The months we live through are not some abstract grid of days and weeks like those represented on a dentist’s or real estate agency’s complimentary calendar. We don’t just move through the seasons, we inhabit them.
When I imagine the months of high summer, I think of them as a sort of enchanted, cozy cabin. Something out of an Arthur Rackham illustration of a fairytale cottage, perhaps. Located between the woods and the sea, with climbing ornamental roses and an herb garden filled with basil, tansy, rosemary, camomile, and mint. The air is filled with a complicated smell of sea and storm, cherry blossoms and gunpowder. In the morning, sunlight sparkles on a dancing river. There are tire swings and hammocks making lazy arcs There are children whooping and running wild through the woods, and older folks reading fat mindless books while chips of ice melt in bourbon cocktails. At night the skies are carnival bright, with wild stars and a huge gold moon.
October, by way of contrast, is a hunting lodge. The stuffed and mounted head of a magnificent antlered stag is displayed upon its wall, and there is a fireplace large enough to roast a whole hog upon a spit. The long dining room table is aglow with candles, and it’s set with the finest silverware and silk napkins. The room is fragrant with roasting and baking. Bottles of red wine are breathing on the sideboard beside bowls of fruit and dried flowers, waiting for company to arrive. One of the walls is floor-to-ceiling glass, and we can see the distant mountains, already resplendent in their winter snow, gleaming in the sunshine.
January, though, is a wholly different place, in another country altogether. It’s a haunted house, dark and frightening. A crumbling gothic pile in a far-away land where the days are fleeting, and the nights are eternal. Night winds scream through the trees. Their denuded branches, all sheathed in ice, clack like witches’ bony fingers. The ancient timbers are always shifting and creaking, so that it sounds like the feet of long dead dancers are moving above our heads. Like children staying the night on a dare, we pretend to be brave here. We huddle together, and tell each other stories, and wish we had brought extra batteries for our dimming flashlights. Our eyes dart about, seeing strange shapes swirling and congealing in the velvet shadows. The walls are decorated with yellowing portraits of sinister ancestors, their malevolent eyes following all our movements.
To keep our spirits up, we tell ourselves that the days will soon be brighter, and we’ll walk again through warm and sunlit rooms. But somehow, in the dead of night, it all seems like a false hope, a false dawn, impossibly far away. We wonder if we will ever leave the haunted rooms, with their chilled air and flyblown mirrors. We know, in our primitive, superstitious souls, that we may never see another summer. After all, if any month can last forever, January can.