Day #30 of my Search for a Soulmate ... and the Halcyon Days of December

Quick comment on something Damien Echols wrote about these days … although he timed the dates as December 20-25:

“The most magickal time imaginable is that short window between December 20th and December 25th when the daylight hours have dwindled to nearly nothing. I love it because the entire world feels like a pendulum that has swung all the way to one side and hangs suspended in the air for a moment before beginning to swing back to the other side.” (18 OCT 2010)

I was reminded of this sensation he had – and it is a sense that he has shared with all sorts of people who felt the same way - when I was reading about the “Halcyon Days”.  Damien identified his awareness of the sensation as being five days (December 20-25); Ovid identified the same period of time as being 14 days long – seven days on either side of the Winter Equinox. 

True, Saturnalia is also arriving, but the Halcyon Days are special.  The mythology surrounding the Halcyon Days are based on the story of the goddess Alcyone, a depiction of whom is to the left, daughter of Aeolus, the ruler of the winds. 

You’ll note, as most people would, that she is missing her nipples. 

She was not, in fact, missing them in the original painting by Herbert James Draper (1863-1920) an English Pre-Raphaelite painter.  The “Myth Index” (http://www.mythindex.com/greek-mythology/A/Alcyone.html) people appear to have airbrushed them out – an extraordinarily odd thing for myth-obsessed people to do, especially if they’re going to be presenting myths about gods and goddesses recreated in statues and paintings, when said deities are usually half-naked. 

Of course, the second question women might ask is:  “Why would she decide to strip to the waist within seven days of the winter equinox to go looking for her missing husband?”  An excellent question!  This makes the airbrushing of her nipples out of the painting by the Myth people even more strange; as everyone knows that if you send a naked women out of doors in that weather her nipples would be knocking viewers out of their chairs.  Men, of course, don't believe that women need a reason to rip most of their clothes off and run around naked, but women - not being quite as overwhelmed with mindlessness at the thought of their own nakedness - are a bit more pragmatic about it.  Really.  Why would a woman strip to to waist and run to the shoreline to search for a missing spouse?  Exhibitionism?  Mistook the shoreline for a "Clothing Optional" beach?  Stupidity?

Answer to the question:  Because a horny man painted the picture.  Horny men should never be allowed to paint pictures of women, lest they paint unrealistic depictions of female behavior in the dead of winter.  I don’t care how sexy I was with my shirt off, I’d still be wearing a fleece-lined ski parka, flannel camisoles and three layers of winter underwear whilst out of doors and roaming the shoreline in December, which is the activity that Alcyone is performing in this painting.  Most people would assume that she's moaning, "Not tonight, I have a headache!", but actually, she's scanning the horizon for her hubby's sinking boat.  Yeah, most women go running half-naked to the shoreline to scan horizons for sinking boats.  Really.  It's our favorite pasttime.

But – as always - I digress. 

Alcyone was married to Ceyx, the king of Thessaly. There are various versions of what occurred to these two.  One is that they lovingly called each other “Zeus” and “Hera”, and provoked the real Zeus and Hera into getting ticked off at them; the other is that Ceyx went to consult an oracle and drowned on the way.  In any event Alcyone, in grief and despair over the death of Ceyx,  threw herself into the sea.  Her father, ruler of the winds as you’ll recall, calmed the sea so that Alcyone could find the body of Ceyx.

This story still exists today in the phrase “halcyon days”, which means calm and beautiful and peaceful days in the middle of winter (also known as “Indian summer”), or days of peaceful calmness and stillness, in the name of various types of kingfishers, in the belief that they lay their eggs and build nests on the calm sea which occurs before and after the winter equinox (I’m not sure if that’s true or not), and in lots of cultural references.  For example:

Halcyon Days (1891)

by Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

Not from successful love alone,

Nor wealth, nor honor'd middle age, nor victories of politics or war;

But as life wanes, and all the turbulent passions calm,

As gorgeous, vapory, silent hues cover the evening sky,

As softness, fulness, rest, suffuse the frame, like freshier, balmier air,

As the days take on a mellower light, and the apple at last hangs

really finish'd and indolent-ripe on the tree,

Then for the teeming quietest, happiest days of all!

