My Solstice Fortune

I admit to still being in love with what I call the pagantides, those eight points of the wheel that come around in their regular pattern of long-balanced-short-balanced light and dark. I like midwinter, in spite of the things that drive me crazy about the season, the high heat bills, the back-breaking labor of clearing snow, the stupid-as-a-sack-of-hammers snowmobilers who, despite my requests that they not cross my property, continue to regard my land as their right-of-way. Up goes the fence!

But overnight (and uncharacteristically) last night, most of my chronic irritation melted away. I woke today with a delicious--and decidedly seasonal--craving for solitude. All morning the sky has been cloudy and low, although now a wind has picked up and the green pines and the gray branches of the maples are blowing around in it. The movement reminds me: things are alive. I woke wishing that my house were situated in the midst of a vast tract of acreage, field upon field and wood upon wood, and that I could be free to walk out through it alone with my thoughts and in danger of meeting no one. I like the energy of this, the shortest day of the year, and think that it naturally lends itself to going within, to deep thought and focused reflection. When I'm lucky enough to uncover the treasure that's patiently waiting there, I realize that it's the real thing I want for Christmas, and every other day of the year as well: the only thing on my wish list is that I be given an idea I can develop, and the time to develop it. And that I then be given the next one. Usually those discoveries come to me through writing--contrary to what a lot of people think, most writers don't know what they're going to say when they first sit down to say it. Or at least I don't. And of course, sometimes that treasure comes along through writing's corollary, walking (which in my experience is a kind of letterless adaptation of writing). That's what I try to tell my students: I love to write because when I do, when things are really in flow and your self is truly engaged with your self, it feels exactly like flying.


Today of course the reality is somewhat removed from solitude's ideal: my house is just one of a number of houses clustered around this block in the village, my son was awake early and so came downstairs practically on my heels, even now, as I write upstairs at my computer, the dog has arranged himself beside my chair making me aware of the other heart beat in this room besides my own. And at that moment, as if my writing a sentence about him had been the same thing as calling his name, the dog got up and nudged my arm and forced my attention away from these words for a moment and we both enjoyed a good long scratch behind his ears.


But, the urge to make a story out of the day has not passed, and despite the inevitability of the million other things I'll have to do today, there's still that long silver road spinning out in front of me to think about, and that road is the impulse to write, to make an image of or otherwise translate some experience that captures my attention at just that moment, or this one. As long as I can see that road the potential to walk down in exists, and everything else, the distractions or difficulties that rise up ahead of my getting there, are pretty much secondary.


Yesterday I spent the day with a kindergarten class, and while they colored away in a book full of illustrated Christmas carols, I sang the words to them and sometimes they sang along, as they could, and sometimes they stood up and did interpretive dance to the words. I never enjoy singing more than I do when it's for an audience who doesn't even notice that I don't sing well. I even amused them by making up my own words to some of the songs: "We wish you a merry CHRIST-mas/Get down off that chair!" (Prior to their class, I'd been reading a chapter in Stephen Fry's marvelous The Ode Less Travelled and reading about meter and rhyme always makes me start thinking in meter and rhyme.) This in turn made me remember, as I always do this time of the year, that there's a large body of work out there done rewriting the old Christmas songs to turn them back toward their pagan roots. I don't think there's anything wrong with this--at my core I'm a spiritual anarchist and anyway, I think that song-making is a fine occupation for this time of the year. I've already decided that this year, my solstice present to myself is going to be picking one or two favorite tunes (here I'm thinking Greensleeves and Lullay Thou Little Tiny Child) and making them my own, creating the lyrics that will fit the music and that will also reflect my own experience of this deep dark time of the year. That will be one part of the walk along that silver writing road today, just as writing in this blog space is also a part of that walk.

This morning I threw the I Ching and got the hexagram that translates, roughly, into "staying still," which is perfect advice, I think, for the day. Kind of a gifting message, I think: just sit still and see what your stillness attracts. let creativity come a-courtin' you. It's a happy state of anticipation. What do people do, I sometimes wonder, what do they think about, who do not seek out this state of inspiration? In my personal pantheon, at least, I arrange on the uppermost tier those divinites who grant that inspiration, placing them ahead of all the other spirits of weather, fortune, luck, and light.