Green Man Pics

Festivals

No. 6 in what I love about England: festivals! They really know how to live with contrast, and the summer is therefore a constant party. Every weekend another fayre, another set of carnival rides, another music festival dot the green spaces; with literally hundreds of festivals one could festival hop all summer, and some people do.
Besides our local fayres we choose a music festival in Wales to attend because it looked rather groovy, small and child friendly, and had an excellent history in musical taste: The Green Man. Adding another appealing dimension to this festival choice is the creation and burning of the green man himself. Druids blessed the site and built the green man out of wicker, bark, and leafy twigs back in the spring. He stood about 20 feet tall all through the summer, and on the last night of the festival he went up in flames. A heart in his chest was lit first, then fireworks went like crazy, and the bonfire of his body lasted through the next morning. It was spectacular, cyclic, energizing, and really anchored into my being the surge of spring and summer giving way to the release and quiet of fall and winter.
For 5 nights we camped, danced, took naps in the grass, spun poi balls and diabolos, and otherwise had a wonderfully joyful time. The landscape itself was great, really gothic like, and the people were friendly as can be. I think we will repeat this venture :)

Face of the Beloved

A favourite children's book I once had is called The Rough Faced Girl, it is the cinderella story in the Native American tradition. The beauty of the book is how the girl sees her beloved evereywhere, in the rainbow, the clouds, the streambed, even the stepsisters. The illustrations are particularly evocative. Here in my research I have a lovely lovely description of this at my lucky delighted fingertips:

The body is like the earth, the bones like mountains, the brains like mines, the belly like the sea, the intestine like rivers, the nerves like brooks, the flesh like dust and mud. The hair on the body is like plants, the places where hair grows like fertile land and where there is no growth like saline soil. Its breath is like the wind, words like thunder, sounds like thunderbolts. Its laughter is like the light of noon, its tears like rain, its sadness like the darkness of night, and its sleep is like death as its awakening is like life. Its motions and acts are like motions of stars and their rotation. Its birth and presence are like the rising of the stars, and its death and absence like their setting.
The words are Sheikh Suleyman Loras and come from a book on the whirling dervishes by Shems Friedlander.
Much Love~

Seven

Our big girl is seven! Later that night she lost her front tooth and is lisping beautifully into this dreamy skippy goofy stage of childhood...

Fresh Air

Living in fresh air: #5. A northerly island in the Atlantic Ocean once acted as a refuge for peoples with slightly odd and different ways from their mainland conquerors, was once a rainforest dense with trees and wildlife, was once the portal for alien communication, or so some say... Today it is a chunk of crystal earth covered mostly by grasses and millions of little humans in tiny stone townhouses. The wind blows furiously across the moors, chilly and fresh. To keep out the damp, windows are cracked even in the depths of winter, and this means wearing a hat inside. Even my lease has a byline which states that I will keep the residence truly aired. While it has taken some getting used to, I have grown to LOVE this unceasing breeze...it means I get to wear billowy skirts (with nice thick leggings underneath). It means I get to hear the outside noises of my garden and my street at night. It means I get to feel the propulsion of the air element and the resistance of it too. A new popular book on the newsstands here is The Cloudspotters Guide. Yes, we watch them, we notice just how full of rain they are, we track their speed, we divine their shapes. Air that is fresh and consistent and open, well I guess I would like that!

Terrific Colour

So the thing about English flowers is not that they in themselves are so exciting, they are like flowers anywhere, and the gardens are not that spectacular, really they are rather small. What it is about English flowers is that they exist, and they are desperately loved in their existence.
Because of all the grey, the intermittent sputtering summers, the damp, flowers are heavier in meaning than in the sun soaked areas. The crocus when they bloomed this spring gave me such a sense of hope! And when the first pansies came out in our walkway Aurora squealed with delight. I will never forget it. And I dearly adore my pots of petunias and geraniums and diamathus and daisies...just to sit on the deck near them and feel them growing, knowing I too am growing, despite the weather conditions.
When people photograph here they often say, oh get that nice bunch of colors! Aren't the colors nice in this photo, etc... They speak of light like nobody else I have ever heard, painting as full of light and shadow, of the shades of light, of the sense of light like it is tactile. When rainbows grace us people stop and notice, stand on the street for a moment and breathe it in. Color is appreciated.
Not quite Inuit or Polar Bears, the English do not live in a world of white, which is it's own stark beauty, but rather in a world of light and dark grey, with color splashes everywhere. The wellies (rain boots) I ordered today are bright orange..I wouldn't have been caught dead in them in America.. ;-)

My Boy

A bright light shoots across the waters and lands in the middle of miles of cornfields...every boy is their mother's superman, a gift from the cosmos, a troubling pebble, a fountain of joy. My oldest goes home tomorrow, and there is peace about it. I have really really done my part, so well, and it really is time for his father to do his part, and his father is rising to the occasion. Kaiah will be on the high school baseball and basketball teams this year, take welding and metalwork alongside math and physical science, and join the junior firefighters. He will go fishing and chop firewood and learn to put electrical wiring in the barn. And he will still be my son, miles and oceans away. That very young mama who made cupcakes for breakfast and watched Chitty Chitty Bang Bang at very late hours with him has grown into a woman now, with more children to raise and a heart of her own that needs tending. As the cycles spin, one young spring moves toward it's summit while another washes into the heat of summer. I love you boy, troubles and joy alike!