solstice

Somewhere In December…

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 6 Comments

We’re all home at 3, the youngest just home from school, the oldest finished with exams and lying on the couch with her cat who eyes me warily. What now? that cat seems to say. As if the cat himself is out of sorts with the weather.

Are any of us made to live so far north? I insist we pull on boots, go outside. The sun slips down over the mountain before four.

Then — here’s the thing — we’re talking about not much at all, and the younger daughter says something about the cat that’s not shall I say kid appropriate, and I just laugh. I mean, I really laugh. I’m not entirely sure she knows why I’m laughing. The other day she asked if I was intended to hang little white Christmas lights in the “residential quarters.” I did, and I do.

But just thinking about it makes me laugh again. Why not?

Like a wheat grain that breaks open in
the ground, then grows, then gets
harvested, then crushed in the mill for
flour, then baked, then crushed again
between teeth to become a person’s
deepest understanding…

There is no end to any of this.

— Rumi

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In the Gloaming

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 2 Comments

Even the kids remark on the darkness.

In our kitchen, the girls baking cookies after school turn on the overhead light. At my library, the little children play outside in the afternoon dark, rolling down the snowy hillside in their bulky clothes.

I turn on the outside light beside the door for the parents. It’s not yet 5 o’clock.

Around our house, a bitter wind swirls snowflakes with tiny teeth. On our red rug, the cats stretch, indolent. Through the vast space, on our heavenly blue-and-emerald body, we spin.

Already light is returning pairs of wings
lift softly off your eyelids one by one
each feathered edge clearer between you
and the pearl veil of day

You have nothing to do but live.

— From “Winter Solstice” by Anonymous

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Bookselling & Stories

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 1 Comment

December is the best month to be a bookseller, because it’s the month when people give stories to one another. All day, folks stamp in from the cold and ask for a book for their ancient aunt who enjoys knitting and local history, or a baby not yet born who has a whole world yet to love. My favorite today was the young uncle who bought Roald Dahl for overseas nephews, but went home to reread James and the Giant Peach before mailing the novel.

Today, with the ground finally covered in our familiar snow, the light returned in the solstice kind of way we New Englanders know and love. This evening, a half moon glows on our piece of the earth, the clouds scudding back and forth over its pristine illumination.

Like this light, stories came in all day at the bookstore, not simply flowing out in wrapping paper and bags. We heard stories of the babies on their way, of the old who were babies themselves in this town; one, two, three stories that made me want to weep, the story of a woman buying an auto repair business in the Northeast Kingdom, and many more simply funny and joyous. Taken together, this was a bouquet of stories, all across the human realm. Fitting in a place for literature.

You can speak as though your life is a thread, a narrative unspooling in time, and a story is a thread, but each of us is an island from which countless threads extend out into the world.

— Rebecca Solnit, The Faraway Nearby

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Photo by Molly S.

Singing in the Dark

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

This time of year, the darkness knits around us. Waking early, I’m awake for hours working into the light. Very early evening, I returned with the children in the full dark, the stars overhead distantly radiant in the pitch firmament. The shortest day of the year is now so near, I can feel the arc of our universe nearly rounding the bend, gradually slingshotting us back toward light.

This is my one life. Say you know.
Say this means many things, say snowy owl,
say three feet of snow, say kestrel. My one
life is here at the table, next to me. Say you know,
say fine night for soup, glad to have you,
how was your drive….  Say here,
One Life, settle in with us. Here is the fire.
Say here is a warm stone. Say sing.

Say Sing, Kerrin McCadden

 

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