m back in school, in a new city, and without the relationship that focused my life for the past six years. Last year, I found it fitting to post about Beyonce on this blog; this year, I turn to this blog for comfort and reassurance and support.

It’s all upside down. 

Which I guess is what February is for, now. Its always been the worst month, and now its character feels appropriate for all that has happened to us. And since you all feel it too, it can’t just be me. You have all allowed me to focus the blame off myself and on to the month, for its loneliness and its tragedy and its despair and its endless endless chill. So for that, I am grateful. It’s not me—its February.

And its going to get easier, too. This year isn’t every year. This February isn’t every February. And I try to remind myself, amid the confusion of each morning that seems to place me in a life so different than what I imagined, that every day could be the start of something new.

As Annie Dillard says,

“Every day is a god, each day is a god, and holiness holds forth in time. I worship each god, I praise each day splintered down, splintered down and wrapped in time like a husk, a husk of many colors spreading, at dawn fast over the mountains split. I wake in a god. I wake in arms holding my quilt, holding me as best they can inside my quilt. Someone is kissing me – already. I wake, I cry “Oh,” I rise from the pillow. Why should I open my eyes? I open my eyes. The god lifts from the water. His head fills the bay. He is Puget Sound, the Pacific; his breast rises from pastures, his fingers are firs; islands slide wet down his shoulders. Islands slip blue from his shoulders and glide over the water, the empty, lighted water like a stage. Today’s god rises, his long eyes flecked in clouds. He flings his arms, spreading colors; he arches, cupping sky in his belly. He vaults, vaulting and spread, holding all and spreading on me like skin.”

And February ends: making way for spring. This is the best to remember. So, enjoy revisiting this poem:

February

BY MARGARET ATWOOD

Winter. Time to eat fat

and watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the cat,   

a black fur sausage with yellow

Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed and tries   

to get onto my head. It’s his

way of telling whether or not I’m dead.

If I’m not, he wants to be scratched; if I am   

He’ll think of something. He settles

on my chest, breathing his breath

of burped-up meat and musty sofas,

purring like a washboard. Some other tomcat,   

not yet a capon, has been spraying our front door,   

declaring war. It’s all about sex and territory,   

which are what will finish us off

in the long run. Some cat owners around here   

should snip a few testicles. If we wise   

hominids were sensible, we’d do that too,   

or eat our young, like sharks.

But it’s love that does us in. Over and over   

again, He shoots, he scores! and famine

crouches in the bedsheets, ambushing the pulsing   

eiderdown, and the windchill factor hits   

thirty below, and pollution pours

out of our chimneys to keep us warm.

February, month of despair,

with a skewered heart in the centre.

I think dire thoughts, and lust for French fries   

with a splash of vinegar.

Cat, enough of your greedy whining

and your small pink bumhole.

Off my face! You’re the life principle,

more or less, so get going

on a little optimism around here.

Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it be spring.