The day dies slowly in the western sky;
The sunset splendor fades, and wan and cold
The far peaks wait the sunrise; cheerily
The goatherd calls his wanderers to their fold.
My weary soul, that fain would cease to roam,
Take comfort; evening bringeth all things home.
Homeward the swift-winged sea-gull takes its flight;
The ebbing tide breaks softly on the sand;
The sunlight boats draw shoreward for the night;
The shadows deepen over sea and land.
Be still, my soul; the hour is not yet come,
‘Ere the gods once more see thee safely home.
(Yes, that “the gods” instead of “God” in the last line was my revision. But still ...)
Made me wonder how the month of November ended up with such a pitiful reputation. I know the name came from “novem” (“nine”) when the Roman calendar only had 10 months in it; the number nine traditionally had the “end of things” association. But really, November isn’t all that bad, is it?
Closest thing I could find that pinged my heart was the Italian singer Syria’s “Sei Tu”, which technically is not a November song, but a winter at the beach song. Needless to say, “winter” and “beach” both appealed to me. You can go to You Tube and search for Syria, Sei Tu – she debuted the song at the 1997 Festival of San Remo. http://lyricstranslate.com provided the translation. True, translations are never perfect – nor do they perpetuate the rhyme and meter of the original – but I liked the lyrics anyway:
Sei Tu
There are days, even in winter time,
a little sunny
when you feel like going out to take a walk
and the blood is so warm
inside my veins
even if it's cold I'm going to the seaside
and I am at peace with myself
in my tranquility
no wind could take me away
and it almost hurts my eyes
this light that won't go away
and yet suddenly it's dark
inside this soul of mine
It's you that I miss
It's you the one who tires me
it's because of this insecurity that you put me in
that you go away with every cloud that passes by
but I look forward
because there are just moments ...
if you were a blue sky
maybe I wouldn't be there
because deep down what I want
is for you to stay the way you are
the way you are...
There are moonlit nights
when you don't want to sleep
and you feel like writing and thinking
the clock ticks slowly
inside this room
sooner or later the dawn will have to come
and I'm at peace with myself
because I have no faults
but to have wanted you....
it's that when it comes to giving
I give everything I have
and then suddenly
an emptiness inside me comes
It's you I miss
it's you the one who tires me
it's because of this insecurity that you put me in
that you go away with every cloud that passes by
but I look forward
because there are just moments ...
if you were a blue sky
maybe I wouldn't be there
because deep down what I want
it's for you to stay as you are
as you are... as you are... as you are
I started trying to fill in the gaps in my annual “calendar” – which events, celebrations, festivals were or are held on which days. Long project – I started it a few years ago, drift away for a time and then pick it back up again.
November 15th rolled around and I was feeling both very rhythmic, hip-swiveling to Gianni Morandi, and then ethereal, with Vivaldi. But at least I was consistent in my inconsistency. I had re-filled the backyard bird feeder after the nor’easter and high winds had blown all of the seed out of it a week ago. The birds were probably cursing me out, it took me so long to refill it. Ten minutes later, they were all gathered around it, stuffing themselves and looking very happy. I came back into the study and opened my few source books on ancient day calendars. I’ve mentioned them before. Their usefulness on a given day varies. Some of them are just bewildering.
November 15th seems not to have engendered a lot of celebrations, no matter which civilization was discussed. One source book said, simply, “Egyptian Day”. No mention of what one was supposed to do or celebrate on “Egyptian Day”. Say, Yay for Egyptians? Who knows? The Thoughts for the Quiet Hour book contributed a really depressing November poem about coming to the end of your life. Oh, lovely. Another thought it would be appropriate to celebrate Georgia O’Keefe’s birthday. Really?? Mentalfloss offered “Clean out your refrigerator” day. Uh-huh. I celebrate that holiday every day – it’s called “eating”. Another website tells me the day was the Roman Feronia Festival. Well OK, that sounded promising. What, pray tell, was the Feronia Festival? A “Festival in honor of Feronia” was the answer.
Yeah, I sorta already guessed that.
I look up Feronia: “Feronia’s themes are fertility, abundance, earth, freedom, sports and recreation. Her symbols are fire and coals. This Roman fire Goddess provides fertility and abundance during even the harshest of times ... If you find your inner reserves waning with the winter’s darkness, light a candle sometime today to invoke Feronia’s vitality. Better still, light it for a few minutes each day until you feel your energy returning.” (Patricia Telesco, “365 Goddess: a daily guide to the magic and inspiration of the goddess”.)
