Words are inadequate

Made it up to Threshold and Erin this year. Apparently this is the only place in the province that has snow; everywhere else got rain and more rain. Overcast grey yesterday but the sun did come up this morning.

The year past: Ace of Wands
The transition: Five of Cups, reversed
The year to come: Seven of Swords, reversed

It's been a struggle of a year, for sure, but ... mostly just different, not bad. And one with progress, I guess, not just fighting against the same things. I seem to be learning after all. Soon will be time to put it into practice.

Peaceful Sunreturn to all.

It's dark outside and I am burnt out in multiple directions. This is a not unusual state for me. I've a week and a half off from work coming, and perhaps I'll spend more of it lazing around my apartment than I'd planned.

I barely know who I am anymore. I don't know that I'll find myself in Vancouver, either. I just know that I won't here.

It's dark outside and well below zero, and it snowed a foot or so yesterday and last night. Good Sunreturn weather.

The year past: The Star
The transition: Ten of wands
The year to come: Six of pentacles, reversed

A hope come to fruition, at a personal cost. A need for rebalancing, a warning not to focus overmuch on myself or my own material needs and also not to take on too much.

Peaceful Sunreturn.

Another longest night past. I'm told it gets brighter from here, though.

Winter up north is better than winter in Vancouver. There's light, for one thing: less daylight but what there is is dazzling against the snow.

It's been a downhill slide since the equinox. Here's hoping it turns around.

The year past: Four of cups
The transition: Death
The year to come: Eight of pentacles, reversed

Well. Harsh and abrupt change, from a lack of foundation to a lack of ... foresight, maybe. Great.

(Written a day late, due to having no internet at home.)

"We did everything I thought we were going to do, and it was still not what I'd expected."

That's not entirely true; we didn't stay up all night to make sure the sun came up. Other than that, though. Seems an accurate abstract for the relationship as a whole.

We did wake around fiveish, and watched the sunrise while pouring an awful lot of orange-blossom honey for a Solstice intention mead. We bottled just shy of twelve gallons of booze and ate olives and drank rose lemonade and talked a great deal about relationships past and future.

We have believed too long
in the impersonal inevitable, but the truth is
the sun does not come up without us;
if the arc bends, it is because hands pull it.
--siderea, "The Longest Night"

In the midst of all the greater awfulness it feels plausible, this year, that the light will come back. Is coming back.

This morning the low-lying clouds had buried the Fraser River again. Hints of treetops and light poles through the mist, and sloped lines that might be mountains on the horizon. And all filled with a diffuse yellow sunlight glow.

I dunno. This year it really feels like having come through three, or four, or eight-plus, years of dark nights. Like 'better' is a state of being that might actually happen, instead of a lie I tell myself so I can keep going.

Peaceful Sunreturn to you all.

Grey anyway. Working from sunup to sundown has been rough. I think the grim of winter's come early as well; I don't remember it being this bleak this time last year. Selective memory, maybe.

It gets better now, at least. The light's coming back. There's Christmas and the New Year to look forward to if you're into that. Someday it may even be spring again.

A peaceful Sunreturn to you all.

I made it through this godawful year (seriously, 2010 is rivalling 2005 for the year that the purpose of the forward march of time is to move us further away from) and it didn't, quite, kill me. From here on up, as Walt Kelly said, it's all downhill. And someday I'll be able to recognise it as something we can accept, mistakes made by the selves we had to be.

For now I'll settle for the light getting a tiny bit better and the night getting just a touch shorter.

Happy Sunreturn, all. Axial tilt may be the reason for the season but that's no reason not to celebrate, or at least reflect.

Today is Sunreturn. The dark of the year has passed and we've not given up. From here on up it's all downhill. &c., &c.

I celebrate Sunreturn as a reminder that, even when all the evidence I can see points to being locked in the same frozen patterns forever, there's still hope. The world moves on and so do I.

It's not really a joyful kind of holiday. That's more Spring's forte. Sunreturn is. . . the faith that one's efforts will be rewarded. Even (especially) when those efforts are "only" surviving. It gets better, it gets easier. One day you'll look around and notice that there's a bit more light in the sky, a touch less chill in the air. This will happen, is the message of Sunreturn. All that's asked of you is patience, persistence, and the strength to survive.

These are not trivial things. They're also not hopeless ones.

A peaceful Sunreturn to you all.

A joyous (edit: late) Sunreturn to you all, and a reminder that axial tilt is the reason for the season.

Dennis Hartley, who occasionally posts movie reviews at Digby's place, reminded me of the best Christmas movie ever. "Well. What family doesn't have its little problems?" Next year I shall begin a Tradition of watching it in the company of cool people. (The rest of this holiday season being rather full already.)

The awesomest thing I got this Xmas I didn't actually get at all. My parents gave me a smallish box with some rocks inside it ("to give it some weight"), and also a short note. The note said that they've taken Pop's old clock (now mine) into a clock repair shop, in order to have its innards ripped out and replaced with functional ones. Apparently when the clock was made the mechanism was delicate enough that it needed to be sitting Perfectly Level, or else. And, well, it wasn't, for many years.

I suspect that when they fix it they'll actually fix it, and thus remove the coolest aspect of the clock. On the fifteen, thirty, and forty-five minutes it plays one, two, and three bars of Westminster Chimes. On the hour it plays all four bars and then supposedly chimes the hour. My earliest memories of this clock involve it chiming one extra time each hour. Sometime in the late eighties Gram and Pop took it to a repair shop and had it "fixed" so it would chime correctly. Eleven times out of twelve, anyway. At one o'clock it would chime thirteen times.

I got Dad the llama movie, so we watched that after lunch. It's an anomaly among Disney films: there's only one musical number (the opening credits), the kids have two parents, and there's a great deal of actually witty banter. "Why do we even have that lever?" "I really hope this doesn't come back to haunt me later." The whole "Don't tell me. Waterfall dead ahead" conversation. David Spade is bloody annoying but other than that it's a great deal of fun.