Erin (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
apocalypseinsurance) wrote2025-06-20 09:02 am
apocalypseinsurance) wrote2025-06-20 09:02 am
Solstice day 1
I have tattooed on my side the "to everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven" passage -- it goes on for quite awhile, ending "and enjoy the good of all his labor, it is the gift of God" on my upper thigh. I put it there because I need reminding.
It's summer solstice in the year 2025. I'm alive. The days have swelled and swelled until they burst the barrier between light and dark and sunlight bleeds over the horizon even when it's supposed to be night. I live further north than I had ever thought I would. My garden here, where I've lived longer than anywhere else in my adult life, is rewarding my attention this year. I don't have much attention to give, these days, but the form and amount seems to suit Threshold, this land I've partnered with. Living with this land is like having bones supporting my essential self.
I wear reading glasses now. Normally when I catch sight of myself in a mirror I get stuck, frozen for anywhere from a few minutes to maybe half an hour or so. Maybe for the first time, this morning, I caught sight of myself wearing reading glasses in the reflection of my laptop screen and smiled because I looked like a comfortable silly human. I did not get stuck and I was not indifferent. I had a moment of joy -- that's me, being a silly human, with cheap blue-green plastic reading glasses, watching an Agatha Christie show in bed.
This week I'm going to practice being inside joy like that. So much of my life has been joy thinking about what I will do, how to do it, following through, thinking, thinking. My, call it illness, has reduced both my thinking ability and my doing ability so I'll need to strengthen my other sources of joy to survive.
Many things have been weighing on me recently. Some have been taken off my shoulders by others, but I'm using this long time of light to take another off too: it will be dark again this winter, and I can set my long, slow, multi-year ghosting by Tucker aside to think about in the darker times. I can figure out how to process that dead, painful thing into fertilizer for what comes next at another time. I don't have to think about it now.
When I set this aside and step out the door the immediate embodiment of the long summer days will come meet me, wiggling her tail and chewing a stick. Hard to believe Solly has been here for two years now, and hard to believe she's ever not been here. She's the youngest of us all except for Little Bear. It's nice to have a young one around.
It's summer solstice in the year 2025. I'm alive. The days have swelled and swelled until they burst the barrier between light and dark and sunlight bleeds over the horizon even when it's supposed to be night. I live further north than I had ever thought I would. My garden here, where I've lived longer than anywhere else in my adult life, is rewarding my attention this year. I don't have much attention to give, these days, but the form and amount seems to suit Threshold, this land I've partnered with. Living with this land is like having bones supporting my essential self.
I wear reading glasses now. Normally when I catch sight of myself in a mirror I get stuck, frozen for anywhere from a few minutes to maybe half an hour or so. Maybe for the first time, this morning, I caught sight of myself wearing reading glasses in the reflection of my laptop screen and smiled because I looked like a comfortable silly human. I did not get stuck and I was not indifferent. I had a moment of joy -- that's me, being a silly human, with cheap blue-green plastic reading glasses, watching an Agatha Christie show in bed.
This week I'm going to practice being inside joy like that. So much of my life has been joy thinking about what I will do, how to do it, following through, thinking, thinking. My, call it illness, has reduced both my thinking ability and my doing ability so I'll need to strengthen my other sources of joy to survive.
Many things have been weighing on me recently. Some have been taken off my shoulders by others, but I'm using this long time of light to take another off too: it will be dark again this winter, and I can set my long, slow, multi-year ghosting by Tucker aside to think about in the darker times. I can figure out how to process that dead, painful thing into fertilizer for what comes next at another time. I don't have to think about it now.
When I set this aside and step out the door the immediate embodiment of the long summer days will come meet me, wiggling her tail and chewing a stick. Hard to believe Solly has been here for two years now, and hard to believe she's ever not been here. She's the youngest of us all except for Little Bear. It's nice to have a young one around.