Seems sacrilegious, somehow, to be feeling down on Midsummer’s Eve. Even if it’s only a little.
Some people dear to me are bringing aching hearts to a Celebration of Life this weekend. It will be wonderful, it will be grand. It will be just the party Mary asked for – a party that, for a moment at least, will fill the holes she left in so many lives with comfort, companionship, and joy. Her family and friends will do her proud.
Wish I could be there.
Injury, illness, or unusual circumstances are keeping others I love from doing the things they love. Things that inspire their creativity, de-stress their bodies, satisfy their souls, and take the edge off the state-of-the-world anxiety that afflicts us all these days.
“Us” meaning “me, included.”
And I know I’m not the only one who has spent the first half of this solar year stumbling along a murky, labyrinthian path that endlessly loops and turns, occasionally taunting me with glimpses of its egress – deceptively near; yet, in truth, still so far away.
Definitely a downer.
The visual evidence attests that a labyrinth’s entrance and exit are one and the same. Don’t be fooled. A labyrinth exists between the worlds. You must walk it to understand that you don’t come out of it the same place you went in. It’s a kinetic rite of passage.
A few days ago, a wise Sifu I follow opened up in a video post about the “dark tunnel” he had been in for months and how he was finally beginning to come out of it. Yet, even in crossing into the light, his heart was a bit heavy – because he recognized that the hardships he’d been enduring were more than massive bumps in the road. They were signaling the end of the life he and his wife had imagined as young marrieds, and built, and nurtured for decades. They were testaments to the end of an era.
I, too, am making my way through a dark labyrinth. I, too, am mourning the end of a personal era even as I make my way toward the light.
I don’t know if Sifu Fung had someone to lean on as he plodded through his tunnel. Me, I’m leaning heavily on my daughter … who doesn’t seem to mind at all. “That’s the whole point of you moving here,” she tells me. Her kindness shines bright as the sun.
May Summer’s light guide you through every dark passage and all Her blessings be yours five-fold.
Midsummer, Tobago
Broad sun-stoned beaches.
White heat.
A green river.A bridge,
scorched yellow palmsfrom the summer-sleeping house
drowsing through August.Days I have held,
days I have lost,days that outgrow, like daughters,
my harbouring arms.– Derek Walcott
Midwinter wishes to you from Australia. A late summer suddenly slammed into winter weather a couple of weeks before the solstice.
Much to unpack in that essay. I love its clarity.
Most of all I love that photograph as an illustration: it’s a bridge, helping us over something, but the end of the bridge isn’t quite visible. Yet. But someone built that bridge, knowing that others would need help over the obstacle or challenge under the bridge. And they even left us lights to see by!
Thank you. Sue
Oh! Yes, my gosh, that’s it exactly! Thank you for the Midwinter wishes, and thanks a million for taking from the photo precisely what I hoped to convey. I caught that fuzzy shot through the side window of a moving car when we’d only just arrived here in Rochester. Though I couldn’t see beyond the arch, the causeway’s sweet invitation was unmistakable and its message to me in that moment just what I needed to hear. <3
You will, of course, find the beauty in the things around you (with regard to Dave’s comment above); it’s just going to take time to re-tune the engine. ‘I never saw the east coast until I moved to the west’, as Tom says in San Diego Serenade. That can be a tough listen, and right now, might tip you over the edge. But he nails it (albeit you are moving in the opposite direction). It’s a transplant, and your body is naturally rejecting the new organ, but give it time, and you will acclimatise.
I love going west here in Ireland, and had I lived somewhere like Clare most of my days and then moved here to Leixlip, I think my soul would be severely stressed for some time. But there is beauty here too, if I look for it. And then (he adds, perhaps more in hope!), I get to really enjoy crossing the Shannon once a year to feed off that Atlantic air and light. I can do my own Serenade.
Much love from all here in Ireland, which of course is also another place to visit to ease the burden. :-)
Wise words, Mr. Kenny.
I gave Tom’s tune a fresh listen without a hitch. Maybe because I did see my home town, the beauty of where I lived, the goodness of those around me while I was there. I never took my Nor-Cal life for granted. I just imagined I’d not only live, but die in Sonoma. And there’s the rub.
