Maebius Musing

In Everthorn did Maebius
A stately fire-bon decree
With ribbons round a maypole ran
Young girls, some women and their man
Down trunk of sacred tree.
So then his patch of fertile ground
With labyrinth was girded round:
And there the gardens bright with wildcraft frills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing weed;
and spirits ancient as the hills,
Dancing the sunny spots of greenery-d.

—

Ok, forgive the poem. I was…inspired…last night. (not quite in the way the original was inspired, mind you, but still )

This weekend, we had planned a lovely bonfire and maypole party. The wife got horridly ill (possibly food poisoning?) and thus we spent the day inside sleeping or watching TV. So we made due with what we could accomplish in light of the situation.

In the evening, we got all our starter-seeds planted and hung a grow-light from the ceiling above the counter. This should prevent our little sprouts from straining too tall in search of the sun, which tends to happen each year. (insert picture here)

The sprogling and I made salad entirely from yard clippings, with him learning the tastiness of garlic-mustard (Alliaria petiolata) and realizing that our mint patch has finally grown enough to pick. (If given the opportunity, he will sit in the yard and eat mint for a good hour)

The garden-proper has been tilled again, and ready for planting this week when the rains stop. The outdoor chicken enclosure is within an hour of being completed (once I get adult assistance to hold the fence while I hammer posts, etc). And, the side yard labyrinth will start being outlined with wheelbarrow-loads of black composted pony-droppings. All in all, a good weekend’s progress, considering.

I did manage to spend a little time out by the maypole, meditating, circle casting, and inviting the spirits of the land to stop by and play if they wanted. I discovered that our ‘Grandma elder” was very very unhappy, with a small bushy plant that was starting to grow right beside her trunk. Trimmed that, and was quite surprised at the literal emotional imagery that smacked me in the head with that message. Usually plants and nature spirits are more a general faint feeling, not so much a “Hey, you whippersnapper, get over here!” complete with almost-vision of creamy-white-haired crone with berry-stained hands and knobby knees. Yet there she was: Grandma elderberry.

Got it, I’ll trim the weeds!

More musings on spirits and such for tomorrow’s New Moon Muse. Stay tuned, and Happy MayDay!

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Seems the Spring and summer faeries have visited my blog recently, as things were all strangely formatted and the last post (or two) is somehow missing. If you came here looking to comment on a posting made this week, I can’t find it……. Lets do the Time Warp Again!

/dances with a jump to the left, and then a step to the right….

Otherwise, Beltaine evening this year was one of the more subdued, and yet more fun ones from recent memory. We didn’t actually do anything specifically festival-related other than work outside to trim trees, gather wood for the up-coming bonfire, and make a mental list of things to pick up for the party.

However, we worked outside, cleaned up the garden, got ready to plant this weekend, and generally ENJOYED the evening. Lately, we’ve been too busy to really talk, but we chatted while piling branches. We smiled and flirted, we ate dinner and played “Super Mario Galaxy” as a family when it got dark outside. We had some serious FUN chasing our masked “Walken” around the house. We felt young, vibrant, and in love.
All in all, we did bring up spring topics, and gardening, and I received only a joking “The Look” when I mentioned the traditional Greening of the Fields.

The ritual might not have been there in any depth, but the spirit of the holiday was felt much more deeply. It’s now deep into the Springtime.

Happy Beltaine!

((Further updates on the festivities after the ‘official’ Beltaine party this weekend….Varulv’s even bringing a new friend for us to meet ))

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Well, in case you needed to calculate it yourself…

((19*t+u-w-(u-(u+8)\25)+1)\3)+15)mod30)+(32+2*x+2*y-(19*t+u-w- (u-(u+8)\25)+1)\3)+15)mod30)-z)mod7)-7*(t+11*(19*t+u-w(u- (u+8)\25)+1)\3)+15)mod30)+22*(32+2*x+2*y-(19*t+u-w-(u- (u+8)\25)+1)\3)+15)mod30)-g)mod7)+114)\31

Happy Easter!

also, for you non-anglo-christian inclined readers, if ye be reading:

Happy Purim (Jewish holiday)

Narouz (Persian New Year)

Eid Milad an Nabi, (Happy Birthday Prophet Muhammad)

Small Holi, (Hindu Festival of Colours)

Magha Puja ( Buddhist “Fourfold Assembly” day)

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

In more muse-worthy discussion, spring is officially here in my neck of the woods..er… field?

