Solstice intentions, reimagined

Here is where I am, and perhaps you too:

The griefs today are too numerous and too at odds with the exuberant longest days of summer;

The de-personalization and de-realization strikes often, despite the magical shimmer of the verdant leaves in golden sunlight above;

The ache of the dissonance as we try to live more in sync with our warm, growing, and celebratory summer surroundings is as stifled as all other bodily sensations.

—

I met someone today who genuinely shared they were feeling very well and had no complaints in this season of rest and harvest. This writing isn’t for them; it’s for you.

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My solstice isn’t a swelling of sunlight and long days, my solstice is a tipping point.

Tipping towards the cycle of diminishing brightness, which will hold things that need to fall away, one minute of incremental darkness at a time.

Towards the relief in the gradual decomposing of what has overgrown and overwhelmed.

The inability to lay languid in the heat, but the welcoming of the encroaching dark evenings and the promise of distant cooler nights.

—

My solstice is a swing from the waxing to the waning sun and I get to choose the language around it.

Discerning

Weeding

Slowing

Observant

Intentional

Out-breaths

In-body

Cooling

Clarity

In the medicinal constriction of the next six months, may we find the resourcing and resolve to take on our communal responsibility of tending to the tragedies that spawned from the outrageous, inhumane hubris of the few.

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I will not wear a Kupalo flower crown or jump over the fires by rivers, but I have to believe my ancestors will be soothed and seen by my alternative solstice existence this year, sitting silently in a clover patch at twilight and watching turkey vultures swirl overhead.