You’re right, Rochester has beauty as well, and it’s not hard to find. Summer thundershowers, fireflies in the back yard and garden, the lake … With only a short time to do their thing, birds mate, flowers bloom, west-NY state nature surges into wildly noisy and colorful summer existence with a marvelous urgency wholly unlike the laid back “whatevs” dry-season summer of California’s more temperate clime.
When we are settled with our own things about us, when people I love have come to see us, when I’ve proven to myself I can go home again to visit and play, when all of us here and there have made it through this first year of experiencing loss and longing as we hit each significant date and occasion and figured out how to engineer our suddenly long-distance relationships … well, then I suppose it’ll be a grand time to pop by the Hill of Tara for that hot chocolate I’ve been promised.
Thanks for the love. Right back at ‘cha.
x
Risa, my heart is with you. ❤️
And mine always with you. ❤️
Your recent transition has been huge, obviously, but saying that as a way of confirming of course you are in a darker place ….I was a bit in denial at what a huge change it was going to be for me when I moved to Denver…but it definitely hit me at a certain point…and the weird part is that I couldn’t know how long that feeling of displacement was going to last… or how I was going to embrace this as my new home.. Now 11 years later, I feel more stable, and at the same time, I have not fully adjusted…i have more recently, adjusted to not being fully adjusted… having support has helped… .so glad you have Bryn to lean on ….and don’t forget your old pal here to offer support and kindness when needed! I love you and send blessings at this solstice tide. My trip to Wisconsin brightened up my world and i am hoping I can sustain that. So will send you some of my warm sister.
<3 Thanks SO much, Eleanor. Your experiential understanding is stabilizing for ME, in that I feel linked to you, arm-in-arm, California girls now California crones trying to stand strong in strange states. I envy you that you are still residing in the WEST, at least. Driving out here, I didn't start feeling a pit in my stomach until we left Wyoming and hit the plains. The beauty of the East is sedate, ordered, civilized, tame in a way that makes me want to weep. Seeing woodchucks and rabbits nibbling at my sister-in-law's back garden doesn't soothe my soul like seeing small herds of mule deer munching on our wholly uncultivated ex-backyard. Cardinals calling from phone lines aren't like hummingbirds buzzing in my ear as they drink from my sage flowers. And magnificent as it may be, an algae-laden, crazy-still Great Lake is a terrible long ways from the cleansing salt-spray of the roaring breakers of the Pacific.
I hope -- no, I believe that when we’re in our new home, stewards of a back yard that’s a thin slice of real forest, this move won’t just make sense to me when I’m wrapped in the kindness and care of my daughter and yerno. With perfect love and perfect trust, I believe it will all make sense. Blessed be, Sis.
I’m feeling this, stuck in the tunnel with no light in sight yet.
Ah, Kaily. Back in my earlier witch-y days, when I was planning a Sabbat celebration, I’d worry that what I was going through, the stuff that was guiding my plans, might not resonate with the rest of the circle. After a while, I realized that if I was in tune with the ghostly, ancestral, haunted side of Samhain, somehow all my close ones just happened to be having visitations from dead relatives, having ghostly dreams, pursuing family tree research, or getting scare-chills from odd happenings in their homes. If I was feeling the last-harvest energy of the season, likewise, the folks of my circle would coincidentally be into canning that year, saving seeds from their summer gardens, or investing in cider presses.
While it grieves me that you’re also having a Midsummer that feels like a sun-cloud with an ebon lining, it also makes me feel our connection deeply and truly despite the thousands of miles between us. We are trying to get through our personal transitions in a world bombarded by the world-destroying authoritarian actions of a certifiable madman. Any wonder we’re feeling trapped in an oppressive dark tunnel? But as Sifu Fung told me when I sent him a version of the comment you just left me, “Things are slowly starting to resolve. I hope the same goes for you. Perseverance furthers.”
Persevere, dear heart. And whoever gets out of the tunnel first holds a light up for the other. Deal?
Last October I stood along that shore, albeit a few miles west of there, taking in the view. The skyscrapers of Toronto were just visible on the horizon, through the misty atmosphere above the lake. I experienced it as “pretty” and was glad to add the memory to my trove. I think I might have used a different adjective if I’d been obliged to nest there year-round.
Perhaps. “Pretty” is pretty apt, though. What tweaks my brain is the lack of drama in the landscape/lakescape, in this season, at least. It’s quite lovely, but all so … tame.