Seven days to the light
Dec. 15th, 2023 10:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
In one week the part of the planet that I rest on will tilt furthest from the sun. The planet will rest, the northern hemisphere's face turned away like my dog when his least-favorite food is proffered, and then, with a ponderous speed that we can nonetheless detect, it will pull itself back into the light.
At first, the light will increase by only seconds each day. This rate of change increases, and by equinox we are barrelling along at an increase in daylight of three minutes each day. These changes, whether of moments only noticed after a week or two or great gulping changes from day to day, these changes have been seen, felt, and remarked-upon by humans since we were human. Perhaps before. Karahan Tepe, in modern Turkey, has the oldest known winter solstice alignment. These stones, approximately 11,000 years old, were placed by humans to mark the moment, the tipping point, the end of swing.
We've been doing this for a very long time.
Perhaps it's merely that I've lived in the Northern Hemisphere my whole life, and in a moderately northern part of it at that. Perhaps it's that the older I get the more I see how things just keep coming around. Perhaps it's that over the last 6-8 years I have felt a desperate need to find hope in grim times. Or perhaps it's just that, for all my optimism, I know how dark things are.
Everything seems to swing back and forth. Times of prosperity and famine, times of war and of less war, times of freedom and oppression. I know that the solstice is astronomical and not cultural, I'm understand this is a metaphor, but it's one I cling to. Darkness grows, it consumes, it empties, it erases -- and then the unvierse tips, and light returns.
Today is seven days to the tipping of the light. I will be counting the days.
At first, the light will increase by only seconds each day. This rate of change increases, and by equinox we are barrelling along at an increase in daylight of three minutes each day. These changes, whether of moments only noticed after a week or two or great gulping changes from day to day, these changes have been seen, felt, and remarked-upon by humans since we were human. Perhaps before. Karahan Tepe, in modern Turkey, has the oldest known winter solstice alignment. These stones, approximately 11,000 years old, were placed by humans to mark the moment, the tipping point, the end of swing.
We've been doing this for a very long time.
Perhaps it's merely that I've lived in the Northern Hemisphere my whole life, and in a moderately northern part of it at that. Perhaps it's that the older I get the more I see how things just keep coming around. Perhaps it's that over the last 6-8 years I have felt a desperate need to find hope in grim times. Or perhaps it's just that, for all my optimism, I know how dark things are.
Everything seems to swing back and forth. Times of prosperity and famine, times of war and of less war, times of freedom and oppression. I know that the solstice is astronomical and not cultural, I'm understand this is a metaphor, but it's one I cling to. Darkness grows, it consumes, it empties, it erases -- and then the unvierse tips, and light returns.
Today is seven days to the tipping of the light. I will be counting the days.
Amen
Date: 2023-12-15 06:10 pm (UTC)Thanks for making the countdown concrete.
I'd always suspected that the rate of light change wasn't linear, but lacking any knowledge of planetary motion, I didn't trust my gut.