On Alban Hefin

Locally, we passed the Summer Solstice several hours ago at 9:57 am CDT. Spring is officially over both astronomically and meteorologically. Today Druids celebrate Alban Hefin. It’s one of eight festivals celebrated each year, known collectively as the Wheel of the Year. Personally, I enjoy the sense of an annual rhythm I get from a festival every six weeks or so instead of just the two solstices and two equinoxes.

I’ve mentioned elsewhere in these postings that I’m more a fisher, hunter, gatherer than a gardener, so I don’t get much involved in soil preparation, planting, tending, etc. Minnesota has fishing of one sort or another just about year round, so “fishing season” isn’t really. Hunting seasons are in the autumn, but much of early hunting season still feels like summer. Our membership in a community supported agriculture farm [CSA] helps with spring, summer and autumn recognition. Studying Druidry helps bring me more into alignment with an annual cycle of rebirth in spring, growth through the summer, putting food by in autumn, and deep sleep in winter.

this bookcase (2014) is now overflowing plus

Photo by J. Harrington

Much of today  has been spent picking up and assembling one of the two DIY bookcases our son gave me for Father’s Day. The case went together with  few issues. The second one will get assembled after the first has been placed against a wall and filled with books. I am once again attempting to bring stacks of read and unread books into some semblance of order. I’m trying  to restore the house from the equivalent of the old Norwegian uncle's kitchen with  passageways between  the stacks and walls of old newspapers. I think I’ll begin by seeing what happens if I dedicate one case to the unread and partially read stacks scattered about. Wish us luck, I’m pretty sure we’ll need it.

The House Was Quiet and The World Was Calm

Wallace Stevens     1879 – 1955

The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night

Was like the conscious being of the book.
The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The words were spoken as if there was no book,
Except that the reader leaned above the page,

Wanted to lean, wanted much most to be
The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom

The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
The house was quiet because it had to be.

The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:
The access of perfection to the page.

And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,
In which there is no other meaning, itself

Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself
Is the reader leaning late and reading there.

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.