A Space of Time

    
   Sometimes I miss thunderstorms dearly.  The weather here does not crash and clatter about in the way it did where I grew up.  I miss frozen lakes and snow piled up into dirty grey mountains by the roadside, and sweeping white drifts everywhere else, days trapped in the belly of winter where no one expects anyone will venture out, and so the world becomes a wild, empty place to roam through and shape at will. 

In the winter, ridiculously bundled in warm clothing, we would lose the sense of having bodies at all.  Except, in the bathroom a screaming pain awaited the hands of children who stayed out too long, when frostbitten fingers would be forced under the hottest water that came from the faucet.

And in the summer, the plants grew riotously and it was almost impossible to imagine ever wanting to wear clothes at all.  I thought only of the lake, but was sometimes dragged out of the water to wander through shady forests. We used to run outside to dance and shout at times when the sky turned suddenly green and eerie and the rain made rivers under us.  In spring we slipped out barefoot and collected the biggest pieces of hail and hid them in the freezer.  And autumn was sweetest of all.

  Time works differently in places where the seasons are so varied.  Each season is so intensely present that it blots out the others, making them seem lifetimes away.  Here where things are more constant, the hours are always about me, and a space of four months seems as meaningless as yesterday.  One must cast about a much more subtle eye.

 And so we've decided to try and visit the prehistoric markers that managed to make it past all the time and people that have rushed across this bit of land.  One day's strolling down the street and across the river brought us to a mossy cist near the bottom of a slope that rises above the river Dee.

These days are small windows of blue winter light that seem to have the stained-glass hues of one long sunset.  The sun creaks itself a quarter of the way up the sky and then falls back behind the hills again.  The birds fly backwards in the wind.  And we hurry to reach the hilltops and home before dark. 

Over empty stretches of burnt ground littered with bones, a high heap of stones stands ringed by fresh green moss and scorched gorse bushes.  The stones and boulders that were laid together, built up on top of one another to make this cairn, have probably been here at least four thousand years.  Past the cairn the city stretches out in rows, and oil ships sit on the horizon. It seems odd that the bony, blackened, empty place should stand ringed in by fences and industrial estates, a dump and a water treatment centre, and further on, the monkey bars of an empty playground.  Standing next to the cairn in the shadow of that strangeness, one begins to feel like the wild creature that has crawled out of the woods and sits watching in the shadows at the edge of town.

Further up the hill there are at least three more cairns.  Some of them are even larger than the first one.  Where the exposed rock meets the grass, it becomes clear that just beneath one's feet there are many more rocks heaped together below the soil.  It is impossible to know where the swell of the cairn begins and the rise of the hill ends. 

And the light begins to fail.  We push through gorse thickets in the dark, thorns catching at our legs.  More of this funny timelessness where the sun slides up and down the sky with no consequence.  We walk home in the false dark of street lamps.  In the gardens snowdrops are already flowering.  Though it is January there are sometimes daffodils and the odd tree is blooming. We move away from the expanse of the hilltop where the bones of the earth stand overlooking the city.

   Sometimes I can find patterns, but mostly time expands and contracts in ways that mystify me.  My words turn the same things about, and I have no sense of the direction onward from here.  Back in Paris, around farewell drinks someone said "suppose time is moving slightly faster every day. No one would notice, just each day would be a little bit shorter."

Hip Hip Hooray!

   Last night the new year arrived on the north coast of Scotland in the tiny fishing villages which keep to the old Julian calendar holidays.  In Burghead a fiery procession wound its way sunwise through the town, bringing bits of luck to the doorsteps of the people there.

On top of a flame-covered hilltop, the last bit of the Clavie, which is the name for the burning barrel carried through the town, burnt to the ground as people cheered.  And so, the new year began.

There used to be celebrations like this one in many towns on the north coast of Scotland, but this is the last one that remains.  I wrote about the Clavie last year too, so have a look here if you are interested in reading more. 

As we made our way home, reeking of smoke and tar and full of stovies, clutching our piece of the Clavie to bring us luck, my mind moved back and forth over this past year and on to thoughts of the one sitting ahead.
   I have been a little too much in dreamland the past couple of weeks and the time to get back to work and the regular pattern of daily life has come, I think.  I have been gathering ideas around me, and I'm looking forward to bringing them out into the world, or at least my little corner of it.

   Going back in time eleven days from last night, to the more commonly accepted time for celebrating New Year's Eve, we found ourselves at another fire festival.  The photos below come from the fireball celebration in the town of Stonehaven, just south of Aberdeen.

This festival is much larger and also includes a pipe band, a drum group, and fireworks at the end.  You can read more about it in last year's post on the same subject.  We had a lovely night out, standing about waiting for midnight and learning about life in Kazakhstan and Borneo from a visitor met by chance, and then the hush and roar as bunches of fire went whirling past us... sometimes only just missing us as we stepped quickly back!

