Happy Winter Solstice

Early morning yoga after a night of colourful dreams, sagas really. Busy night, waking, sleeping and dreaming another chapter in the saga, waking not sure if I was hallucinating, waking sleep, still it was colourful, full of esplanades and heros, sharp colours and horses.

It was a relief to get up and roll into the smooth actions of yoga. Still, I couldn’t still my thoughts. The dawn sky was muted and the sounds of the waking world filtered through. The buses, the green grocer guys in the shop across the road swapping ribald comments, the smell of dawn coffeeholics. The night’s machinations still rampant in my legs I stretched and flexed and twisted and held my breath out as I sunk into a forward bend.

The sounds of the street faded into the background and finally I stilled and felt steady. The pink day reasserted itself and I walked home. A child’s swing moved back and fourth in the lurid light, moved by some unseen force, the sky was a brilliant red. The dreams had been dragging at the edges of my mind had take on a gothic hue, the colour had faded from my memory and I remembered darker scenes, dark clouds, warring fractions. I looked across the street and saw a ghost. For a moment I was in the dream again. A little girl stood straight and still in a gateway flanked by high hedges, she was pale and stiller than a corpse. She seemed to be looking straight through me. Then a sound intervened and the little girl still looked like a ghost.

The coffee I then brewed was so welcome, warming the chill in my body. “When will I wake up?” I thought.

Later streaming the dream still I saw something that I dubbed, ’The Rose Gardeners.’ Now this title conjures all sorts of idyllic scenes, big red blousy flowers, long stems, summer scents, gentle people in dull colours with secateurs and trowels. Well it’s winter in my world now and although the sun was shining it’s cold and the roses are stumps of gnarled twigs. The rose garden was in a municipal park and the burly gardeners in fluro uniforms, squatting amongst the rose stumps. The title is incongruous, the lumbering men, the bareness of the garden and the stark pale sunshine outlining the men’s silhouettes. The dream continues.

The older I get the less real any of my experiences become…Thank god the ghostly girl has moved on to her shadowy school.

Of course of course it’s the Winter Solstice in the southern hemisphere, the shortest day. No wonder it’s cold. Tonight light a candle and maybe sip a wine or grape juice to welcome back the light of the sun that now is turning slowly towards us again. No wonder I’ve been seeing ghosts and imps and having saga dreams, strange musings and a feeling of dislocation, all that darkness. I tell you what I’ll be lighting a candle and drawing a big sigh of relief, this strange reality needs remedial work… or maybe just some sun…

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