Rainy Sunday

Not fighting the witchy aesthetic today.

Midsummer

It was midsummer eve, and I was preparing a special place in the garden. When I was little, this was my favorite tree. I would sit in the crook of its branches and imagine that it possessed some sort of magic, was perhaps even an enchanted being.

This was years before reading The Old Woman In The Wood, though when I did come upon it, in the memorious summer I turned 10, it immediately became my favorite. It seemed perfectly reasonable that my tree might be a handsome prince in disguise. Although looking at it now, some features of this tree are unmistakably feminine.

While I was decorating, a snail came along to check out the prairie verbena. I have the feeling he approved the result.

Happy solstice to all.

Sun In Splendor

A day so hot, the air moves in slow motion. Heat shimmer rises into the sky. There's nothing to do but seek the water as the sun blazes its way toward the ends of the earth.

It's the burning edge of summer, and the morning chill of May is just a memory, unbelievable, ridiculous even, to think I could have ever felt so cold.

Man In The Moon

A nice view of the man in the moon, June 16, 2019.

The Gateless Gate

When I wrote about the twelvetide fortune-telling method in January, I didn't know how much to expect as far as divination was concerned. There have been a few subtle bits and pieces that had seemed accurate predictions, and this one in March that I'm convinced was quite accurate indeed, although the month was off.

Now I've got another hit, I believe, and this time, the timing was very close to the mark. Read on and decide for yourself...

This is what I wrote about my dream on December 30th, 2018:

"In waking life, there are two arched gateways in my town that are several miles apart. In my dream, however, theses gateways have become two sides of the same gate, as if the distance between them has disappeared. It's a little eerie, as if this suddenly appearing shortcut violates the laws of physics. Nevertheless, I pass through it on my way somewhere. I find a shop where I ask for a cup of hot tea.They say they don't have any, but I tell them they do, they just don't realize it. I find the tea and get my drink for free."

A couple of weeks ago, thinking about those gates, I went to check the one that is in my neighborhood. It had been a while since I'd last looked. But when I got there, what do you know - it was gone.

The gate had been in that space between the trees - previously, and always, as far as I know - it had  led to undeveloped land that was used as a wildlife reserve. Now, there was a road being built, It was easy to see down the cleared space to where a neighborhood was going up.

Now, I had known that a housing edition was being built somewhere back there, but it was my understanding that there would be no road connecting it with our neighborhood, for the sake of minimizing traffic. Yet there it was.

Feeling a bit disturbed by this, I drove the several miles it took to reach the new neighborhood to have a look at it.  The route I took is marked here in green:

This is a route that had been more or less the same my entire life, but sure enough, there was now a new road - one with the same name as the one in my neighborhood. Like so:

As you can tell by the positions of gate 1 and gate 2 on the map, they are not connected, but by golly, there is now a new road connecting them much more closely together, something I did not at all imagine happening last December.

Here is the second gate, just for reference:

And here is the new road, from the vantage point of the new neighborhood being built:

This is just on the other side of the now missing gate.

The distance between the two gates is now reduced considerably, and at the same time is sure to bring changes to this place, which had remained the same for such a long time. This change does make me a bit uneasy, much like the gate in the dream.

This was a prediction for June, and while I discovered this in late ,May, the road isn't open yet. For all I know, it will be open within the month.

As for the part of the dream with the shop and the tea, I'm not sure what meaning that has, if any.

I suppose it might mean that even though this change may be somewhat disturbing, not to be too closed-minded and risk overlooking any positive aspects of the new situation.