SOLSTICE HOURS
short thoughts on the longest day
Today is the solstice –
Yesterday, walking down Clinton towards dinner at Roman’s, many sun shadows at 7pm. I have been sleepy all day, an embarrassing-feeling level of sleepy, and the rays wake me up. I make us stop so that I can stand in the direct light. No sunblock, whoops.
Gianni and I talk about how it can feel a little sad because it barely feels like summer has started, but the days are already set to get shorter. But also, something else: we have one more day where they get longer. This means that the day before the solstice is one of the only ones that feels aligned with how we’re supposed to feel. We know we have one more day that the days will get longer – the longest – and then we can worry about the shortness of it all. By then, we’ll be a little burnt, anyway. But this is the one moment, the loping light in the evening, where we have something clear to look forward to and something a little troubling far enough away.
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Finding myself obsessed with mango. Mango Australian licorice, which is delicious until I realize it has the consistency of Styrofoam where digestion is concerned. I go carnal on full mangos, too, which I get from Mr. Kiwi, my no. 1 market around the corner. Barely peeling them, I face one in a sitting. The pit – which doesn’t feel like much of a pit, really, has those mango fibers on it that are still really sweet. They get stuck in my teeth, which – even though this is a practice I engage in alone – feels embarrassing.
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That time of year that feels so the poem “This Is Just to Say” by William Carlos Williams. So sweet/ so cold. SO Summertime Clothes, by Animal Collective. Let’s leave the sound of the heat for the sound of the rain/ it’s easy to sleep when it wets my brain/ covers my rest with a saccharine sheen/ kissing the wind through my window screen… Sooo ‘same time of day feeling’ until it’s nighttime.
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The solstice is the longest day of the year. The word is derived from the Latin solstitium -- sol = sun, sistere = to stand still. I think about a sundial, staying put and time getting marked around it through movement. I also think about that feeling where you leave your house, realize you’ve forgotten something, and come back. Only to stand in your doorway, knowing you’ve forgotten something, but you can’t remember what it was. Standing there until it comes back.
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Something that is not very nuanced or articulate, but important: I love summer!!! It is just possible to do things and encouraged to have fun outside!!! I never get tired of it, and it never lasts long enough. Except, maybe today, it does.
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The thing about summer that is strange is that bad things still happen, but the backdrop of it all remains so pleasant that processing becomes surreal. It’s like having a horrible day in Los Angeles; you can still go to the beach really easily, and a good smoothie is right around the corner. Bad things in good light.
It’s been a strange few weeks in this regard. There have been some departures, quick and unexpected. This was part of my spring, too -- may just be a part of life, come to think of it. But these most beautiful weeks, particularly beautiful in their newness, have held some heaviness.
I am enrolled in a graduate program at Columbia, called the Spirituality Mind Body Institute, if you can believe it. Lots to say on this, but not yet. A couple things, though:
We had a summer intensive last week, which was… intense, as you might imagine.
First, during a talk about Archetypes and Symbolism, we are shown this image.
The sun! Duh.
I forgot how in classrooms, people just say some stuff. Lol. One person thinks it looks like the Argentinian flag. One person thinks that it looks like an amoeba. The next one notices that the wash behind the sun looks like blood. I say that it is interesting how we start by seeing an image or icon as flat, and end up describing it like it is alive, in an organic body.
We go to Menla, near Woodstock. So gorgeous it kind of feels trippy. They say that the Center was built on a spot where a meteor landed, so the gravity is a little bit different. I buy it.
At Menla, we sit for a talk by Robert and Nena Thurman, the founders of the center. They are immensely charming and so in love. Murmurs around the room, when the talk is done: “I want the kind of love they have”. They talk about Buddhism and past lives, meditation and Menla. I don’t have many notes, because I was stupidly busy listening.
But there’s one, from Bob: “we have a tendency to curse the darkness. Instead, just light a candle. Which is yourself.”
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A few days later, I learn that Robert Thurman has passed away. I am shocked and can’t help but think: he was so alive. Silly thoughts pass in the brain, as it processes.
I feel disoriented, and deeply grateful to have had time with him. Confused and unable to sit to meditate, I walk in the hot heat to the Brooklyn Museum, where voting stations are set up. Through the cool lobby, that weekday no-crowd quiet feeling in a big space.
The new Tibetan Shrine Room is open, moved from the Rubin Museum a couple of days ago. It is hushed, except for recorded chanting. I get to sit alone. I look around, in case I am being looked at, but I realize the glass is opaque. No seeing in, no seeing out. The objects in the room range from the 12th- 21st century. I’ve heard that people traveled daily to visit the Shrine Room when it was at the Rubin; that was their practice.
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A memory I had forgotten. When I was a kid, at summer camp on a tiny island off the coast of Washington state, a strange happening that became normal to me: each Solstice, at sunset, we heard chanting and shouting and singing from an island across the bay. It started at sunset and went all night, however long the mysterious revelry decided to last. Islands are loud on their own, but the chanting was louder. Louder than the cold waves and the crickets and the deer and the whispers from the kids in other tents. Strangely soothing, the chanting and shouting and chaos sent me into a deeper sleep than usual, without fail. When I woke up, it was gone. Quiet and so bright!!!!