December at Williams...

is blurring through the last two weeks of classes, running from class to rehearsal to dinner to rehearsal to Rosary to homework to sleep; on Friday, the last day of class, dyeing my hair green and telling people that St. Patrick's day fell early this year (the Celtic church and their lunar calendar, you know); returning from dinner and collapsing onto my bed, exhausted; it is also getting up the next morning, a Saturday, to take a self-scheduled Greek exam at 8:30am so that it can be finished in time for a 10:30 rehearsal with an impromptu schola before a two-hour choir rehearsal at 11:00...

Later that day, it is singing carols up and down Spring Street with the Elizabethans, ducking into the post office for our yearly attempt at Handel's Hallelujah chorus (this year, for the first time, with sheet music) and then gathering around and closing our eyes to sing Rachmaninoff's Bogoroditse Devo because it's beautiful enough not to need a reason. That night, sledding down Bee Hill in the light of the not-quite full moon, the lights of Williamstown to the north, the wide dark expanse of Greylock southward, Orion askew in the east, Sirius twinkling madly above the horizon. Then, on Sunday, Lessons and Carols in Thompson Chapel, playing the organ and chanting with the schola and singing with the choir, twice; putting the choir robes away for the last time and hanging the jingle bell ribbon with the first three; I notice two are red, two purple.

Back in the Chapel on Monday for three hours of recording for the next Elizabethans CD, then gathering around the piano to plunk out Christmas carols because we don't want to stop singing if it means studying for exams, or maybe just because we don't want to stop singing. Tuesday and Wednesday, writing a paper, wishing I was more of a writer and less of an obsessive prose stylist; Thursday, two exams and the bittersweet feeling of another semester down. Then three days of throwing together the inaugural online edition of Dappled Things (q.v.), fussing over style sheets and applying endless html tags, searching through my files for appropriate winter photos to replace the autumn leaves motif, finally running outside to capture icicles and snowbound vistas, finally catching the sunlight as it broke through the clouds to illuminate the hills beyond the dark evergreens, administering a little artful cropping to eliminate the roof of the athletic complex just below. Publishing, finally, and settling down to clean my room and pack. Sic transit, indeed. Is it over already?

And how did it get to be almost Christmas so soon?