For everyone who’s worrying about font, I’m tweaking the template in preparation for moving to another host. Things will be looking different now and again, and changing possibly frequently. Courage, loyal readers!

I’ve been thinking about it for the past couple of days, and The Two Towers is growing on me. Listening to the magnificent soundtrack helps a lot. Shore has scored some wonderfully evocative themes for the new races and environments we see in the film. It’s sinking in slowly.

In thinking about the film, I’ve temporarily concluded that it felt too fast somehow, with not very much accomplished. Don’t get me wrong – it was a good film… but I just don’t yet know how to explain my vague feelings properly. Did it have less of a direction? In the book, there is plot – in the first half they have to convince both Rohan and Gondor that they’re not going to get out alive, and in the second there’s that whole Gollum-hobbit relationship and its evolution. There were what seemed like those plots in the film, but they felt – flat? I felt the terror and drive to save the world in the first installment, but the second film, where we should feel more desperate, I felt numb. Now, maybe I was feeling what the protagonists were feeling – rushed about by the end of the world rapidly approaching, driven by the Bad Guys determined to destroy the race of Men (in which case, woo-hoo, point made!) – but I’m not certain. I know we’re following several protagonist P.O.V. as well as a couple of antagonist P.O.V., but I wasn’t drawn into their personal anguish and drive to accomplish their various tasks. Drat. Well, I’m looking forward to seeing it again in order to further pin things down, and to experience the finer points which I might have missed.

And I’d like to take this opportunity to say that Gollum’s Song is just plain creepy. Coming from someone who likes the use of minor keys, that’s something. I know it’s the deliberate use of accidentals that creates the effect, but brrr!

The Solstice came and went without my educational post on Yule, so, a day or so late, here it is!

Yule is also known as the Winter Solstice, Midwinter, and Christmas. It usually falls between December 20-23.

Ever since Midsummer, the longest day of the year, the nights have been growing longer, until finally in December the sun sets mid-afternoon here in North America. What sun we do see is watery and cold. To the ancient Celts, whose worldview has inspired much of modern Paganism, it must have seemed on Midwinter Night, the longest night of the year, as if the sun would never rise again. When it did rise the next dawn, the rejoicing and festivities began in welcome, for from this moment onwards the sun would gain in strength and light. The sun is traditionally perceived as the symbol of the sacrificed God, reborn of the Goddess once again to light the land.

Modern Pagans enact similar traditions. On Midwinter Night, at sunset, candles are lit in a sympathetic act to encourage the sun to return to the cold and darkened land. An all-night vigil follows until the first light of dawn, when the candles are extinguished and the celebrating begins!

Apart from feasting, a common part of the festivities includes the Yule log. Traditionally, this is a piece of wood that will burn for twelve nights, a small piece of which is reserved to burn with the next year’s log to provide a sense of continuity. In modern times we do not often have access to a fireplace, and so an excellent alternative is a grouping of candles encircled by an evergreen wreath, or a small log with holes bored into it to serve as a candleholder, decorated with seasonal colours. A candle-end is saved to light the candles of the Yule log the following December.

For centuries people have sought some evidence of life during the barren season of winter, and have brought boughs of evergreen into their homes. For Pagan folk, these evergreen trees symbolise the ever-living Goddess, present even during cold unwelcoming days of hardship. The modern tradition of raising and decorating a tree indoors echoes this belief, as well as recalling the trans-cultural myth of the World Tree or the Tree of Life, which serves as the axis upon which the world turns.

Central concepts: Rebirth; family and celebration; generosity and charity to those who suffer; new beginnings; life in death.

Oooh.

Kind of hard to think about having fun when you’re battling sudden nausea, though.

No, no, no… I refuse to be sick now. I’m so close! I’ll be sick in January, honest, just please, not now, not three days before Christmas, with two parties to go to today…

I am wearing octarine nail polish.

Octarine, for those unacquainted with Terry Pratchett�s Discworld series of novels, is the colour of magic. It�s kind of a greenish shade of purple, and this particular example has touches of metallic silver, and every once in a while a flash of a pale brown. A bunny-like co-worker had received a bottle as a fun gift, and she shared it with me last night on break.

So, my nails are the colour of magic. How cool is that?

The coolness is matched only by Ceri�s Yule gift: a pair of Harry Potter non-slip socks in blue and gold, the Ravenclaw house colours. Toe socks, even. My first pair. Very awkward, and takes some getting used to. But fun.

Life should be this magical all the time. It is, I know, but I think what I mean has more to do with the playful aspect of magical. I need to work on the play part of �plays well with others�. I work well, I interact well, but the play part, however� I think the last couple of years have really fused the play setting in my brain, rendering it an unrecognisable lump of unmoving mechanism.

Project 2003: Learning how to have fun again.

December 20, 2002
Sunrise: 7:31 morn
Sunset: 4:13 eve

Hours of daylight: 8 h 41 min

It�s the day before the Winter Solstice. This means that it�s the shortest day of the year.

In a few minutes, the sun will officially set, and the longest night of the year will begin.

I have had an absolutely horrible December. This past couple of years has been bad, but this month in particular seems to out-bad them all. The phrase, �it�s darkest just before dawn� is something that I always associate with the night before the Winter Solstice, and this year in particular, I�m clinging to the idea that the longest night will give way to the sunrise, and as the days get longer and the sun gains strength once more, my life will turn around, and things will get better.

As 4:13 PM hits, I�ll turn off all the lights in the house, and light the candles in my Yule log on the mantelpiece, and by that light I will think about darkness, and what it means to me. When I go to bed tonight, I�ll transfer those flames to my wind lantern, which will burn on my altar all night. Tomorrow, before dawn, I will carry that lantern to a hill in the dark, and I will watch the sun rise over Montreal. I will greet it with quiet joy, and love, and the knowledge that darkness will always be balanced by light, in a never-ending cycle of give and take.

December 21, 2002
Sunrise: 7:31 morn
Sunset: 4:14 eve

Hours of daylight: 8h 43 min

Let the Wheel turn once again; let hope be reborn with the Sun.

Why is it that just when you think you’re okay, shaky but okay, things go wrong again?