the stars are not enough

robert pütz - building a rainbow

Each year, on the same date, the summer solstice comes. Consummate light: we plan for it, the day we tell ourselves that time is very long indeed, nearly infinite. And in our reading and writing, preference is given to the celebratory, the ecstatic. There is in these rituals something apart from wonder: there is also a kind of preening, as though human genius has participated in these arrangements and we found the results satisfying. What follows the light is what precedes it: the moment of balance, of dark equivalence. But tonight we sit in the garden in our canvas chairs so late into the evening - why should we look either forward or backwards? Why should we be forced to remember: it is in our blood, this knowledge. Shortness of the days; darkness, coldness of winter. It is in our blood and bones; it is in our history. It takes a genius to forget these things.

*

Eye of Horus neck tattoo on the mummified remains of an Egyptian woman who lived 3,000 years ago, found in Deir el-Medina, the village of tomb builders