Winter Light…. Meandering Rivers…… From ‘Emergence’ Magazine….
by Bernie Bell - 10:22 on 08 January 2024
Winter Light….
We’ve just about given up on getting into Maes Howe again – for one thing it’s got very ‘regimented’ and limited, and for another - we live here and we’ve been inside Maes Howe many times. I’ve seen the light come down the passageway twice, Mike’s seen it once. We had the glory days, when access was more accessible…
https://theorkneynews.scot/2017/08/20/what-the-architecture-tells-us/
https://theorkneynews.scot/2017/12/22/the-light-in-the-mound/
For some in the distant past, visiting Orkney and Maes Howe might have been a once-in-a-lifetime experience/pilgrimage – might be that for some folk now too, so we wouldn’t feel comfortable taking up places on the tour when numbers are limited - and too right – they cram them in in Newgrange!
This year as the shortest day approached I had a yen to go to Maes Howe – even wondered if we’d be allowed to go and stand outside in the knowledge of what’s happening inside – decided we probably wouldn’t be allowed as HES might fear that a Stonehenge scenario might develop in which people clustered around outside the mound – though that might be something like what happened back in the day when the chosen few were allowed in and the populace stayed outside – still feeling that they were part of what was happening – feeling good knowing that they were there.
But …that was then and this is now and I doubt if HES would like it.
Mike then had a brain-wave – anywhere round the actual shortest day - as the light in the mound isn’t just on that one day – if there’s a ‘Maes Howe‘ day, we’ll go to Lochside Viewpoint…
https://theorkneynews.scot/2018/11/16/lochside-viewpoint-exactly-what-it-says-it-is/
…walk up and stand on top of the mound, look across to the Hoy Hills and…feel that we’re experiencing some kind of participation in the time that’s in it.
That mound hasn’t been excavated, so for all we know the sun might have shone into that place too. We’d be near enough – maybe it’s the thought that counts.
And today....the sun is shining!
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Meandering Rivers……
I hope I’m allowed to copy this…..
https://dancoecarto.com/4k-rivers
And I’m now singing this…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wIUQzVWHR0
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From ‘Emergence’ Magazine…. https://emergencemagazine.org/
translated by Shangyang Fang
“Aged moonlight, how many times
have you shone on me, beside the plum blossoms?”
To welcome 2024, these four poems from the Song Dynasty by 姜夔 Jiang Kui, 张镃 Zhang Zi, 李清照 Li Qingzhao, and 张孝祥 Zhang Xiaoxiang, translated by poet Shangyang Fang, illuminate the braiding of land with the interior self. Shangyang reaches into the ache of longing, the luster of love, and the echo of time as he enters each poet’s inner realm, made manifest in the surrounding landscape—in the song of evening crickets, the deep green of willows, the fragrance of plum blossom, the wash of moonlight. Closing the divide of duality, these poems dissolve the borders between Earth and spirit, delivering us into the primordial entwinement of the human and the living world.
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