Solstice

It's time to memorize (again)  this poem by Yeats.

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

       THE SECOND COMING
    Turning and turning in the widening gyre
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

    Surely some revelation is at hand;
    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
    Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
    Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

    The darkness drops again but now I know
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Happy Solstice, Everyone.

 Light keeps us from bumbling around lost. It lets us see what's really there. Light can tell us when to stop or go. It can warn us or warm us. Light shines through the eyes of those we love and shines out of our eyes into their hearts.

Channel Islands Harbor Parade of Lights

Last night's sunset with the Christmas lights that  finally went up on my patio.

Light warring with darkness at the beach this morning

Light coming in through the window of my mother's old room, illuminating her favorite Christmas decorations.
Note the set of identical twins.

Tomorrow the days grow longer.

Secret Solstice Sunset

The sun refused to show itself at the close of the shortest day, sinking into the water behind a wall of clouds.

I haven't shown myself much lately either. I've been roaming the house in the dead of night with a throat so sore that I can't sleep, then making my way back to bed when the middle of the night House Hunters re-run lulls me into submission. In the morning I wake with half-a-dozen Ricola wrappers on the night stand, convinced that certainly this will be the day I feel better. And I do for a little while. But then. Crash. However, this being the longest night of the year, I may be up again watching Love It or List it, International House Hunters or god knows what. I should be reading through my stack of New Yorkers, brushing up on my French or something but it feels like there's a block of goo filling my brain. Okay, it might have been that last night I finally did sleep. If I sleep again tonight, I'm going to proclaim myself cured.

Meanwhile, I've been appropriately engaged during  these dark days.  I'm spinning around and around trying to get my mom on Medicaid. This morning I confirmed that state #1 has now faxed State #2 in order to confirm that the measly little life insurance policy of my mom's has no cash value and therefore cannot be counted as an asset prohibiting her from qualifying for Medicaid yet again. So if State #2 faxes back to State #1, all should be well. Riiiiight? How's this for a darkest day of the year fear: My mom will finally get that Medicaid acceptance letter the day she takes her final breath. I've been working on the Medicaid thing since the end of September.

Here's what I've been reading these short days and long nights:

It's Never Too Early to Start Thinking about Your Own Death

What Working in a Nursing Home Taught Me

Our Bodies, Ourselves

If You're 30% Through Your Life... (of course I know that I'm at least 60% through my life)

A Parting Lesson From My Parents

How Mindfulness Can Ease the Fear of Death and Dying

I might add that I've also been drinking some nice wine, eating rum balls and chocolate truffles, and lighting lots of candles.

One of the denizens of Hearst Castle

What have you been reading during these dark days, dear ones? Where are you finding the light?