The longest night
Dec. 21st, 2023 08:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
resoluteOne day until the light begins to return.
Tonight is the longest night of the year, for me in the Northern Hemisphere.
I am sitting in front of a full-spectrum light as I write this. I call it my SAD-lamp, which cracks me up every time. I think, as I do whenever I am contemplating the timespans of the natural world, that all of humanity who has ever lived at this latitude has shared this day with me. This night. Watching the sky and waiting for the light to return is an experience that a great deal of humanity has experienced.
There's a famous line from the Game of Thrones story, "The night is dark and full of terrors." It's a line that sticks because, well, if you've every been somewhere truly dark at night, well, yes. It makes sense. We are sight-oriented animals, and while we are predators on the whole of things, we are also absolutely prey. The night holds that which harms us, eats us, kills us. Night is treacherous and makes the ordinary dangerous, the familiar path now full of holes, the familiar stairs uneven and slick.
The longest night holds the greatest amount of danger.
But night is also respite. No work can be done in the dark and so the night is for sleeping. Children fall asleep and their weary caregivers have a moment to string two thoughts together. We rest, we restore, we rise with the light ready to take on another day's work.
My favorite poem about the winter solstice, as many of you probably already know, is John M. Ford's "Winter Solstice, Camelot Station." You can read it here. It's about King Arthur, his knights, and the great railway network centered on Camelot, all the trains that the knights take to arrive at the court's solstice celebration. It's about how we are who we are, and sometimes the fate we make is visible in our character before it happens. It's about the nature of stories, how a narrative may come to a conclusion but the story lives on. It's about knowing that you don't regret what you have done but you might regret what you know you are going to do. It's about the fact that our lives are stories, and while a life may end, the life lived does not.
And it's about trains.
And this:
Tonight is the longest night of the year.
The train may stop.
But the line goes on.
Tonight is the longest night of the year, for me in the Northern Hemisphere.
I am sitting in front of a full-spectrum light as I write this. I call it my SAD-lamp, which cracks me up every time. I think, as I do whenever I am contemplating the timespans of the natural world, that all of humanity who has ever lived at this latitude has shared this day with me. This night. Watching the sky and waiting for the light to return is an experience that a great deal of humanity has experienced.
There's a famous line from the Game of Thrones story, "The night is dark and full of terrors." It's a line that sticks because, well, if you've every been somewhere truly dark at night, well, yes. It makes sense. We are sight-oriented animals, and while we are predators on the whole of things, we are also absolutely prey. The night holds that which harms us, eats us, kills us. Night is treacherous and makes the ordinary dangerous, the familiar path now full of holes, the familiar stairs uneven and slick.
The longest night holds the greatest amount of danger.
But night is also respite. No work can be done in the dark and so the night is for sleeping. Children fall asleep and their weary caregivers have a moment to string two thoughts together. We rest, we restore, we rise with the light ready to take on another day's work.
My favorite poem about the winter solstice, as many of you probably already know, is John M. Ford's "Winter Solstice, Camelot Station." You can read it here. It's about King Arthur, his knights, and the great railway network centered on Camelot, all the trains that the knights take to arrive at the court's solstice celebration. It's about how we are who we are, and sometimes the fate we make is visible in our character before it happens. It's about the nature of stories, how a narrative may come to a conclusion but the story lives on. It's about knowing that you don't regret what you have done but you might regret what you know you are going to do. It's about the fact that our lives are stories, and while a life may end, the life lived does not.
And it's about trains.
"Now two men stand on the dirty snow,
The conductor waves a lantern and the train grinds on.
The ugly men start walking, the new arrival behind,
Singing "Wenceslas" off-key till the other says stop.
There are two horses waiting for them. Rather plain horses,
Considering. The men mount up.
By the roundhouse they pause,
And look at the locos, the water, the sand, and the coal,
The look for a long time at the turntable,
Until the one who is King says "It all seemed so simple, once,"
And the best knight in the world says "It is. We make it hard."
They ride on, toward Camelot by the service road."
The conductor waves a lantern and the train grinds on.
The ugly men start walking, the new arrival behind,
Singing "Wenceslas" off-key till the other says stop.
There are two horses waiting for them. Rather plain horses,
Considering. The men mount up.
By the roundhouse they pause,
And look at the locos, the water, the sand, and the coal,
The look for a long time at the turntable,
Until the one who is King says "It all seemed so simple, once,"
And the best knight in the world says "It is. We make it hard."
They ride on, toward Camelot by the service road."
And this:
"And at the great glass station, motion goes on,
The extras, the milk trains, the varnish, the limiteds,
The Pindar of Wakefield, the Lady of the Lake,
The Broceliande Local, the Fast Flying Briton,
The nerves of the kingdom, the lines of exchange,
Running to a schedule as the world ought,
Ticking like a hot-fired hand-stoked heart,
The metal expression of the breaking of boundaries,
The boilers that turn raw fire into power,
The driving rods that put the power to use,
The turning wheels that make all places equal,
The knowledge that the train may stop but the line goes on;
The train may stop
But the line goes on."
The extras, the milk trains, the varnish, the limiteds,
The Pindar of Wakefield, the Lady of the Lake,
The Broceliande Local, the Fast Flying Briton,
The nerves of the kingdom, the lines of exchange,
Running to a schedule as the world ought,
Ticking like a hot-fired hand-stoked heart,
The metal expression of the breaking of boundaries,
The boilers that turn raw fire into power,
The driving rods that put the power to use,
The turning wheels that make all places equal,
The knowledge that the train may stop but the line goes on;
The train may stop
But the line goes on."
Tonight is the longest night of the year.
The train may stop.
But the line goes on.
no subject
Date: 2023-12-22 05:54 pm (UTC)I belong to a group of friends who have taken to gathering on (more or less) the turning of the seasons, which started a last year when one woman issued an invitation to come to her backyard firepit on the solstice and burn regrets/ sow intentions for the coming year. I didn't come on that night but I went to a different friend's place in the fall of 2022 and it's gradually built Katamari-style to add a lot of the women who need this.
This year various things arose (family emergency, travel) and some of us were able to gather earlier in this week but last night the same friend issued a firepit invitation, and I was able to come, and everything was too wet to start a fire, but the two of us lit some candles and we sat and we talked and she's had the worst things that could happen to a mother happen to her this year, and I've tried to be there in deep and pedestrian ways (carry the flower arrangements from the church to the reception, show up on an afternoon and help clean the garage) and she spent most of the time talking about what's going on in other friends' lives and the kind of support they need, and the big and small things.
I came home and got a great night's sleep on the longest night of the year and today I'm throwing myself into silly creative endeavors and thinking about the last year and the one that's coming up.
Much love to you and yours, and thank you for being the first person to tell me 'always go to the funeral' and for modeling this tradition of taking the solstice to reflect. I'm thinking of the tight little Internet group we made for a while starting (15?? years ago) and people and platforms go their own ways but I'm always glad to have those times as a touchstone, and to read what you have to say.
(This is what you get this year that I didn't get around to sending cards. Welcome back to the light!)
no subject
Date: 2023-12-23 02:58 pm (UTC)I, too, have been trying this year to focus more on the people living near me, and, yeah, it's a different sort of relationship.
<3
Merry Christmas!
no subject
Date: 2023-12-26 12:46 am (UTC)Thanks for introducing me to that poem!
May the light surround us and shine brightly.