Joy

It really has been a beautiful day.   Crisp, cold (but not too cold), very still.  I went into the garden to put some vegetable peelings on the compost and was filled with something approaching joy.  The blue of the sky. The quiet. The generous and unexpected brilliance of the January sun.  Such has been the nastiness of the last few years that these days I'm wary of opening up to this kind of upbeat emotion without vetting it, patting it down, thoroughly in my mind first  - for safety's sake -  but today I just went ahead and let it in.

The sun has vanished now and night is falling fast.  The waxing moon in the east peers in at me through the window as I type.