Winter Solstice \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Winter Moon<\/p>\n
The long night continues. \u00a0Kate and I had our bonfire together. \u00a0All three dogs came out and sat with us for a bit before taking off for doggy business barking at something deeper in the woods.<\/p>\n
(Lorraine_Williams_Rainbow_Serpent_Dreaming)<\/p>\n
The silence has fallen and will stay with us until morning. \u00a0Then the sunlight will wake up the birds and the newspaper deliverers and those who work on Sunday mornings. \u00a0And the long trek into darkness begun last summer in June trades places with an equally long ancientrail of light.<\/p>\n
These are not opposites, not poles of a dialectic, but two sides of the world, entered through dawn and twilight, and with us every single day of our lives. \u00a0I’m still intrigued with the notion that the darkness may be our brains normal state and all this waking activity is clever misdirection by the dreamtime.<\/p>\n
This will bear more thought and reading.<\/p>\n
I do know this. \u00a0The ancientrail of darkness\u00a0is katabatic, like Persephone’s or Orpheus’s or Odysseus’s. \u00a0That is, it is the trail which leads to the underworld, the dark places within us and that it has always drawn me more than the journey toward the light.<\/p>\n
Let me say exactly what I mean here. \u00a0This is a bodily sensation, a sense of familiarity and comfort, a feeling of spirituality and it correlates to the increasing darkness. \u00a0It becomes most intimate this night, a night that is different from all other nights. Yet, the same.<\/p>\n
It’s not that I reject the light or feel oppressed by it. \u00a0The garden, the growth of plants and the chance to wander outside easily has its joys, certainly. \u00a0It’s just that for me the darkness is richer, takes me further.<\/p>\n
Does this have any correlation to my depressive or melancholic or dysthymic states? Maybe. \u00a0Does that mean it’s bad in some way or counter productive? \u00a0I don’t think so. \u00a0It seems to me that this is descriptive, not prescriptive or proscriptive.<\/p>\n
My guess is that our bodies and our early life experiences give us a tendency to lean more toward the dark or the light. \u00a0My guess further is that since waking activity has a natural though not necessary linkage with the day, in particular work and school, that we privilege those who tend more toward the light, perhaps even suppressing in ourselves a tendency to favor the dark.<\/p>\n
At any rate I’m of the dark persuasion and this is the moment in the year when I feel, as Tom Crane suggested, at home.<\/p>\n
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Winter Solstice \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Winter Moon The long night continues. \u00a0Kate and I had our bonfire together. \u00a0All three dogs came out and sat with us for a … Continue reading At Home<\/span>