I am aware of the date as I begin to write this somewhat after New Year…
I’m just enjoying a bit of pretense in a system older than my relationship with Monsieur Silha…
That of a tradition having a spell of deep quiet time after the studio’s more external work is finished. There is a word for this quality of time: HALCYON, a mythical presence of calm seas at solstice.
These years we seem always to be rushing off earlier than my own body’s timing might wish to celebrate toward more active ways what is nonetheless a poignant season.
I take my idylls now as I can find them…
This year’s travel did give me a fine alternate version of that sort of celebration: we traded our smaller Island for the biggest one of Hawai’i. We flew on the 18th inside the becoming usual vicissitudes of cancelled flights & reschedules, but arrived only a few hours later than we’d expected at our Vashon friends John & Glenn’s home in Captain Cook, south of Kona on the western side of the world’s tallest mountain, an active volcano whose height must be measured from the ocean’s floor. Whew!
As with our visit to INDIA three years ago, we observed curious juxtapositions of northern holiday paraphernalia on the tropics: Colored lights on wreaths or even garlands of pine were common, but they also hung out in palm trees! On that earlier trip, when we spent Christmas on the beaches of Goa, such things were more unexpected, but our fiftieth state could hardly be immune to such well marketed traditions. Nevertheless, my humbug is happy to be allowed to continue practicing ignoring ever more of it…
But how could even such a flaw in my character remain disgruntled when presented with the warmth, the verdant blossoms plus the visuals of even more exotically colorful fish through a snorkel mask?!?
Or decorations like this:
Unexpected examples of how the holidays coordinate with tropical fauna were the numerous poinsettias blooming in gardens & even seeming wild along the roads. The Kona side is dry, rather desert-like, being leeward of the three volcanic peaks of this mountain. These plants are Mexican in origin & love such dry tropical situations.
There is nothing quite like that color. It has an artificial quality, enhanced by that texture of flocked velvet… I found myself constantly captivated by my own weary revulsion toward that most commercial holiday flower. This was my most effulgent sighting:
But, I was looking at time… timing… rhythms.
Halcyon is, by supposition, if not definition, quite damnedly ephemeral.