Every year in March, I start fretting about our garden, and watching outside to see if the nearby farms are ready to start preemptive plowing. I feel like winter is going away, and we need to get outside and do stuff, plant stuff! Yet I know that in early (and late) March, there is still a good chance of snow, and late April is really when things get in the ground around here. In fact, as I type this, mere hours away from our big Weekend involving guests at the house, dining at a huge annual buffet, and egg-hunts, it is below freezing and snow is accumulating on the cars again. I’ll have to de-ice the doors before driving home from work!

I’ve attributed this early anxiety to my being raised farther south than where I live now, and the general climate being slightly ‘off-schedule‘, compared to my fondest childhood memories. (Perhaps my friend Nettle has similar experience, having migrated south to the Big City?) Where I grew up, it really was time to start serious browsing of seed catalogs, and the big amish farms started, if not full plowing, then getting the equipment hitched up and tightened. Within one or two weeks, things will be blooming down there. Around upstate New York now, the trees are only considering the possibility of budding out.

Lately though, in the past few years, started to drift away from specific date-centric celebrations of seasons (with the exception of solstices, equinoxes, and birthdays, etc). More and more, I am building a set of internal correspondences for general seasonality and celebration. The subtly spiritual side of being in-tune with the world around me has taken it’s cues from the local area, rather than the printed dates on my desk. Most notably felt was this past Imbolc, where the feeling of coming spring remained aloof and distant in the midst of our wintery weather.

As a timely example, I can say with authority (at least to my own heart) that spring has arrived. Not because this ball of rock oribting the sun has swung around to a certain point. Not because of the clock on my computer reading off dates similar to 03/21/xx. I know it is spring because of the geese.

This past week, I have seen flocks of waterfowl across the sky in growing numbers. It’s hard to picture, but perhaps even more geese than crows are visible on my evening drives home. Yesterday, I looked out at our pond to see four Branta Canadensis floating around! To me, that is a stronger sign than any easter-themed flowers, eggs, and chocolate.

Going solely on the calendar, especially in terms of Easter celebrations, which tend to fluctuate all across the month of April, seems a tad bit silly as a measuring stick. For the rest of the country, and probably a more useful truism in the European climate which helped create the iconic imagery for these festivals, this time of year is reflected in the return of nature’s growth.

Perhaps this observation is a result of being more in-tune with the place. I’ve lived here, going on a decade now. (Wow, has it really been that long?!!) I’m starting to get used to the changing seasons in a way that is meaningful to my innermost mind. Logically, I still cling to the habitual time-frames I grew up with, and habits die hard. Beyond that though, I think that the semi-conscious thought of marking local signs like our pond-dwellers to the seasons is my brain’s way of re-connecting without having to break up those old habits.

For whatever reason, it’s working, so I won’t dig too deeply into the reasons, other than to acknowledge the observation and enjoy it. Spring is here. The geese came home.

What a great worm moon!

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I found the camera cable, and was able to dump a good backlog of images to a more PC-friendly location (ie: my hard drive and subsequently a CD-rom).

So, here are four fun images to keep you occupied until a real Musing-style post hits the site in a day or two….

First, announced briefly over here, was my wife’s grandfather turned a century old earlier this month, and had a wonderful party with all sorts of relatives, friends, and the like. Here’s the man of honor himself, presiding over the cake & candle ritual. One candle per decade, Awesome!

