jazzfish: a black-haired man with a big sword. blood stains the snow behind (Eddard Stark)
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.
jazzfish: a black-haired man with a big sword. blood stains the snow behind (Eddard Stark)
More snow on the way tomorrow, saith the weather app, but today out my back window all is blanketed and quiet. Appropriate for an inbetween time.

As it turns out I'm not going anywhere. The buses were all full or flaked out. I briefly considered driving but I'd need to get winter tires put on first, and organizing that plus an eleven-hour drive, with both ends done in the dark, just felt like more than I could handle at the moment.

So I sit at home, with my black-and-white cat who seems to have gotten comfortable and secure enough to bite me when the world is not to his taste. (We're working on finding better ways to express displeasure.) I've scooted some things around and got my sun-lamp out and set up, so perhaps that will help break the depressive slump. I have a mug of tea in one of the large Wächtersbach christmas-tree mugs of my childhood, I have people who care about me. I have, maybe, the mental space to find my way.

The year past: Seven of wands
The transition: Nine of cups
The year to come: Three of swords, reversed

I got this far by relying on myself, and that's gotten me to somewhere I needed to be... but it's also left me wounded. Gonna need some help to heal from that.
jazzfish: a black-haired man with a big sword. blood stains the snow behind (Eddard Stark)
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.
jazzfish: a black-haired man with a big sword. blood stains the snow behind (Eddard Stark)
I missed Sunreturn last year. I missed a lot of things last year, and this year too. Almost missed this one again.

No Tarot pull this year but the Oblique Strategies told me to Listen to the quiet voice.

I've lit a candle. I'm taking the next two days off from work; I intend to spend them on my own in my apartment, as much as I can.

... fuckit.

The year past: Ten of pentacles, reversed
The transition: Ace of swords
The year to come: The Magician

A failed harvest, for sure. But perhaps I'll learn to learn from my failures. Wouldn't that be something.
jazzfish: a black-haired man with a big sword. blood stains the snow behind (Eddard Stark)
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.
jazzfish: a black-haired man with a big sword. blood stains the snow behind (Eddard Stark)
Cloudy yesterday. Cleared up by evening, and there were stars. Today it's more bright than cloudy.

I'm beginning to develop Sunreturn traditions, beyond just ("just") acknowledging it.

The year past: Queen of swords
The transition: Six of swords
The year to come: Knight of cups

The journey's internal, or maybe from the external to the internal.

It's been a hell of a year.
jazzfish: a black-haired man with a big sword. blood stains the snow behind (Eddard Stark)
(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.
--[personal profile] 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.
jazzfish: a black-haired man with a big sword. blood stains the snow behind (Eddard Stark)
Dark and wet and dreary the sky this autumnal winter, just the worst time of the year for a journey. A fine time to stay at home buried in blankets and cats.

I feel like I'm just starting to get a sense of what my life is actually going to look like. As though there's a sense of stability just about to settle in. Doubtless something will shake it soon enough; if it's all the same, or even all predictable, then you're dead.

So the light gets brighter and the night gets shorter. And we move forward, as we always have, into the stories that have yet to be written. And may your Sunreturn be peaceful.
jazzfish: a black-haired man with a big sword. blood stains the snow behind (Eddard Stark)
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.
jazzfish: a black-haired man with a big sword. blood stains the snow behind (Eddard Stark)
I first read A Wizard of Earthsea sometime in elementary school, I no longer recall exactly when, and followed it up with The Tombs of Atuan and The Farthest Shore. I adored Tombs wholeheartedly and reread it often: it's an adventure story and a rescue narrative in which the main characters save each other, and the culture and that twisty map of the Tombs drew me in. I found (still find) Shore to be dry and depressing and generally a slog to get through.

Wizard, though. There was something there, something behind the densely poetic language and the confusing ending that kept drawing me back. "Only in silence the word, only in dark the light, only in dying life, bright the hawk's flight on the empty sky." Or the wizard Vetch's sister Yarrow: "And when you're starving on the waste water between the far isles you'll think of that cake and say Ah! had I not stolen that cake I might eat it now, alas!-- I shall eat my brother's, so he may starve with you--" "Thus is Equilibrium maintained," Ged remarked.

