The year is fading. Light is fading. Solstice means sun-stilled. We light candles and raise toasts,
The year is fading. Light is fading. Solstice means sun-stilled. We light candles and raise toasts, we smooch in doorways under strung-up plants, we hang lights along the roofline peaks, give gifts, make wishes, laugh and pray and fear. We bring the light into the earth and try to harness the great forces. It’s a wild sort of stilling, a thrashing frenzied sort of stilling, a stopping of time, a de-metering, a holding of the breath as the tension builds, as the dark expands, until it cracks and light drives in. That’s the hope. The far-off tinkling of bells you hear could be the harness of the reindeer or the bells around the neck of a goat. Hoofbeats on the roof, hoofbeats thudding in the warm and living hollow of your chest. Here in the wild quiet, something in the shadows whispers and you can’t tell if it means you good or ill. Pomegranate, holly branch, birch switch, mistletoe. We’ll leaf with life and pass below the secret places of this earth.Part Two of my series on the Winter Solstice for the Paris Review. -- source link
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