Patricia Monaghan wrote that Feronia “made Her simple home in woodlands like those at Campania or at the foot of mountains like Soracte. She may date to the era before Rome some believe She is a vestigial Etruscan Goddess, powerful enough to maintain Her own identity after Roman conquest, for Her major sanctuaries were in the central Italian areas where the Etruscans once lived.”
So there you go. Happy Feronia Day!
The last of the source books thought November 15th was the perfect day of the year for a "Rite of Puberty" Day. Not a holiday, not a past holiday or celebration. A Rite ... of Puberty. On November 15th. Really. What exactly does one actually do to celebrate "Puberty"? Especially if you've already gone through the experience and can't imagine anything you'd like less than celebrating it - or perhaps I'm only recalling those years from the safety of a slightly more sane adulthood. It almost feels like I would be celebrating "Temporary Insanity" Day.
The only link between that entry and my actual life that I can see is probably the pleasure I’m getting out of re-discovering the Cowsills ... when I tell you that my bedroom wallpaper around the age of 12 was an homage to the newly discovered and much appreciated sensual appeal of the “older man” (by which I mean the 18-year old Bob Cowsill, or however old he was at the time), I’m not kidding. Picture a 12-year old, starry-eyed schoolgirl fervently whimpering, “He is the most beautiful human being who has ever existed since the dawn of recorded time!” (or something equally as goofy and scientifically unprovable), and that was me, every time Teen Beat, or Tiger Beat or 16, or whatever those magazines were back then, came out with a new photo of Bob Cowsill.It occurs to me now that girls of that age must be gifted professionals at drowning themselves in relentless, unwavering – if grotesquely misdirected – optimism. Every time I would read such sober, scholarly articles as, “What Kind of Girl does Bob REALLY Want?” they never seemed to mention seriously under aged ones with her teeth in braces, or one whose pet peeves were fractions, and her precocious little brother stealing her diary and writing in it. Yet the emotions barreled on. The unreachable Bob even got married somewhere in there, and that hopeless crush remained undented, because now it had tragic, “woe-is-me”, soap-opera tinged overtones which must have satisfied some sort of unfolding inner hormone-fueled self narrative.
Ah, puberty – that magical time in your life when enlightenment dawns and you discover that at least some boys may not, in fact, be terminally infected with “cooties”. Would I have wanted anyone to publicly call attention to it – to me - in a rite??? HAIL no. What pre-teen would?? As I recall, these were the slammed door, “leave me alone!” years when I would nurture unfamiliar sensations and unnamable hungers in secret, protecting them from prying eyes, naysayers and curious bystanders alike, confident in my belief that I was the only girl to have ever entertained such thoughts, felt such feelings, blushed so hotly at a handsome boy’s open and generous ... and two-dimensional ... smile from her bedroom wall.Well, I could always hold a belated “Thank you Bob Cowsill” Rite of Puberty for myself now, I suppose - after all, today is supposedly the day for it. As far as imprinting on someone during those years of roller-coaster emotional explosions go, I could have done a lot worse than Bob Cowsill, who had that “I drink milk!” wholesome image behind him – imagine where I’d be today if he’d been the spokesman for the “Underage Beer Guzzling” society.
Although, speaking of milk: I have to confess that I cannot tolerate the taste of real milk. (Sorry, Bob!) Not that I’m lactose intolerant or anything, I just didn’t like the taste. I haven’t had any since I was a child – I wasn’t even fond of it when I was a child ... it was just put in front of me and I was told to drink it – being an inexcusably obedient child at that age, I did. As soon as I wasn’t told to drink it anymore, I stopped. I can’t remember what I did drink in my post childhood years – fruit juices, and tea maybe, I always liked tea. OK, correct that: I was an obnoxious tea snob, I’m ashamed to say. We never had soft drinks in the house, so I didn’t drink that until my college years. I’ve always been a happy water-drinker too, so I probably drank a lot of tap water “on the rocks” in those years.
But then I kept seeing cartons of almond milk in the communal refrigerator at work. One day, being curious, I tasted it, and was pleasantly surprised – I actually liked the taste of it. Even so, it took me a while to buy some for myself – now, I drink it all the time. Well, not ALL the time, but frequently enough that I had to look it up so see what I was actually getting out of it. Supposedly, it has a lot of health benefits and few calories for the filling benefit.
In fact, I’ve taken to it so much I keep waiting for the downside: some horrible side-effect brought on my guzzling almond milk all the time. Anybody know of any?
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