Next, mentioned in this posting on Happy Camping, is a shot of the new bathroom style. The walls are painted “Happy Camper” green, which fits nicely with the general use of the room. *wink*

Thirdly, there was a strange visitor to our house, who took control of the Wii for the day, and played “the TMNT game” for hours upon hours, giggling the whole time. Isn’t he adorable!

Finally, after years of deliberation, and in order to help out a good friend get some practice with his chosen hobby, I have gotten myself re-inked. This design, which is not 100% completed yet and will get some touch-up work and perhaps a bit of colour, has lots of cool symbolism for me, which may be described in a separate post someday. This solar-inspired design is also going on my djembe head, in either henna, or watercolors, because it is just that cool to me. ….it’s still a bit ouchy though today.

Sorry for blurry pic. The camera was out of batteries, so I had to keep snapping it, hoping to grab the image before it turned itself off.

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Firstly, a quick update to the web template. Figured out how to make “pages” which are links along the top of the page, just above the sidebar and below the pretty green leafy-header-thingy. Current pages are ‘Home‘, then ‘Archives‘, then ‘Contact Me‘, then ‘Playlist‘. The Archive has been taken out of hte sidebar and put on it’s own special page, likewise the little widget that had my playlist is now on it’s own page. I tend to open a new tab to the playlist and let it run in the background while doing other things, so I can still groove to the tunes there. Try it out! More pages may make an appearance as I think of what to put there.

Additionally, this weekend was the first time I attended our local OpenDrum Meetup! I brought my djembe, my friend Varulv, and the sprogling (4yr old son). Got there a bit late due to my inability to find my way from our prior morning of swim-lessons at the YMCA to the proper section of town to pick up said friend Varulv. Once I got my bearings again, it was easy, though road construction didn’t help matters there.

When we arrived at the UUC where the meeting was held, we could hear a nice beat from across the parking lot. MY son was all excited since we had brought a small rubber-over-round tin type thing for him to drum with, plus a nice metal “shaker” we bought at Starwood many years ago.

The gathering went pretty well, not knowing what to expect really. We snuck in and were directed to “grab a chair” while the other 12 people kept a nice beat going. I just warmed up with a simple heartbeat, trying not to be too loud, and watching carefully what the others were doing. There were mainly larger djembes or Ashikos, the usual conga, bongos, Goblets, and smaller similar things. Plus cowbell, clapper, bonerattle, and such in hte middle which others could pick up (and did) from timeto time.

One unique instrument, which I had never really seen before, was a cajón. It made a nifty sound compared to the regular “boom/smack” of the other styles of drumhead. I think this one was one described on the site as “…may also have several vertically stretched cords pressed against the tapa for a buzz like effect or tone.” since it definitely sounded like there were beans or sand due to the “buzzy” effect (similar to if you’d roughly shake a rainstick and compressed the sound into one “beat”.

At one point, when the rhythm completely degraded into a few seconds of random ‘NOISE’ for some reason, the organizer chuckled and paused while we did some more proper intruductions. Before that point, there was a good 45 minutes of jamming, with the only communication being eye-contact acknowledgements.

After simple hellos were exchanged, she had everyone keep one beat and alternately sped it up, slowed it down. This went a huge way to re-define the cohesiveness, and the final hour of drumming that evolved from that was rather impressive for a group of relative strangers, more than one of which had admitted to just borrowing the public drums to “try their hand at” and having no formal training or practice. (About 5 of the people had just arrived that day, so didn’t know anyone either.)

The usual size of this meetup group averages 4-6 people, from what they said, and everyone was pleasantly surprised so many showed up this weekend. They gather once a month at the church, or the park nearby if the weather’s nice. Every so often, the main organizers (a husband/wife couple, with a lovely 1yr old girl who danced for us that day) try to do a simple workshop to introduce folks to drumming, or how to care for your drums, etc. Very informal, casual, and just all-around nice-people.

I can’t wait to go again next month!

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