Monday, May 2, 2011
Sunday, May 1, 2011
May Day 2011
May Day used to be a big deal in this country. Hell, May Day used to be a big deal, period. People used to decorate and have parties. Girls would wear white dresses and dance around the Maypole wearing flowers in their hair. I don't know what the men did. I guess they watched.
We like to watch girls.
May Day is a fertility festival (aren't they all?) celebrating Maia, a Mother/Spring goddess (for whom the month is named) and Nature in its generative state. Maia (mother of Hermes) is the same as Flora is the same as Maya (virgin mother of the Buddha, just saying) and even sort of Mary (whose month the early Christian church made May, probably to co-opt the festivals of pagan Europe).
The holiday is related to Whitsuntide and to Beltane and to Walpurgisnacht and the Floralia. All the different cultures have festivals at this time of year. Or had, anyway. Christianity never saw a fun thing it couldn't try to ruin.
Sigh.
In the old days, they got up early on May Day to go out into the woods and wash their faces in the dew (seriously) and gather branches of hawthorn trees and then they'd come back into town, singing and decorating and whatnot. Then, you know, the maypole dancing (because, in those days, girls were into phallic symbols) and then the fornicating in the woods.
Basically, a good time had by all.
May Day, in my secular paganism, is the third big deal holiday of the year (after Candlemas and Easter). It is a festival of Springtime in full bloom. It falls halfway between the equinox and the solstice, so it is also the holiday celebrating the cusp of Summertime. On May Day you can start to think seriously about putting away the sweaters for another year.
Also, in my May Day festivities, we don't get up early and wash our faces in the dew. That dew is motherfucking COLD.
If Chiara were here for May Day this year (she's in Italy), I'd name her the May Queen. She'd wear a white dress and I'd put a crown of flowers on her and everyone at the big May Day party would have to pay her a compliment. She'd probably hate that. She'd like this bit, though - the Queen of the May just watches the other people dance, she doesn't dance, herself.
Chiara likes to watch other people dance.
We'd put up a big pole of some kind and have a bonfire and get drunk and think about sex and then, later, and not in the woods (because of how the woods are COLD) we could have actual sex. May Day is that kind of a holiday to me. I dunno. Seem like the best reasons I can think of for a holiday.
And, as ever, the main advantage of my secular paganism is the predictable scheduling of everything. You always know when you'll be having a party. None of this "first Sunday after the first full moon after the equinox" nonsense, like with Christian Easter.
So, come to my May Day party next year, I guess. Wear white and bring some flowers and a bottle of wine. I will provide the funk music and cheeseplate. That is all.
We like to watch girls.
May Day is a fertility festival (aren't they all?) celebrating Maia, a Mother/Spring goddess (for whom the month is named) and Nature in its generative state. Maia (mother of Hermes) is the same as Flora is the same as Maya (virgin mother of the Buddha, just saying) and even sort of Mary (whose month the early Christian church made May, probably to co-opt the festivals of pagan Europe).
The holiday is related to Whitsuntide and to Beltane and to Walpurgisnacht and the Floralia. All the different cultures have festivals at this time of year. Or had, anyway. Christianity never saw a fun thing it couldn't try to ruin.
Sigh.
In the old days, they got up early on May Day to go out into the woods and wash their faces in the dew (seriously) and gather branches of hawthorn trees and then they'd come back into town, singing and decorating and whatnot. Then, you know, the maypole dancing (because, in those days, girls were into phallic symbols) and then the fornicating in the woods.
Basically, a good time had by all.
May Day, in my secular paganism, is the third big deal holiday of the year (after Candlemas and Easter). It is a festival of Springtime in full bloom. It falls halfway between the equinox and the solstice, so it is also the holiday celebrating the cusp of Summertime. On May Day you can start to think seriously about putting away the sweaters for another year.
Also, in my May Day festivities, we don't get up early and wash our faces in the dew. That dew is motherfucking COLD.
If Chiara were here for May Day this year (she's in Italy), I'd name her the May Queen. She'd wear a white dress and I'd put a crown of flowers on her and everyone at the big May Day party would have to pay her a compliment. She'd probably hate that. She'd like this bit, though - the Queen of the May just watches the other people dance, she doesn't dance, herself.
Chiara likes to watch other people dance.
We'd put up a big pole of some kind and have a bonfire and get drunk and think about sex and then, later, and not in the woods (because of how the woods are COLD) we could have actual sex. May Day is that kind of a holiday to me. I dunno. Seem like the best reasons I can think of for a holiday.
And, as ever, the main advantage of my secular paganism is the predictable scheduling of everything. You always know when you'll be having a party. None of this "first Sunday after the first full moon after the equinox" nonsense, like with Christian Easter.
So, come to my May Day party next year, I guess. Wear white and bring some flowers and a bottle of wine. I will provide the funk music and cheeseplate. That is all.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
When We Say "Get Up," What Do We Mean?
"The one thing that can solve most of our problems is dancing."
-- James Brown
Put A Buckle On It
Just finished Sarah Vowell's tight little book about the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. It took me awhile. I know she'd hate my saying so, but Puritans are a bit of a tough slog, even in Ms. Vowell's winning snarky pluck.
She has obvious and deep affection for her subjects, maddening and flawed though they so clearly were. She is able to take the foundational myth of the American character and find new and unexpected truth inside of it where people seldom look or think to look. There is the sagacity of Winthrop and the rather stunning egalitarianism of Williams and the charmingly iconoclastic Hutchinson. There are the strange and shifting rivalries between the local Native tribes and the almost casual barbarity of the colonists when they are roused to revenge.
In other words, it has all the ingredients of a ripping yarn and in Vowell's hands, it is also humane and funny and ironical. I can't say anything against it, save what I've already said and that sort of pains me to say: It is simply not an easy thing to get interested in the Puritans. They repel interest and affection like emotional Gore-Tex. No matter how internecine their struggles, no matter how learned their words, no matter how actually and truly historic their actions, they just absorb whatever excitement you can throw at them and return a certain dry dreariness to you, like a mummy's cough.
Which is a shame. And is my fault. Because no one could have managed to tell their story in so short a book in so charming a way.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
We Live in a Diminished Age; Behold the Paraceratherium
 |
| The MichaelCeratherium was smaller, but charminingly twee |
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Friday, April 22, 2011
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Sunday, April 3, 2011
The Chiara Heresies IV
Getting home at four in the morning, Chiara complains of the lateness of the hour.
Says me: "But what do we care? We have nothing to do tomorrow. We have no kids. We don't have church in the morning."
Says Chiara: "I have church in the morning - The Church of Sleep."
Says me: "But what do we care? We have nothing to do tomorrow. We have no kids. We don't have church in the morning."
Says Chiara: "I have church in the morning - The Church of Sleep."
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