There is something hypnotic in these fire processions.  Watching as the flames blaze past in the dark street, or trailing along behind them, emotions balance out between excitement and strange awe.

   More than candy-coloured fireworks ever could, these raw flaming processions make a deep and dramatic impression.  I hope that these tiny glimpses of flames and sparks will warm and quicken you a bit.  Thank you for passing this past year with me and my thoughts.  May you make your dreams come true this year!

Throwing fireballs in the sea.

A pane of glass, and the dream of summer and winter.

   Coming back down the hills, over the river, and toward home after a walk in the thrashing wind, there is a sheltered stopping place where flowers bloom even in the darkest days of winter.  Outside, gales of wind, howling and roaring, shake the metal frame of the arboretum and scratch at the glass.  We walk from room to glowing room of the greenhouse, listening to the creaking and watching clouds roll darkly beyond the glass sky.

It is strange to walk in a hothouse at night.  Almost empty of people, there are shadowy corridors with only a little bit of coloured light at the end where a lamp's light shines off tightly growing bunches of flowers.  Walking through the dark, towards that brightness, one can stop and smell a flower that has the scent of early spring, and another that hints at midsummer.

 In the Arid Room, there is a sign that can be read in the daylight which says that on every day of the year there is a different type of bloom among the cacti.  And so we hunt the flowers in the gloom, finding a few odd-shaped blossoms of lemon-yellow and magenta.

 A blackbird and a wren live together in the high leaves of the tropics, where the humid air is thick and scented and drops of moisture fall from above.  Orchids and Spanish moss press in on us only a few feet from the wild northern night that falls in early afternoon, and the hothouse seems like some kind of biological enchantment growing on this landscape.

 In the centre of the glasshouses there are Christmas trees sparkling next to banana and palm trees, patches of poinsettias and cyclamens.  A river of tossed coins and goldfish flows under tiny, arched bridges, and somewhere in the backrooms of the greenhouse a man is jingling his keys and calling out that this strange, glowing place is about to shut for the night.  And so we slip back into the dark, churning sea of wind and whirling cloud to walk down the empty streets with their stained-glass entrances blazing, all the bay windows full of Christmas trees, and behind them families eating at long tables.  On the longest nights we make our own light.

Wishing you a season of the brightest, most beautiful light this winter!

The sky touches every last thing.

   Only some fat flakes of snow whirled down as two men in their winter hats erected scaffolding on the house across the street.  We took our old route down to the sea, looking for evidence of the snow all the while, but there were just some pockets of frost that the sun forgot to chase away from mossy grasses.

Little, glittering shards of the sky flew past and bit us. Small birds came running on their wings, back and forth to the tree at the window, and now the tree is bare of every last rowan berry.  Now there is only a thrush that comes and sits on the chimney pots looking down its nose at me through the foggy wet morning window panes.

Towards the sea with coat pockets full of holes and chocolate and the danger of losing things in the lining.  We saw another couple, as we slipped between some gravestones and up a hill to a tear in the wire fence.  They laid down new flowers, laughed and called to each other as they hurried back and forth to and from their car.

Beyond a rickety wooden weather shelter by the road, the sea floor was swelling up out of the waters, pushing sandy streams down and behind it as it crawled toward the line of cars and cafés.  Down toward the harbour, a pod of surfers rose and fell in silhouette. 

This month goes creaking on, little tasks get crossed off lists, and there is a lot of hurrying here and there.  One whole day baking, another on the phone.  Buried on my desk is the old tile I use as a palette, and I am sure that the paints on it must be dried all the way through by now.  I feel like, on some still December days, when the normal streets are empty and everyone is in the shops, if no one is looking it should be allowed to float slowly, deafly, up up up away into the cold, quiet blue.

Der Nikolaus

   Since today is the 6th of December, the feast of St. Nicholas for those who celebrate it, I thought I would send my own little Nikolaus out to you.  My father used to tell me that on this day every year, in the town where he was born in Germany, Der Nikolaus would visit in the evening.  As he passed through the streets, parents would run out of their houses to call him in for a meeting with their children.  All the children knew that the visit of this big, rough-looking man in his worn red coat wasn't a great cause for celebration.  The meeting between Der Nikolaus and a child involved an assessment of that child's behaviour since Der Nikolaus' visit the year before, and at the end of the discussion, either an orange or a beating was doled out. 

   When I asked my father if Der Nikolaus was all alone when he visited the houses, he said "yes. Well, unless maybe he had been out drinking with some friends before. He was a rough sort of man."

    In case you are wondering: the 6th of December aside, Christmas itself wasn't so frightening for my father.  He and his brothers would be called into the living room late on Christmas Eve to find that Der Christkind had visited and magically left behind a table set for a feast and a tree decorated with lit candles on every branch and presents beneath them.  I was always astonished by the idea of an incarnation of Jesus as a baby that left a trail of magic and riches behind him, and I would ask to be told about him again and again.  Sometimes I spent Christmas Eve with my father and his family and returned Christmas morning to celebrate again, in typical Canadian fashion, with my mother and her side of the family. 