The brooding and blissful halcyon days!

From Leaves of Grass, 1891-92

Speaking of Damien, his definition of “regularly”, as in, “I’ll be posting here regularly” appears to mean:  “once every year”, as he hasn’t posted anything since the 6^th of December and it’s now the 17^th.  Which would be “regularly” to some, I suppose … but to the rest of us?  Ehhh … not so much.  We were hoping for something a little more frequent, Mr. Signpost. 

Speaking of poetry, in honor of the Hamadryad I met (see last entry), I wanted to look up  Poe’s Sonnet to Science – how often do you see a hamadryad mentioned in a poem?

Found it.  Loved it.  And I especially loved that while Poe is so certain that science with its “dull realities” will drive a hamadryad from the wood, I met my first hamadryad outside of a biotech building in Cambridge!  He is correct in that if I were to tell the scientists I work that I had met a hamadryad … well, let’s just say that respect for my intelligence among my coworkers would wither rather dramatically.  Ah well …

SONNET - TO SCIENCE  (1829)

by Edgar Allan Poe

SCIENCE! true daughter of Old Time thou art!
Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart,
Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?
How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise,
Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering
To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,
Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?
Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car?
And driven the Hamadryad from the wood
To seek a shelter in some happier star?
Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,
The Elfin from the green grass, and from me
The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?

The minute the Thanksgiving turkey is digested – and sometimes even before – everyone is bombarded with christmas music to the point where you start clutching your head and screaming every time you walk into a store, even if it’s only to buy the weekly groceries.  To replace the awful musak in your head, I start listening to my own holiday play list, in the fervent hope that one cancels out the other.  Even Mannheim Steamroller is getting annoying, and I never thought I’d say that, as creative as they are at rearranging stuff that would typically drive you bonkers, hearing it for the ten millionth time in the span of five minutes.  Es Ist Ein Ros Entsprungen by the Monteverdi Choir, selections from The Nutcracker Suite, Chris Botti, some scattered Harry Connick, Jr., Zastupnitse Userdnaya from the St. Petersburg Chamber Choir, various adagios and the like.  Anything to get the usual dreck out of my head.

Meanwhile, celebrating “Let’s Clear Out the Refrigerator Day”, I’m slowly becoming happily intoxicated on a weird mixture of apple juice, grape juice, pear nectar, orange Gatorade … shaken with Old Ipswich White Cap rum and Malibu Coconut rum and poured over ice.  Yesterday was the first time I’d ever sipped rum right out of the bottle, and the Old Ipswich was the smoothest rum I’d ever tasted.  Great stuff.  So now I’m getting happily sloshed on it.  Expensive as hell, but worth it.

Well, my future soul mate will be pleased to know that I can now add:  “Able to make low-sugar blueberry muffins” to my resume.  Since they’re in the oven as I write this, I cannot honestly say that I made delicious low-sugar blueberry muffins, only that I made them.  (Addendum, 1 hour later:  okay, NOW I can honestly say that I made semi-delicious low-sugar blueberry muffins.  I stole the recipe off of the back of a Splenda box, and even this recipe tastes too sweet as they included a quarter cup of honey in the recipe.  I’m betting I can revise it into “no sugar blueberry muffins”, as I’m not all that fond of the honey in it; I’m just wondering - if it adds moisture - what I can replace it with – a small amount of oil, maybe?  Unsweetened applesauce?  Back to the drawing board.

The Bayer replacement meter took 9 days to arrive as it turns out they had sent it to the wrong address.  (*sigh*).  I may resurrect my desire to publicly blast them for incompetence.  But at least I now have the meter; I can go back to testing my blood sugar every day and getting depressed over the realization that they’re probably going to up my insulin again.