The turning of the year

Happy New Year!

It's the first of January, and this is my first post of 2009. I admit I have rather a hangover - a real head-thumping humdinger in fact - the first for about a decade - so forgive me, if my thinking seems a little wooly...

It seemed appropriate to reflect a little on the turning of the year. Last night, of course, we moved from one calendar year into the next. But the year is 'turning' in other ways, too. The winter solstice last week was the moment when the days began to grow longer and the nights began to grow shorter. And it's called the 'solstice' (as I can confidently tell you, because I did Latin at school!) because the sun (sol, from solus), which has been getting lower in the sky throughout the winter so far, stands still (stasis) for a few days before it begins to climb higher again.

'The turning of the year', indeed. I had a vague feeling that this must be a quotation, but I couldn't think of its source, so I googled the phrase. I was a little taken aback to find there are 57,400 results for that exact phrase, and nearly 39 million for 'turning' and 'year'! But I'm not easily daunted, so I followed up a couple of hunches.

First, I looked up Auld Lang Syne , but it's not in that. Then I thought of Shakespeare, but thanks to a rather nifty searchable text thingy I now know the phrase isn't his, either. I found it in a rather nice modern version of The Holly and the Ivy, but since this is very different from the old version I learned as a child, it can't be where I've heard it before.

My search uncovered a couple of lovely discoveries; they didn't help me with the origin of the phrase, but I was glad to have found them.

Someone has done lots of research on the symbolism of all the months of the year , and their post for Yule and the New Year made interesting reading:

"Yggdrasil (the world-tree whose roots were knotted in Hell and its boughs supported Heaven) ... This Tree of Life sheltered the Norns, another example of the triple-goddess: Urth (the past), Verdandi (the present), and Skuld (the future) who lovingly tended the tree. In Norse tradition, the festival of Yule (December 26-January 6) assigns 4 days to each of the Norns to honor the turning of the year. New Year’s day, the middle of this period has become a day when we remember the past and plan for the future, making resolutions to better our lives, and invoking the assistance of these triune sister goddesses".

Then the Guardian website had a page with some links to lovely poems relating to new year, including Emily Dickinson's 'Hope is a strange invention':

Hope is a strange invention
A Patent of the Heart
In unremitting action
Yet never wearing out

Of this electric Adjunct
Not anything is known
But its unique momentum
Embellish all we own.

Hope seems to me to be great theme for 2009. Let's face it, 2008 wasn't much fun, was it? And I certainly hope this year will be better.

Fun. Ah yes: one of my favourite themes!

I never did find the origin of the phrase, but thoughts of the year's revolution have now turned to resolution. And I am resolved that this year will be much more fun-filled than last, because I agree with Tom Robbins:

"Fun! If others might find that appraisal of his life shallow, frivolous, so be it. To him, it seemed now to largely have been some form of play. And he vowed that in future he would strive to keep that sense of play more in mind, for he'd grown convinced that play - more than piety, more than charity or vigilance - was what allowed human beings to transcend evil".

And may 2009 be full of fun and play for you, too!

Flow x

Mushrooms, mists and musings

I don't much like autumn, usually.

It never feels like a season of mists and mellow fruitfulness to me. It's too depressing. All that rain, decay and darkness. When all hope of a late Indian summer has gone, I feel bereft - almost betrayed; and when the clocks go back, I rage, rage against the dying of the light.

But this year something seems to have changed. I am looking at autumn with different eyes.

.

Suddenly, the colours seem incredibly beautiful, and the sky seems higher, and the cold seems (what's the word?) brazen - like it is daring us to shake our heads and wake up.

.

If you look at my pics, I hope you'll see what I mean.

For the first time, as autumn advances and winter creeps towards us, I feel something like relief as well as sadness. It seems the leaves are letting go, not falling! It feels like the out-breath after the in-breath; the ebb after the flow.

.

And for the first time, I actually believe that spring and summer will come again!

I wonder if this means I'm getting old?!

.

.

.

Flow x

.

.

.

.

(© 2008 - All photos)

Remember hope, remember joy?!

We're living in weird times. All sorts of things seem to be teetering on the edge. I was going to say, balancing on some sort of threshold between bad and good, but it's sometimes hard to escape the impression that bad is likely to tip over into badder-than-bad.

Politically, socially, personally - and of course seasonally - it feels like things are sure to change, and as so many people seem to be saying at the moment, "Things will get worse before they get better".

Blimey!

If you've been listening to the UK news recently, you will have been fed a miserable diet of war, economic crisis, bank collapse, BBC presenter scandals, 'yob culture' and the 'youth problem', and you probably have indigestion by now. The chances are, aspects of your own life seem to echo these depressing headlines. My own tally of gloom this week includes a sore throat, a contract I didn't get, my thirteen year old son getting robbed, and hearing that a dear friend has colon cancer. Even the weather seems to be in on the conspiracy: we had a disappointing summer, now we're gripped by a grey, bleak autumn, and we have months of winter still ahead.

Rain or blizzard, trouble or collapse, unhappiness or total misery: these seem to be our doom and gloom options!

And yet ...

And yet, there are some signs of hope. Some of these are relatively small comforts - like the sun coming out this morning so that I saw a patch of blue for the first time in a week. Some are small but important - like the marvellous fact that my son wasn't hurt when his 'phone was taken, and we found him a new, better one on eBay last night for only a tenner!

And yes, some things - YAY! - are big, fat, juicy causes for hope. This week, as you will certainly know (unless you have been on retreat or held hostage somewhere very isolated*), America elected a new president who has inspired millions to vote who had never voted before, and who offers hope and a new positivity. Whatever we want to do or dream, Barack Obama says, "Yes, we CAN". My 8 year old heard his victory speech and said "that sounds like a poem" - and politicians who speak poetry are an excellent reason for hope, if you ask me!

Now, I'm a glass-half-full kinda woman. My occasional episodes of anxiety and depression (yes, I'm one of the one-in-four) have been stress-related and a reaction to horrible things - where anxiety and depression, frankly, were the sanest responses. But, generally speaking, I'm contented and cheerful, and I always prefer to look on the bright side of life.

But sometimes it's hard to be cheerful, amid all this doom and gloom. Sometimes it's hard to remember about the sunshine, and the blue sky, and (bloody hell, I'm beginning to sound like Fotherington-Thomas!) poetry - even the poetry of politicians!

Sometimes I need reminding about the good stuff.

So that's what this blog is all about: it's for silly stuff, stuff that makes me laugh. It's for beautiful images, words and sounds. And it's for serious stuff, ideas and thoughts that give me inspiration. But most of all, it's a record of my day-to-day attempts to remember hope and remember joy!

OK, so I'm not always so good at going with the flow (as kind friends sometimes remind me!) ... but meanwhile - oh yeah! - I'm determined at least to go-go with the flow!

Wanna come dancing with me?!

Flow x

*By sheep, say, in a small village in the Pennines with no digital TV signal and generally appalling telecommunications! ;-)