Beautiful Things in December
- Celadon and gilt walls, gilt-trimmed mirror, wreath decorated in gold in the middle.
- Rainbow lights swirled around the bare branches of a winter deciduous tree.
- The small business district around the corner from my house at night this time of year, all of the trees wrapped in red and white and green lights, wreaths and candles hanging from the poles. Warm and bright.
- Orange filefish casually flipping himself sideways to eat off of a shelf.
- A dense thicket, bare of leaves but chock full of sparrows chirping and fluttering about inside it, bursting out in a cloud every now and then to retreat to nearby branches and fence-tops.
- Morning sunlight through the pines. A cold morning in the woods with dog and friends. Less beautiful when said dog joyously and cluelessly runs out onto the thinnest possible ice that covers only part of the pond, and a brief few minutes of panic when he disappears and does not return when called because his nose has found a far-too-intriguing deer carcass and thank goodness his bestie dog is there to find him for me because I could have walked right past where he is, down an embankment by the side of the pond, without ever spotting him. But still. Morning sunlight through the pines. A cold morning in the woods with dog and friends.
- Lichen on lichen on lichen on tree bark. Verdigris on verdigris. Curly-edged leafs of large lichen overtopping roughly cracked bark barely visible through the tiny florets of small lichen broken up only by small patches of a type in a shade of mustard or chartreuse.
- Flock of birds - starlings or sparrows, small and dark - clustered away from the wind on the back of a highway sign, tucked in rows into the corrugated aluminum back, dark silhouettes in lines on silver, save a few still flying into or out of place in a corona around the sign.
- Sun rising outside my bedroom window, bright stripes of orange and yellow stretched across the bottom of the sky.
- At the corner of a yard, a silver-painted chain-link fence meets an older stretch of fencing made from steel piping and twisted wire, braided and looped, old black paint and sheen of rust, dry gold mementos of summer greens still wrapped in both fences.
- It's turtle season where I volunteer, and I could watch through the window of the large tank where many of them are staying as they glide around, over and under each other, flippers working.
- Power lines and Jupiter and dark silhouettes of treetops and holiday lights just coming on and long expanse of dusk sky.
- Another sunrise from the bedroom window, this one a vivid streak of pink and gold beneath a vast expanse of scalloped gray clouds.
- Three speck of cinnamon suspended in a drop of water.
- A gray night sky, bare branches, black power lines, all framing a gleaming celestial glow: Jupiter looking almost as big as the moon in the haze.
- Copper-colored leaves from a marcescent beech, dry but not fallen; even in a photo you can almost see them tremble.
- Chain-link fence with peeling paint in a Fenway green, that real Green Monster green, that green that's somehow soft but more robust than verdigris, revealing a brilliant burnt orange rust where it has peeled, a classic yew hedge behind it, that deeper secret blue green.
- Christmas light leaking out into pools of color on wet pavement.
- Hanging out with my friend's 9-month-old while she has a few meetings. Tiny cutie, excellent disapproving face.
- Honest-to-God snow falling for my birthday.
- The house behind my parents' house has a yard full of tall, old evergreens, and after the first real snow in a few years, they are blanketed, enrobed, all deep spruce green and white.
- The view across the snow-covered park: white field, gray sky, and in the middle a row of peak-roofed houses lined up like toys, a line of bare trees making dark patterns in front of them, clouds moving, sun a hazy glow in the center.
- Brick-beige brick wall with a gray power meter box set against it, gray and blue scratches and patches and discolorations of various kinds marking it, partially covered in stickers probably left by a dozen different people on a dozen different occasions.
- The dried-up stems of grasses and wildflowers, brown and leafless, but still standing up through the snow.
- Little translucent grass shrimp running up and down the walls of their enclosure.
- Park with my dog, gulls wheeling overhead. Just a couple miles south of where I live (still covered in a fair amount of snow) and not a flake to be seen. I was worried it would be too icy to walk without my snow boots, but they either never got snow or it melted far more quickly.
- Row of trees along the Common with off-season nests visible, so many tiny branches it looks like hair.
- The fog billowing up from the rapidly melting snow, although more the eerie shadows made by the changing angles as I walk by constantly shifting how the light from the other side of the park comes through the trees far off in the fog.
- The way the bay gets at dawn or dusk when the fog is thick and the light is iffy and Squantum and the Harbor Islands disappear and it's hard to tell what is sky and what is sea and what is land in all the blue and the soft edges.
- A cup of tea with my oldest and very dear friend the afternoon before she heads back to the other side of the world again, my dog lounging in a sunbeam on a plush oriental rug like a hound in a painting. I love every moment I get to spend with her and it is to my sorrow that it is only ever visits, that she doesn't live nearby where I can come pester her weekly or make her run errands with me or come over and chat while I organize my apartment or watch Hallmark movies with me over bao buns and cheung fun and congee from the restaurant around the corner (although the frequent pictures of Australian fauna she sends me make up for it just a tiny bit).
- Woke up out of sorts with 100 things I wanted to do or felt like I should be doing but I just couldn't bring myself to do and after a few hours of fruitlessness, I just decided to head to the woods with my dog. Never a bad decision. For a few years in a row, we started our year out with a walk in the woods on January 1. This year, that falls on a Wednesday, which is the day I volunteer, so this seemed like a good alternative. Tall pines, bright sun, more marsescent beeches with sunlight gleaming through, bubbling streams, staircases made from roots, russet leaves nestled into mossy dips in boulders. I felt much better after that.
