Post Patron Blues

Bridgette, considered the Patron Saint of Ireland, has left the building.

She was here for Solstice. I sang her invocation composed by Mara Freeman. I felt her in the room. I’m carrying around the list surely she inspired and that I wrote Solstice night, adding to it this week as more list-worthy things occur to me - both personally and globally. Like how could I forget that I wanted to nurture the seed of personal right livelihood and global climate stabilization? It’s sixty-five degrees in New York, for Christ’s sake, and thirty-eight in Southern California!? Action is required, let’s get fired. Up. Set this sorry world back on its ass-tronomical course corrected warble through the universe.

Now that solstice is over, and Christmas too, I feel let down after all the anticipatory hype. Business as usual isn’t boring, exactly, but it lacks the high-octane rev of hustling to put some effort out to pull in the predictable comfort wrung from assembling red and green candles, pine scented soaps, and goo gaws with which my Gram enchanted me - all for the benefit of enchanting the enchantress herself, the six-year-old Grandie. I didn’t decorate much, but decorating is a must. Just to get in the spirit. So, Solstice early evening - before the sun set -found me plugging in lights, assembling the candles, and pulling out the little hagadas my friend Wendy Z and I assembled years ago to support others learning the tradition we’ve been practicing for over thirty years.

Tomorrow starts Kwanza. Maybe assembling Rastafarian artifacts will give further testament to the idea that busy trumps depressed.

Ultimately, I still believe that we’re meant to be depressed S.O.B. hibernators in the winter months. Lethargy and ennui serve a purpose. When you sit across the cave from Glurg, who keeps belching and farting, fowling the air in the only shelter you know for the tempest months, there’ve got to be times when you just want to get up and deck him. Lack of light yields a natural lack of endeavor and energy trickles to a slothful minimum. So maybe I’ve simply stripped down to the pro-survival human trait of sitting still and not killing Glurg. It’s in-born pro-survival of the species.

Bridey will kick up her heels when the sun returns. Giving a stir to our loins and blood. A quickening to get the work of survival for another winter in gear. Planting. Gathering. Hunting. Drying. Weaving. Sewing. Curing. Fermenting. All those hearth-felt arts must be pursued for the species to continue.


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What would the world really look like if peace broke out and didn’t let go? Would we recognize it without its opposite pastime? Can we appreciate truly or even recognize any yin minus its yang?

The war-weary dream of a lasting peace. (Do the celibate dream of a lasting piece?) Sorry, that just slipped out… so to speak. But grass is grass: green is a spectrum. Is the imagined grass on the other side of the fence only a spectral green?