Christmas Weather

In some places it is---

In some it is---

{Hello, Down under^}

And where I am it is always---

{Even the lights dolphin ^ agrees it's springing spring}

I feel thankful for my Christian friends for sharing their lights with us

Merry Christmas

Spring Has Sprung

The word for spring in Hebrew is Aviv. You may have heard it as a proper name, even more in its feminine form, Aviva. You may have heard of Tel Aviv, Israel’s largest city, whose name means Spring Hill. The root  of the word (letters AVV) pertains to a young sprouting plant.

But I so prefer the English word, spring.
It has more energy and connotes active bursting and flowing forward. The sound of it, beginning with constipated consonants jammed together, (SP) and opening to a forward flow, (IN) ending with what feels, to me, a sort of exclamation,(G)-- make it an ingenious sound for what is, really, an idea.

The idea is that we emerge from a bottled up state, a freeze or hibernation of sorts, and like just uncorked champagne we pop, gush and flow, hands stretched in an upward motion that says ---

!

Do you feel it yet? Spring, officially, just got here.

May creativity and life conquer all.

SEASONS and SEASONINGS

Where I live, the seasons are barely delineated. Call it year-round spring, and you wouldn’t be far off. But we do our best to pretend to have, at least, two seasons.

Winter is ushered with a change of bed quilts, from the light colored and thinly stuffed to the heavier, darkly rich hued kind. 

When my kids were little, the content of their dresser drawers would change— with lighter clothes placed at the bottom and sweaters floating to the top. New pairs of socks would replace the odd unmatched singles of last year, and sandals got pushed to the back of the shoe drawer.

In truth, we can just about wear any of the clothes any time, and the bedding would not make a real difference either way. But we pretend we can’t, really, in order to have the illusion of change. Unlike folks who have what we here call “real weather,” we don’t change our tires to snow tires, and we don’t use antifreeze. We don’t need to get the snow shovels from the back of the garage, and we have no use for thermal underwear. For those who go on ski weekends— their gear is specialized, but this was never part of my life in California.

But one seasonal thing is not a pretense for me. One word sums it up: SPICES. Specifically— Cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cloves, and that thing we call allspice, which isn’t all the spices mixed together but a kind of pepper from a West Indian tree.

Sure, you can use these in summer, and people of “real weather” think of these seasoning as ushering Fall. But in some mysterious way I find a strong urge overtakes me to start spicing and baking and stewing and sprinkling with the above as soon as November comes.

That’s today. Can you smell it all the way from my kitchen?

As the gingerbread is baking and the pumpkin soup is simmering, I reflect on how this relates to writing stories. I don’t want to write the same story over and over. I mark a new story with new and distinct words and expressions. In this way I know I am entering a different territory. Words, used like seasoning, tell me I am here and not there, and should address perception differently.

 Just as I will now dress differently.

If this sounds like a stretch, just come over and get a whiff. I’m not kidding.

August Days

Nothing much happens in August.

August is when the Parisians leave Paris for calmer grounds.

August is when the well-heeled English go to the country to do little other than drink gin-fizz.

August is when school children sit by the lake and learn to throw stones that will skip the water’s surface. Any other learning will wait.

August is HOT.

I remember coming for a family visit to Israel in the summer of 2005. I was greeted by my sister at the airport, and her second sentence was, “you have a lot of courage to come in August.”

It was hot.

So, dear ones—let your minds rest, let your feet up, and keep the chocolate in the fridge. Don’t struggle; let August be August.

 It’s what it is, and then it’s over.

Groundhog Day

If ground-hog day was bright and fair,
The beast came forth, but not to stay;
His shadow turned him to his lair,
Where six weeks more, he dormant lay
Secure in subterranean hold—
So wondrous weatherwise was he—
Against six weeks of ice and cold,
Which, very certain, there would be...

~H.L. Fisher, "Popular Superstitions," Olden Times: or, Pennsylvania Rural Life, Some Fifty Years Ago, and Other Poems, 1888

Well, then— it’s today, and it’s all right if we missed it. GROUNDHOG DAY is for many young’uns an excellent Bill Murry movie, played over and over since its release in 1993. But the odd Farmer’s Almanac-like   custom is much older, and not less bizarre when analyzed. Does the groundhog see its shadow? Six more weeks of winter? Heh?

I think of it this way— the weather is uncontrollable. We want control. Give us some grounding from where we will navigate.

But I like to leave this post with a much more spunky quotation that should take us through the next six/eight/ten/please no more weeks:

“It's a holiday entirely based on the power of a psychic rodent. If that isn't the epitome of awesome, I don't know what is.”

~Flying LlamaFish, "7 Reasons Groundhog Day is the Ultimate Holiday," 2010, PunIntended.com