Lunaea Weatherstone's Blogue

Weather

When I told people I was moving to Portland, the response was almost always along the lines of "It rains eight months a year there!" Having been here now for more than ten months, I can report that this isn't exactly true. But there have been enough rainy days (weeks...) to keep me happy. Weather has always been my great joy. Having a short attention span -- or to put it more positively, a love of variety -- the ever-changing drama of the skies feeds my soul. My family moved to southern California when I was 10, but I had those first ten years in places where there was deep snow in the winter and thunderstorms and tornadoes in the summer. I grew accustomed (as children do) to the lack of real seasons, but I never stopped yearning for weather, for the power of nature's uncontrollable moods.

This painting by El Greco, View of Toledo, captured my heart when I first saw it at about age 12, reading a biography of the artist. It enthralls me still: the light, the mystery, the sky, the sky, the sky....

It's raining today in Portland, and it rained yesterday, and will probably rain tomorrow. But two nights ago, I stood in my doorway gazing in rapture at a midnight snowfall that turned my garden into a glittering faeryland before the rain came again to dissolve it into memory. Giving yourself over to the moment is the great lesson of weather. You can't put it off, can't wait until a more convenient time to experience it fully. The wild magic will not be denied. El Greco caught a moment in paint and canvas more than 400 years ago. How many such moments live in your memory? What new mysteries will come into your view today?

Heeding the call

Over the last couple of months, huge flocks of Canada geese have been passing through on their way to warmer climes. They call to each other as they fly, and the sound of honking overhead echoes on the wind, holding me spellbound as the magnificent birds fly over my house -- a dozen or a hundred or more painting their calligraphy against the sky. I heed their call to look up, to stop whatever I'm doing and give my full attention to the fleeting silver-feathered moment.

As the geese know without question when to rise into the sky and begin their ancient migration, I've been listening for my own inner call, hoping for that kind of surety and unerring sense of direction. For the past few months, mostly that call has been toward stillness. The image that comes to mind is of a pendulum that has been set wildly swinging and needs to gradually and in ever-smaller circles come back to a still center. Or perhaps it is a compass, or an alethiometer, anything that spins and then points toward clarity. It's not easy to describe, and hence the long silence on this blogue. "I'm thinking" doesn't make for fascinating reading. From what I've heard from friends, there's a lot of that going on, and it's certainly the right time of year for it. The deep silence of winter solstice, followed by the insistent clamor of the calendar, all leading toward a desire to understand what has passed so to better welcome what is approaching.

As I do every December, I offer you two of my own traditions for the New Year. First, the worldwide vigil for peace, which happens on New Year's Eve day at noon Greenwich Mean Time. You can do your own math for your time zone -- here on the West Coast it's 4am on Saturday morning, so you would set your alarm tonight if you want to arise in time for it. Some years I've gathered with dear ones at a sacred spot to pray for peace (and then go out for pancakes), and in other years I've simply awakened at the hour and offered prayers for peace from the grateful warmth of my own bed. All the positive energy we put out adds to the web of blessing, so do add yours.

My other New Year custom is to draw a word at random from a little bag of words (you can download the list I use here or make your own; my list originated from my friend Renee). This word can serve as both divination and intention, and looking back a year later, can provide chewy food for thought. I chose three words last New Year's Eve: dedication, magnetism, understanding. Dedication and magnetism bring me back to that image of the pendulum or compass needle or instinctive pull toward ... who knows? Maybe understanding only comes after the surrender to that pull. Maybe it's enough to just heed the call, to follow the instinctive longing that empowers mighty wings. May your own call lead you surely and safely toward your soul's desire.

 

The last sunny day

For the last few weeks, people here in Portland have given me the same comment about every sunny day: that it's the last one, the last sun we will see for many months. This is my first winter here, so I don't have the experience of what seems like endless dark wet days, but even so, the concept of "the last sunny day" has its appeal. As I said in my last blogue post, thinking that something soon will be gone adds an intensity to the senses, so I took my camera and my sun-attuned eyes out for a drive today, and here is some of what I saw (you can click on all images in this blogue to see them bigger):

The words from "Fare Well" by Walter de la Mare ran through my mind as I drank in this last sunny day:

Look thy last on all things lovely,

Every hour. Let no night

Seal thy sense in deathly slumber

Till to delight

Thou have paid thy utmost blessing...

However many more sunny days are left -- in this season or in this life -- to look on all things lovely with eyes that truly see is surely a blessing.

Just one more delight to bless on this day, the magnificent mountain, wrapped in his mantle of snow:

Ah! Like gold...

This is the first autumn I've been surrounded by deciduous trees rather than evergreens, and the pageant of colored leaves has me dazzled. In previous years in California, there would often be one brilliant tree standing out against the dark green background, as if in a spotlight onstage, and that is its own kind of joy. Here in Portland the glory is everywhere, tapestries of trembling amber and russet and crimson and flame.

A few years ago I added a line in Elvish to one of my wrist tattoos: Ai! laurië lantar lassi súrinen (Ah! Like gold fall the leaves in the wind). It is from the poem Namárië (Farewell), also known as Galadriel's Lament, by J.R.R. Tolkien. I meant it as a reminder to see the beauty in time's passage, and to let the knowledge of loss and endings bring the present blessings into sharper focus. This autumn I am seeing that poem vividly all around me, as chill gusts of wind send the golden leaves swirling. I want to clasp the gorgeousness to me, hold it, preserve it somehow, but Nature knows better. There is no art that can capture this joy, distilled with a drop of sorrow. There is only this moment, and the next moment, and the one after that. Who knows how many more there will be? Sí man i yulma nin enquantuva? Who now shall refill the cup for me? The Goddess has filled it, filled it to overflowing, and I drink with deep gratefulness the golden wine.