I have a vague recollection that somewhere in The Farthest Shore, when Ged and Arren visit the raft-people, Le Guin talks about the festival of Sunreturn. The internet tells me Sunreturn gets mentioned throughout the books, though only ever in passing. Regardless. Something about the name spoke to me, stayed with me.

And now the sun is up, as up as it gets in Rain City in the winter, and maybe a little earlier than yesterday. The light and the warmth come back if we can hold on and wait.

Happy Sunreturn.
jazzfish: a black-haired man with a big sword. blood stains the snow behind (Eddard Stark)
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.
jazzfish: a black-haired man with a big sword. blood stains the snow behind (Eddard Stark)
It's been a rougher and lonelier six months than I'd expected. I think if I'd known it was going to be this tough to meet people, or that the dark would hit me this hard... I would have come anyway, because for something I've wanted this much for this long I'd rather fail than not try.

And now it gets better. The dark, at least, has begun to lessen. Hibernating and simply surviving get easier. The only way out is through, and I know there is a way through, even if I can't see what it is yet.
... the one who is King says "It all seemed so simple, once,"
And the best knight in the world says "It is. We make it hard."
--John M. Ford, "Winter Solstice, Camelot Station"
Happy Sunreturn. Looks like this year it'll matter to me on more than just a metaphorical level.
jazzfish: a black-haired man with a big sword. blood stains the snow behind (Eddard Stark)
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.
jazzfish: a black-haired man with a big sword. blood stains the snow behind (Eddard Stark)
Happy Sunreturn to you all. I'm told things only get brighter from here.

Hold on, have faith, survive. Spring will be worth it.

. . . I dunno. I can't really see it, this year. Maybe once the light gets in.
jazzfish: a black-haired man with a big sword. blood stains the snow behind (Eddard Stark)
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.
jazzfish: a black-haired man with a big sword. blood stains the snow behind (Eddard Stark)
Joyous Sunreturn to you all. We've passed through the darkest night of the year; from here on out it gets better. Slowly, incrementally, but relentlessly. Until one day you stop and point and say, "That's a crocus!"

I appreciate the sentiment of Xmas, winter cheer and peaceonearth goodwilltoall and such. It's the specific holiday I object to. Traffic. Crazy shoppers. Family Obligations. (A "holiday" I'm required to spend in the company of relatives is no holiday at all.) So I choose to have no particular interest in Xmas, in 25 December. I celebrate the day after the longest night, the promise that warmth isn't dead. Sunreturn.

'cos you never know what next year will bring

This season I celebrate with gaming, gaming, and (probably) more gaming. How 'bout you?
jazzfish: an open bottle of ether, and George conked out (Ether George)
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.

Thud.

Dec. 22nd, 2004 11:04 pm
jazzfish: an open bottle of ether, and George conked out (Ether George)
Today, I suppose, is Sunreturn, the day when the days actually begin to lengthen. That's a day I can celebrate. (Okay, really I just missed the solstice.) The announcement that HP#6 will arrive this summer fills me with intense dread.

Finished classwork on Thursday afternoon, and today marks the end of seven straight 6+ hour days in retail. Straight from the one into the other. Leaving tomorrow to visit parents in NoVa, and possibly other people as well, but not very many since I have to be back for another round of work on the 28th lasting through at least the first of the year and probably on for longer. I imagine I'll take a day or two off somewhere in there, and then really seriously get down to work cleaning/unpacking/finishing my room. I should also get my schedule for next semester set.

Bs and Cs for grades, which makes me feel like I fought this semester to a draw. Perhaps I'll do better next time. Went postal on Monday and got everything sent out, and it might even make it to its destinations by Xmas.

Tons of thoughts colliding in my head lately about permanence, and what MilBrat syndrome has actually meant for me. The words flow, and they spill over into other words, and run to places that I'm not quite prepared to go yet.

Blue Man Group's The Complex is quite possibly the finest rock album ever recorded. And Kind of Blue beats A Love Supreme all to heck.

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Adventures in Mamboland

"Jazz Fish, a saxophone playing wanderer, finds himself in Mamboland at a critical phase in his life." --Howie Green, on his book Jazz Fish Zen

Yeah. That sounds about right.

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