Dip my feet and ask for more
"It’s midwinter and the mood seems adrift..."
I’ll leave you softly sleeping
While the moon is gently shining
Pictures in your eyelids reeling
I can hear your deepest breathing
And I’ll walk across the moor
Over the ribbon road before
Water by my toes is streaming
Dip my feet and ask for more
Until I reach the journey’s ending
Dip my feet and ask for more
- poem by Caitlin Gilligan
Trying to write when you don’t feel like it is like scraping dregs from an auld jar of jam. Well here we are. I showed up. It’s been longer than I’d hoped because I was struck down with the winter flu. It’s been a dawdler and I still have a lingering cough. Not much singing, alas.
The breeze outside is unkind and I’m happy to be tucked up in my wee house with my cat and not striding the Pier Head in all climes, as life has me do every so often. I lit a candle to make this morning feel kinder. I’m not religious in any meaningful way but I do think such things have a indescribable magic.
It’s midwinter and the mood seems adrift. I know in my mind that it’s Christmas soon; that my birthday was two days ago. On the beginning of the equinox. Maybe it’s because I live in a city now but I feel more disconnected to nature with each passing day. Gone are the bedtime lullabies of foxes and owls. Or the chiming of sheep behind my bedroom window. I spent a lot of time as a kid out in the fields of gorse and sheep, harmonising with the whispering landscape. The curling boughs. I can still feel the shifting of the light stirring deep within me. Like two ships passing. It’s not a sadness or a particularly emotional thing at all. It all feels correct. I feel drawn back to the country but I am a restless soul. Always yearning for something new. Something else. Something more.
A new year is nearly here and with it a promise of fresh dreams. Before this though, I always like to look back on the year that has passed and good or bad, I like to honour it. A tradition my family do on Hogmanay, along with getting very merry, is lighting a bonfire and burning paper messages. Things we want to let go of or intentions we wish to set. It’s a shared yet secret moment we have together which I think is quite beautiful.
Last night I had a notion to make a playlist of some of my favourite new releases of 2024. Sort of an act of reminiscence. It’s been such a great year for new music with the likes of Joshua Burnside, Bonny Light Horseman, Jake Xerxes Fussell and Laura Marling to name but a few. So I thought I would share with you…
My jar is a wee bit empty still, so I will close the lid here with the promise of more jam in the coming days.
I wish you all a wonderful and happy Christmas and festive period!
Love, love, love xx