![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chelidonIn the time of Summer, the wisdom of Summer can be heard...
I remember many Summers, now -- summers at my grandparent's city brownstone, and my uncle's farm, summers in the desert, summers spent surfing, reading and hiking, the long, almost endless summer between high school and college (bursting full of possibility, expectation, and love), fevered, tender Summer moments with a lover now dead, summers spent building, learning, laughing, studying and teaching at camps, drinking in new magic and old as if straight from the wellspring of life, my first Summer as a father, hot, humid days in the garden, and always, always, wild, burgeoning life -- flowing, overflowing forth in abundance and delicious, joyous excess.
Summer (Ordinary Magic)
from Patricia Monaghan, "Seasons of the Witch"
Let us go out to the garden to understand.
Look: everything is full, fleshed out. A few months ago, plants stood tall and separate against the brown Earth. Now leaves press into each other, the rows crowd compactly. Summer is a season, but it seems a moment. Everything seems to happen at once. Everything seems on the verge: peaches redden, corn tassels. Tomatoes fill the air with acridity, roses with heady spice. The sun is high and hot, the days long and ripe.
This is the season of urgency. There is never enough time. Everything must be done at once. This is the season of too muchness, of too many blackberries, too much zucchini, too many tomatoes. It is a time of dense sensuality. The air is syrupy on humid nights as peaches poach on the stove and steaming glass jars wait. The air is cool on the porch where breezes sway the vines as the stately moon rises. It is the season of gifts: extra produce brought to friends' homes, baskets of overripe fruit, potlucks and fairs.
Nature is in a splendor of excess. Even the garden's villains are excessive: the starling flock taunting from the apricot tree, the myriad crawling pests, the slugs creeping through evening's cool. The weather, too, is excessive. This is the time of violent winds that tear apart the harvest. Of sheeting rain that shreds and drowns. Of drought and failure: corn desiccated on the stalks, soil blowing in fierce grit winds.
Summer is bountiful. Summer is extreme. Earth is not kind nor gentle, save on those pale nights when even the sky holds still for a moment, and, through the hush of a sleeping world, the heartbeat of time is heard.
So, too, for women, the summers of life. She is in her prime, full of energy. Life is endless, endlessly crowded. It draws her here, there, here, with new desires and demands. Every sunrise is an opportunity, every noon a driving compulsion, every sunset a dawn into night's possibilities. She is full and brash and busy. She takes and discards lovers; she produces children and art; she creates a self and a home. She feels exhilarated by her power. She feels exhausted by possibility. She says yes to everything. everything grows and burgeons from her energy, she is a forcefield of affirmation.
But this is also the time of losses so huge they seem to stretch to the horizon: parents gone, children in pain, the world convulsed with war. Tornados of feeling sweep through her, this woman of summer. Sometimes she feels a vast hunger, an enormous yearning, as though her soul can never be sated. Sometimes she feels as though beauty is a thin membrane stretched over pain. In the midst of excess, she feels wrenching want, for there is never enough: enough time, enough tears, enough love.
Summer comes to women more than once. It opens, a wave of green energy, driving us to productiveness and passion. Summer can explode upon a woman at any time, whenever the force of life rages through her, whenever life's ache opens her eyes to the magic and beauty in each moment.
The magic of the season rests in transformation: seed into fruit, embryo into child, idea into reality. Daily the magic occurs, so fast we fail to see it truly. But within the flux of the transformation, there are moments of perfect consciousness: a hawk pivots perfectly in a tight sky circle; a star glows a single second before falling. Inside those moments, power lives. Power that is beyond the normal magic of growth and death. In these moments, time can reverse itself, all forms may change, all directions can flow into their opposites. This is the secret of Witches and initiates: to recognize these moments and, falling into the vast space behind them, to become timeless and free.
Go into the garden for understanding. Let power flow through you. Touch yourself. Touch each other. Transformation rests within you and among you. You are always transforming yourself. Just watch. Just watch.
