It is the Longest Day in more than one way. Work is an indoor fug of bad smells on a muggy day. I get in my car when the shift is done; it is stuffy, and probably smelly but I’m too used to it to really care- it has a vegetable tinge. Opening the windows lets in a healing draft of fresh vegetation; field grass, hedge flowers; this is the beginning of getting my Solstice balance back. Bird music shimmies from tall trees. High in the sky, set in blue, is a shining half-moon. I park up, and walk down a smooth skinny lane, swapping troubles for details- here grows a rose, here a pretty shadow falls. Here is a beach of fine sand. Low to the left, a blazing eye of sun casts over a silver-blue sea. I hear the lazy roll of waves, the gulls, some children laughing. And now: cool water on my longing skin. I swim out. I find perfect balance. I draw it in through sensory contact, I make a space for it within. Holding my head up in the gold light I ask the sun for a blessing. Even as I'm...
Heartened by signs of spring we had begun to hunt for summer. It had hid so well, under days that stretched out light but not warmth, we began to worry. When it pounced it was glorious and shocking: still in our cold weather clothes suddenly the alchemy of heat swept through everything. Butter was a liquid, our icy, cavelike bathroom was a blessing, the roads were lava. Grass grew taller than fences. Strawberries got fat. On my commute, cars became carapaces catching sun, shining scales on a snaking neck. Road kill was crow jerky in roadside dust. Ox eyed daisies lifted up, radiating cool petals, signalling hope. Signalling remember: signalling balance. Death feeds the carrion birds, and the earth; it becomes the soil to nurture roots. The sun can both love and blister you. And then, as the calendar turned to the first month of summer, rain came; it was dumped by the bucket, it washed away the heat, made mud from dust. It suckled the flowers into bloo...