Much to my own surprise, I have decided that January may very well be my favorite month of the year. Over the past few weeks, when I’m sitting in my living room, or out running errands on the bus, or taking a walk, or meeting someone for coffee, or meeting a good book for coffee, I’ve been struck by how different the quality of the light is. I think I may have noticed this, on a less conscious level, in years past, but this year it’s remarkable.
Here is my attempt at an explanation, along with a confession: I do not understand the planets, particularly the rotation part. On or around December 20 we experience both the shortest day and the longest night of the year. Ever since I moved to Oregon in 1994, I have come to think of this day as bottoming out. I don’t mean that in a negative way, necessarily; what I mean is that if you see the daily light dosage on a graph, with the hours of light at the top and the hours of darkness at the bottom, June would be the high point with December at the bottom. In Oregon, the loss and gain of light are so dramatic they’re impossible to miss. In Portland, you can read the newspaper without electricity after 9 o’clock in the evening in late June, and by the week of Christmas it feels reasonable to light the candles just before 4 in the afternoon.
To me, the change in the quality of light between the 22nd of December and the first week or two of January is way more significant than the number of days that have actually passed would suggest. This year it occurred to me that it must be due to our movement away from the sun being replaced by our movement toward it. By my calculations, November 30 and January 9 are the same distance – the same number of days – from December 20 and therefore have the same amount of darkness and light, yet thanks to the lighting in Portland, I often have to remind myself that I’m in the same city, the same neighborhood, that I have not, after all, been transported to a new sphere. I’ve decided that in Portland, even though the hours and minutes are the same, the gaining rather than losing puts a different tint to it, and I’ve decided that I really, really like it.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been captivated by the lighting to the east, right outside my living room window. In the brief moments before afternoon surrenders to evening, it’s light enough out for the rooftops and the edges of the evergreens and the other trees, bare branches at this point, to be silhouetted before a backdrop of faint gray. At the same time, the street lights and the lights on the porches up the side street come on and cast a yellowish glow over the neighborhood, which more often than not includes a shimmering reflection of the wet, black pavement, which the moisture transforms into something close to silver. During these few moments on January afternoons, the aluminum siding on a rectangular building and the boards in a deteriorating fence look regal somehow, almost elegant, even the power lines and a low-slung, hopelessly beige apartment building across the street, all of it washed in a golden-orange glaze – golrange, I call it – that makes me feel, for a second or two, that I am in New Orleans.
Here is my attempt at an explanation, along with a confession: I do not understand the planets, particularly the rotation part. On or around December 20 we experience both the shortest day and the longest night of the year. Ever since I moved to Oregon in 1994, I have come to think of this day as bottoming out. I don’t mean that in a negative way, necessarily; what I mean is that if you see the daily light dosage on a graph, with the hours of light at the top and the hours of darkness at the bottom, June would be the high point with December at the bottom. In Oregon, the loss and gain of light are so dramatic they’re impossible to miss. In Portland, you can read the newspaper without electricity after 9 o’clock in the evening in late June, and by the week of Christmas it feels reasonable to light the candles just before 4 in the afternoon.
To me, the change in the quality of light between the 22nd of December and the first week or two of January is way more significant than the number of days that have actually passed would suggest. This year it occurred to me that it must be due to our movement away from the sun being replaced by our movement toward it. By my calculations, November 30 and January 9 are the same distance – the same number of days – from December 20 and therefore have the same amount of darkness and light, yet thanks to the lighting in Portland, I often have to remind myself that I’m in the same city, the same neighborhood, that I have not, after all, been transported to a new sphere. I’ve decided that in Portland, even though the hours and minutes are the same, the gaining rather than losing puts a different tint to it, and I’ve decided that I really, really like it.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been captivated by the lighting to the east, right outside my living room window. In the brief moments before afternoon surrenders to evening, it’s light enough out for the rooftops and the edges of the evergreens and the other trees, bare branches at this point, to be silhouetted before a backdrop of faint gray. At the same time, the street lights and the lights on the porches up the side street come on and cast a yellowish glow over the neighborhood, which more often than not includes a shimmering reflection of the wet, black pavement, which the moisture transforms into something close to silver. During these few moments on January afternoons, the aluminum siding on a rectangular building and the boards in a deteriorating fence look regal somehow, almost elegant, even the power lines and a low-slung, hopelessly beige apartment building across the street, all of it washed in a golden-orange glaze – golrange, I call it – that makes me feel, for a second or two, that I am in New Orleans.