I remember many Summers, now -- summers at my grandparent's city brownstone, and my uncle's farm, summers in the desert, summers spent surfing, reading and hiking, the long, almost endless summer between high school and college (bursting full of possibility, expectation, and love), fevered, tender Summer moments with a lover now dead, summers spent building, learning, laughing, studying and teaching at camps, drinking in new magic and old as if straight from the wellspring of life, my first Summer as a father, hot, humid days in the garden, and always, always, wild, burgeoning life -- flowing, overflowing forth in abundance and delicious, joyous excess.
Summer (Ordinary Magic)
from Patricia Monaghan, "Seasons of the Witch"
Let us go out to the garden to understand.
Look: everything is full, fleshed out. A few months ago, plants stood tall and separate against the brown Earth. Now leaves press into each other, the rows crowd compactly. Summer is a season, but it seems a moment. Everything seems to happen at once. Everything seems on the verge: peaches redden, corn tassels. Tomatoes fill the air with acridity, roses with heady spice. The sun is high and hot, the days long and ripe.
This is the season of urgency. There is never enough time. Everything must be done at once. This is the season of too muchness, of too many blackberries, too much zucchini, too many tomatoes. It is a time of dense sensuality. The air is syrupy on humid nights as peaches poach on the stove and steaming glass jars wait. The air is cool on the porch where breezes sway the vines as the stately moon rises. It is the season of gifts: extra produce brought to friends' homes, baskets of overripe fruit, potlucks and fairs.
Nature is in a splendor of excess. Even the garden's villains are excessive: the starling flock taunting from the apricot tree, the myriad crawling pests, the slugs creeping through evening's cool. The weather, too, is excessive. This is the time of violent winds that tear apart the harvest. Of sheeting rain that shreds and drowns. Of drought and failure: corn desiccated on the stalks, soil blowing in fierce grit winds.
Summer is bountiful. Summer is extreme. Earth is not kind nor gentle, save on those pale nights when even the sky holds still for a moment, and, through the hush of a sleeping world, the heartbeat of time is heard.
So, too, for women, the summers of life. She is in her prime, full of energy. Life is endless, endlessly crowded. It draws her here, there, here, with new desires and demands. Every sunrise is an opportunity, every noon a driving compulsion, every sunset a dawn into night's possibilities. She is full and brash and busy. She takes and discards lovers; she produces children and art; she creates a self and a home. She feels exhilarated by her power. She feels exhausted by possibility. She says yes to everything. everything grows and burgeons from her energy, she is a forcefield of affirmation.
But this is also the time of losses so huge they seem to stretch to the horizon: parents gone, children in pain, the world convulsed with war. Tornados of feeling sweep through her, this woman of summer. Sometimes she feels a vast hunger, an enormous yearning, as though her soul can never be sated. Sometimes she feels as though beauty is a thin membrane stretched over pain. In the midst of excess, she feels wrenching want, for there is never enough: enough time, enough tears, enough love.
Summer comes to women more than once. It opens, a wave of green energy, driving us to productiveness and passion. Summer can explode upon a woman at any time, whenever the force of life rages through her, whenever life's ache opens her eyes to the magic and beauty in each moment.
The magic of the season rests in transformation: seed into fruit, embryo into child, idea into reality. Daily the magic occurs, so fast we fail to see it truly. But within the flux of the transformation, there are moments of perfect consciousness: a hawk pivots perfectly in a tight sky circle; a star glows a single second before falling. Inside those moments, power lives. Power that is beyond the normal magic of growth and death. In these moments, time can reverse itself, all forms may change, all directions can flow into their opposites. This is the secret of Witches and initiates: to recognize these moments and, falling into the vast space behind them, to become timeless and free.
Go into the garden for understanding. Let power flow through you. Touch yourself. Touch each other. Transformation rests within you and among you. You are always transforming yourself. Just watch. Just watch.
