THINGS TO CARRY INTO THE DARKER PART OF THE YEAR

Autumn Equinox

We have begun the journey now into the darker part of the year in the northern hemisphere. I have found myself in an enforced stillness that feels somewhat similar to the early stages of lockdown…

I’m in the final lush with a little book that I’ll share more about soon, one written like the first two: swiftly and with deep immersion. Things are being tied up and cut loose and unravelled, and I am here at a threshold of form.

I am craving rest, and stillness, and quietly transformative things.

I am gathering things to carry into this enforced stillness this season holds now for me.

Bright and beautiful things…

What would you add?. . .

Giantess ( The Guardian of the Egg) ~ Leonara Carrington

There is something truly exceptional about Summer into Autumn, I’ve spent many a year trying to unearth the exact nature of this journey’s wonder; seeking to really hear its messages. Autumn into winter, too, holds something of incomparable worth, but these last years I’ve found myself too overwhelmed, too close to the edge— to reap the benefits.

I return to books I’ve read before over and over and over again in these darker days — ones that deliver deep nourishment—but this year I have had the most unusual run up to this season, in that for the first time ever I have been more drawn to image as guide.

Autumnal Equinox ~ Ithell Colquhoun

What artists do you turn to when the winds of change are blowing through your garden (all the gardens you might know, particularly the ones inside you)?

“You may not believe in magic but something very strange is happening at this very moment,”

Leonora Carrington

The Messenger ~ Leonora Carrington

The Pomps of the Subsoil ~ Leonora Carrington

So yes, I’m thinking of image and word together; dancing winds on a wild and strange night. I am thinking of female creativity and how it is fed by darkness.

Onward, towards the velvety darkness; towards the silence — into the folds of the earth and all she holds both for and of us.

(I am ready.)

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