12 Months On, On a 12th Night
I did not know that day what I know today, the 6th day of January, for I would have wassailed, I would have bowed, made offering with hand on heart to the gods at play. Instead my palm had a conversation with camera, Joanna, waving adieu! Sharpied to my skin. It was certainly not of any human wisdom to for me to sign off with a date so potent from a venture that had come to stall my soul. I was too singleminded that day to register I was under witness of the year’s first full moon, a super moon, Wolf Moon. I am confident I did not pay heed to the date, what would have been my Aunty Betty’s birthday, the day when Christmas decorations were painstakingly rewinded back to the loft, if they had survived that long. A thin thought remembers them calling it Twelfth Night.
But I was turning to my star, emboldened with a belly deep compass of trust to walk towards the unknown. Of course I ran. I ran towards my longing, with pen to paper I felt the light. I may have set off with less sure foot, faltered with expectation if I had known the day was the festival of Epiphany, the twelfth holy night of the Christian Christmas. The story tells that the three wise men having followed a guiding star had their epiphany revealed, the baby Jesus. I was trusting for an epiphany, praying for one as I submerged myself into the dark infinite waters of as yet unknown, eyes closed and animal alert. I breathed under and in the waters and waited, listened into silence and felt for the winds’ words. I had little with me but papers, brushes and pen, and 5 decades worth.
All under a Wolf moon. Blessed be the Wolf. I would meet my pack three months on, when I would start hunting for my skin.
This year, this night of the 6th, I will gently walk my bones of Winter and feel for my knowing. I will find the star that is waiting, no not the biggest and brightest, but the one with the low insistent whisper, handed from the oldest elder of me. I will dream under this star until time is right in the stirring of Spring to move towards its light. With me, the three words to guide my year already received: Prana, strength, Wolf.