 
   This year, I have tried to be more clever with my cards.  I made them a few weeks ago, so they will hopefully arrive on time this year!  And I tried to make the subject of the cards more obvious than last year, or the year before, since apparently not everyone wants to read the wee stories we tuck into their cards.  At least this year I don't foresee getting little notes into February asking why I made a card with a picture of cows on it.  St. Nicholas is so common there can be no confusion.

    It also happens that my husband's family has a tradition relating to St. Nicolas' feast day: my husband used to always find little treats left for him in his shoes on the morning of the 6th of December.  And up in Scotland this year, it looks as if tonight we might be receiving the wonderful gift of the first snow of the season.  So I'll be keeping my fingers crossed for snow and wishing you lots of foil-wrapped chocolates in your shoes and hot spiced drinks by the fire!

Light at the End of the Year

   These long nights and short days are little poems of flickering candles and twirling notes.  Sometimes, it is the slow part of the day.  There are the sounds of dishes being washed and some northern-English Christmas carols from the archive my husband works on.  There is one carol about a new bride who plays a game of hide-and-seek with her groom on their wedding night, but she is never found... until many years later a heavy, old chest is opened and a wedding gown is found with a skeleton inside.  There is a pedal organ and many voices.  Other carols are less strange, full of "hark, hark" and angels.  In some villages there used to be bands that would wander about in the cold on Christmas Eve singing and playing music in the streets until the sun rose on Christmas morning.  Apparently many churches made sure to acquire big pipe organs to curb this behaviour, bringing the music into the church and the choir under their control.  I must admit I never suspected a beautiful church organ as being used as a force for control and loss of culture, among other things.

   

   The night before last, we heard the most beautiful music from Hungary and Romania.  I never have my camera when I need it, so there are no photos of upright basses, accordions and fiddles catching the light of candles stuck in old bourbon bottles, or women dancing past stacks of piled up chairs (only some glimpses from last weekend in Edinburgh for your eyes).  But at least I can direct you towards the source of all the beauty: the website of The Jani Lang Band, and that of Tcha Limberger, who was playing along with the band as a special guest.  The music was brilliant all night and all of the musicians were amazingly talented, but I was completely spellbound by Tcha Limberger's solo part of the evening.  He sang, sometimes in Magyar and sometimes in Romani, as he accompanied himself on fiddle or on guitar.  I didn't want it to ever end. 

       

  

And as December settles in and blackbirds sit in the bare branches just outside eating red berries, as the afternoons turn inky and dark and gales blow in off the North Sea, I have to fight with myself not to hibernate.  One more spot of brightness keeping me from a long winter's nap is Romica Puceanu, who I found out about by reading the lovely City of Reubens blog.  Romica Puceanu started singing in Bucharest cafés when she was just 14, and she had a gorgeous, velvety voice backed by beautiful cimbalom, accordion, and fiddle playing.  Little treasures like this are especially important in winter, I think.  These long evenings need to be filled so full that it doesn't seem to matter if the sun ever rises again.

Windows and Wallflowers

Wallflower

   I have been off dissecting accordions with a group of old gentlemen and strolling the back lanes in the dark.  I have sold raffle tickets (and won a mouth harp!), and drunk free whisky that made my arms go numb at an art show I contributed a couple of things to.  I have been practising old tunes on the concertina around sunset these days.  I have spent some lovely evenings in the homes of people who have thrown open their doors to me.  In short, I think the anxious blues of the past months have been chased away, and we are settling into another winter.  Now that absolutely all of our plans have fallen through, I can safely say that we are staying here in Aberdeen for a little while yet.  I think it will be lovely.   

 

Two very, very late or very, very early crocuses from the other day.

We will be heading down to Edinburgh later on this week, so I thought I'd share an old photo of some stained glass windows there that I always enjoy looking at when they are lit up at night.  The whole matter of "nobody watching" is a little bit funny with all the crazy surveillance in the UK.  But it does make me think of my grandparents and the strange joy they seemed to derive from keeping tabs on the neighbours. 

"My mother knew everybody in this street.  She could reel off the occupants of every single house; everybody could once upon a time.  Now they come and they go.  That's why these tragedies happen; nobody watching.  If they knew they were being watched they might behave." (Click to enlarge)

Update:  I'm back from Edinburgh with more info about the image above. The window displays are still in place, though they weren't lit up when I passed by the other night.  On further, closer inspection it appears that they are not stained glass windows, but skillfully done papercuts with coloured tissue paper added.  I was also able to find out that the artist is Astrid Jaekel and she has done other delightful installations like this one, which can be seen on her website.