I’m up in the night, awake, as the fog blows in and the wind rings the chimes that surround my home.  I light candles for scent and flickering brightness.  One candle holder has Japanese Kanji characters, and I reach for meaning.  I see Sky and Sun and then a square that when I look it up has multiple meanings. At first, I’m enchanted with one meaning, Opening, yes, perfect, and then, I read another meaning, enclosure. Enclosure.  I’m feeling safe and enclosed, blinds down though the view is private, but it’s fall now, and though we carve pumpkins for light, the pumpkin encloses its seeds, and I feel seeds inside ripening. 

The Kanji square can also be perceived as Mouth, yes, the mouth, opening and enclosing, ingesting,  which brings me to the image of the mouth of a river where water that’s been enclosed and held flows into a larger body of water, meets the sea  And so do we, as we breathe in and out in an exchange of connection and renewal. Life!  And it’s a new moment, a new Year!