Summer Solstice

The words following were written by experts, waxing far more eloquent than I could ever be on anything, not least the topic of summer and the solstice. South-western Oklahoma summers, for my northern English blood, are not much fun - they're simply "too flippin' hot!" Still, though, for any passing readers who enjoy the heat - "have at it" (as they say) and please take my share as well!

"The spring rains woke the dormant tillers, and bright green shoots sprang from the moist earth and rose like sleepers stretching after a long nap. As spring gave way to summer, the bright green stalks darkened, became tan, turned golden brown. The days grew long and hot. Thick towers of swirling black clouds brought rain, and the brown stems glistened in the perpetual twilight that dwelled beneath the canopy. The wheat rose and the ripening heads bent in the prairie wind, a rippling curtain, an endless, undulating sea that stretched to the horizon."
Rick Yancey, The Infinite Sea



"Hot weather opens the skull of a city, exposing its white brain, and its heart of nerves, which sizzle like the wires inside a lightbulb. And there exudes a sour extra-human smell that makes the very stone seem flesh-alive, webbed and pulsing."
Truman Capote, Summer Crossing



Heat, ma’am! it was so dreadful here, that I found there was nothing left for it but to take off my flesh and sit in my bones.
Sydney Smith, Lady Holland’s Memoir



It is Summer, it is the solstice
the crowd is
cheering, the crowd is laughing
in detail
permanently, seriously
without thought.
William Carlos Williams

Solstice, Fathers, Cattle, Poetry...

Sunday will find us once again at Summer Solstice - the longest day . For anyone who enjoys the summer - do take my share of the heat as well as your own. I heartily dislike this time of year in south western Oklahoma - too darned hot for this northerner, one born in the midst of winter too. Not to appear too churlish though, I should include Solstice Greetings to all. Enjoy it, wherever and however you can!

This year in the USA it's also Father's Day on Sunday. So, best wishes too, to any passing reader who is one of those: a father.

Unrelated to either Solstice or fathers, just to be obtuse ~~~

I enjoyed this video.



It reminded me of an old poem my mother used to recite (her name was Mary).

The poem, by Charles Kingsley:

"O Mary, go and call the cattle home,
And call the cattle home,
And call the cattle home
Across the sands of Dee";
The western wind was wild and dank with foam,
And all alone went she.

The western tide crept up along the sand,
And o'er and o'er the sand,
And round and round the sand,
As far as eye could see.
The rolling mist came down and hid the land:
And never home came she.

"Oh! is it weed, or fish, or floating hair--
A tress of golden hair,
A drownèd maiden's hair
Above the nets at sea?
Was never salmon yet that shone so fair
Among the stakes on Dee."

They rowed her in across the rolling foam,
The cruel crawling foam,
The cruel hungry foam,
To her grave beside the sea:
But still the boatmen hear her call the cattle home
Across the sands of Dee.

From here

The Dee Estuary is currently one of the UK’s premier birdwatching locations for wetland and shore birds. With views of the Welsh hills beyond, the estuary is a hugely significant landscape in Cheshire and of international importance in ecological terms. ...........
The Estuary’s status as a place of mystery and legend was assured by Charles Kingsley’s poem The Sands of Dee which tells the tale of Mary and her death on the estuary. It captures the melancholy of the treacherous deserted flats and shifting sands. Rumour is that she can still be heard calling the cattle home to this day. It is a warning to treat the estuary with respect. Whether in summer or winter the estuary has a feeling of mystery with many stories to tell.

 The Dee Estuary (h/t here)

Oh... alright then, it's Father's Day, Sunday, so... a poem oft recited by my father, in remembrance of Dad, who died in 1992. He once gave me a framed version of this poem, it hung in my bedroom for many long years, until eaten by our Great Fire of 1996.

IF
by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!


Here we were, Mum, Dad and yours truly, ready for the rain, on vacation in Brighton - around 1947/8 I think.

SOLSTICE

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
From Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot

WISE WORDS for 12/21/12:

"A piece of advice: if you want to remain in control of a doomsday cult, don't give a date for the end of the world unless you're really, really sure it's going to happen. Being wrong tends to undermine your authority."
― Jennifer Bosworth, Struck

YULE SONG - Winter Solstice - What Night is This? -Katerina ElHaj

Solstice

Solstice greetings to everyone, from Waco, Texas. And hello to summer!

Over fish and chips at Denny's last night, I mentioned to HeWhoKnows that it was Solstice eve. He wondered what we should do in honour of the sunrise.

"Dance naked across the old suspension bridge, perhaps?" He suggested.

"You can, I'll watch, the 'skeeters are just waiting for a banquet of my tender flesh".

He chickened out, of course.

We had set off later than planned yesterday, in order to stay behind a band of severe storms. Dawdling via quieter roads, avoiding the Interstate as much as possible, we decided to stay over at Waco, have a look around, and see the famous old suspension bridge over the Brazos River. The bridge was completed in 1870. In its day it was a great achievement, and enabled enormous herds of cattle to cross the wide river safely during cattle drives. A newer bridge now stands nearby to carry traffic, the old, wooden floored, bridge is for pedstrians only.

The Brazos River is "well up", flowing too fast for the ducks, and covering picnic tables etc, after storms and unusually heavy rain - for Texas.



Nowadays, sadly, Waco is mostly remembered for a dreadful massacre in 1993, involving members of a religious sect. More than 80 people, including 21 childen died.

Next stop Austin, ust 75 miles down the road.

Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere

Each of us feels the pull of the winter solstice. Sometimes we call it the stress of the season, but perhaps we are also sensitive to the great cosmic forces involved. At this season each of us undergoes a new beginning, a new initiation, as the god within stirs, however slightly. And without a sense of these wonderful initiation Mysteries being portrayed in our Christmas story, it can become a distant event -- which it is not. It is right here with us, and we will experience it every year as the cosmic clock returns to the winter solstice, when even the worst trials and tribulations have within them the seeds of light and triumph.
http://www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/seasons/4s-aed.htm