I'm off for Thanksgiving break now, enjoying a breather after pretty hectic stretch of teaching. As both student and teacher, I've always enjoyed the pause of Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks, and not only because I'm off work for a few days. For some reason, this feeling of rest and peace comes over me at these times that I rarely have otherwise. I don't have similar feelings about the onset of spring or summer breaks, much as I may enjoy them. What I feel now may be the satisfaction of concluding a long labor, whereas in the spring, I feel grateful simply to have survived one. Also in spring, the rebirth of the landscape AND preparations for fishing season are underway, giving a sense of beginning rather than ending something. At the moment, I may be infected by the stillness of the oncoming winter; I do feel a pleasant congruence between the falling snow, and something in my mind.
I often think of Robert Frost's poem "After Apple Picking" at these junctures.
MY long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn’t pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell...
Hope everyone finds a bit of rest over the holiday. For those not celebrating American Thanksgiving, I hope you find it where you can.
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