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Dec. 4th, 2003 10:08 pmA quiet and inward sort of week, despite much stressful busyness at work. I've been sort of keeping up with LJ, but not having much success at putting anything into words here. I feel like I'm shouldering onwards through my life, draft-horse-like, and towing my thick muffled brain somewhere behind me, on a sled, through the heavy snow.
It's a mild snowy night here, gentle and vaguely luminous. I would very much like, at this point, to be able to sit up for a few more hours and do some writing, but. But. Early arising tomorrow, and another day of shouldering onwards.
Many memes ricocheting around LJ the last day or two; the only one I feel moved to engage with at the moment is the Christmassy one, and of that, only one question, "Your favorite carol," which for me would be "In the Bleak Midwinter," and then only the first verse (it gets rather religion-heavy after that):
In the bleak midwinter
frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
water like a stone;
Snow had fallen,
snow on snow,
snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter,
long
long
ago.
What one needs to do is strip away all the blat-blat low-church organ bleatings, and the lushly-swelling choral arrangements, and instead just stand outside on a dark snowy night and hum it softly to oneself:
in the bleak midwinter
. . . hard as iron
. . . .like a stone
. . . . snow on snow on snow
. . . . long long ago.
If one feels one's way deeply enough into it . . . Loren Eiseley has an essay in "The Unexpected Universe" about sitting up late, alone, on a wintry night, studying fossil relics of the Neanderthal and their prey, feeling his way into their lives, and falling a little too deeply into that past, the time when the ice was moving over the earth. His dog, sitting up with him, suddenly grabs one of the bones in his jaws:
That rock-hard fragment of an ancient beast was in his jaws and he was mouthing it with a fierce intensity I had never seen in him before. ... A low and steady rumbling began to rise in his chest, something out of a long-gone midnight. There was nothing in that bone to taste, but ancient shapes were moving in his mind and determining his utterance. Only fools gave up bones. ...
He imagines the dog speaking to him:
...do not put out your hand. It is midnight. We are in another time, in the snow. The *other* time, the big, the final , the terrible snow, when the shape of this thing I hold spelled life. I will not give it up. I cannot. Do not put out your hand.
Eiseley takes the dog out for a walk, and out in the actual present-day snow, the shadows recede, and he and the dog come back into the house, by the fire:
"We have both been very far away," I told him solemnly. "I think there is something in us that we had both better try to forget."
But that carol makes me remember the fact that although Christmas is, essentially, about the rebirth of light, that rebirth only has meaning because it happens at the darkest time of year, and it wouldn't be possible without the darkness.
And, ahem. Getting lugubrious now, and it's snowing quite heavily, and I shall crawl into bed and burrow deep into my flannel sheets, under the comforter.
It's a mild snowy night here, gentle and vaguely luminous. I would very much like, at this point, to be able to sit up for a few more hours and do some writing, but. But. Early arising tomorrow, and another day of shouldering onwards.
Many memes ricocheting around LJ the last day or two; the only one I feel moved to engage with at the moment is the Christmassy one, and of that, only one question, "Your favorite carol," which for me would be "In the Bleak Midwinter," and then only the first verse (it gets rather religion-heavy after that):
In the bleak midwinter
frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
water like a stone;
Snow had fallen,
snow on snow,
snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter,
long
long
ago.
What one needs to do is strip away all the blat-blat low-church organ bleatings, and the lushly-swelling choral arrangements, and instead just stand outside on a dark snowy night and hum it softly to oneself:
in the bleak midwinter
. . . hard as iron
. . . .like a stone
. . . . snow on snow on snow
. . . . long long ago.
If one feels one's way deeply enough into it . . . Loren Eiseley has an essay in "The Unexpected Universe" about sitting up late, alone, on a wintry night, studying fossil relics of the Neanderthal and their prey, feeling his way into their lives, and falling a little too deeply into that past, the time when the ice was moving over the earth. His dog, sitting up with him, suddenly grabs one of the bones in his jaws:
That rock-hard fragment of an ancient beast was in his jaws and he was mouthing it with a fierce intensity I had never seen in him before. ... A low and steady rumbling began to rise in his chest, something out of a long-gone midnight. There was nothing in that bone to taste, but ancient shapes were moving in his mind and determining his utterance. Only fools gave up bones. ...
He imagines the dog speaking to him:
...do not put out your hand. It is midnight. We are in another time, in the snow. The *other* time, the big, the final , the terrible snow, when the shape of this thing I hold spelled life. I will not give it up. I cannot. Do not put out your hand.
Eiseley takes the dog out for a walk, and out in the actual present-day snow, the shadows recede, and he and the dog come back into the house, by the fire:
"We have both been very far away," I told him solemnly. "I think there is something in us that we had both better try to forget."
But that carol makes me remember the fact that although Christmas is, essentially, about the rebirth of light, that rebirth only has meaning because it happens at the darkest time of year, and it wouldn't be possible without the darkness.
And, ahem. Getting lugubrious now, and it's snowing quite heavily, and I shall crawl into bed and burrow deep into my flannel sheets, under the comforter.