Spring Equinox
Writing about terrariums last month, I wrote, as I seem invariably to in early February, about Candlemas. This holiday is one of the eight spokes of the wheel of the year, known as a yule, that was how many ancient believers conceived of the passage of time. Each spoke on the yule is a culmination; an arrival in time that acknowledges what led to it even while leading to the next. Each culmination is an arrival, but it is also a departure. The constant is the journey; the spinning of the wheel.
These holy days, known as sabbats, mark either the high point of the four seasons or the transition between the four. It soon becomes evident to a student of holiday lore how pervasively our current celebrations are rooted in these ancient ones. Almost everything tracks back. Such common holiday symbols as the Christmas tree, the jack o' lantern, the Easter egg, even the groundhog’s burrow all resonate with ancient meaning. It’s not just symbols but practices – the same applies to an autumn visit to the cider mill, a winter sleigh ride, summer canning, spring cleaning. As I’ve written before and expect to repeat, this is the core of urban home blog: the sacred details of daily living as experienced seasonally and by locale. We have only to tap into the ingrained impulse that led our ancient ancestors to commit the courageous, profound act of creating a home to understand how living within the seasons is the very core of homekeeping. The elements themselves drove us indoors, and both within our shelter and as we ventured from it, of necessity we attuned at our most fundamental level to the changing of the seasons. And we turned the attunement and the practice of it into something beautiful.
In a contemporary world dictated by pace, we often label ancient memories as folklore and then we relegate them to the realm of the quaint. As a lifestyle writer, I both encounter this all the time and counterit every way I can. Currently, the prevailing practice in this discipline is to deliver content that focuses on managing busy lives. “On the go” content delivers to the premise that the contemporary household is a scene of barely contained chaos. I respect this approach but I also leave it to its own experts. As befits a homekeeper and a writer whose fundamental influence was a Depression era Oklahoma farm woman, I’ve never found time to be an obstacle in managing a home. In fact, I would say it’s just the opposite; that time is both the context and the cushion in which we are keeping a home. I would always rather slow down to savor than pause to taste. To me, appreciating the quality of life is inseparable from the very acts we commit in making a home: tasting the food we prepare, inhabiting the rooms we design and clean, nurturing the gardens we plant, honoring the meaning of the holidays we celebrate.
Here we return to the wheel, because it is not just a wheel that spins us through time but wheels that take us, along with wings, through time and across distance. It is the spring equinox as I write this, which places John and I at the midway point of a journey we have undertaken for the first half of this year, as we experiment with living bicoastally. Usually at this time of year, I am writing about early breezes filtering through my writer’s window, but today my writer’s window overlooks not a hollyhock bush in Astoria but palm trees in Los Angeles. The breeze rolls in from the Pacific to bracket golden days with cool evenings. I sit on the balcony with my laptop, wearing a tank top, my hair streaked blond, my skin layered with sunblock. My view is of stucco rooftops punctuated by spikes of hotel neon, the turquoise mirrors of swimming pools, the neverending snake of traffic on Hollywood Boulevard. A chattering unkindness of ravens that lives steps away in Runyon Canyon dispatches ambassadors to perch on the balcony railing. They appraise me with all-seeing black eyes, imparting messages with a bob of black head and a display of wingspan. They visit every morning, and scold with a clatter of wings and a cacophony of calls should they not find me waiting on the balcony.
Because of their placement midway between the solstices, we equate the equinoxes with symmetry and equilibrium, fulfillment and expectation. Once you’re here, it’s hard not to equate these qualities with California living. The California aesthetic is built upon sea coast and sunshine and informed by missions, wine country, the movie colony, the Barbary Coast. We have decorated our California urban home in oceanic tones of lagoon, navy and teal, with accents of the foamy white of breakers and the sparkling beige of beach sand. Turquoise art glass and pillows silkscreened with images of shore birds – hungry seagulls, regal herons, whimsical storks – gently complement mission furniture constructed from California oak. Framed movie posters line the walls. The wine rack in front of the fireplace is filled with bottles of California chardonnay and pinot noir. A vintage dish of blue sea glass holds the keys to the car.
Summertime seems far on this day when spring officially begins. By the summer solstice, we will have to make a decision whether to continue living bicoastally or to choose one city over the other. I have no idea what will happen. Not too long from now, wings and wheels will deliver me, safely I pray, back to New York City, where the pleasures of that city and the urban home we have built over twenty years of living there will unfold as spring rains progress to summer heat. We keep up with the pace of contemporary life, but the fundamental cycle of the seasons is constant. Each spoke on the wheel is an arrival and a departure. The wheel ever has spun, ever is spinning, ever shall spin. We shall always find ourselves at a point on that journey.
These holy days, known as sabbats, mark either the high point of the four seasons or the transition between the four. It soon becomes evident to a student of holiday lore how pervasively our current celebrations are rooted in these ancient ones. Almost everything tracks back. Such common holiday symbols as the Christmas tree, the jack o' lantern, the Easter egg, even the groundhog’s burrow all resonate with ancient meaning. It’s not just symbols but practices – the same applies to an autumn visit to the cider mill, a winter sleigh ride, summer canning, spring cleaning. As I’ve written before and expect to repeat, this is the core of urban home blog: the sacred details of daily living as experienced seasonally and by locale. We have only to tap into the ingrained impulse that led our ancient ancestors to commit the courageous, profound act of creating a home to understand how living within the seasons is the very core of homekeeping. The elements themselves drove us indoors, and both within our shelter and as we ventured from it, of necessity we attuned at our most fundamental level to the changing of the seasons. And we turned the attunement and the practice of it into something beautiful.
In a contemporary world dictated by pace, we often label ancient memories as folklore and then we relegate them to the realm of the quaint. As a lifestyle writer, I both encounter this all the time and counterit every way I can. Currently, the prevailing practice in this discipline is to deliver content that focuses on managing busy lives. “On the go” content delivers to the premise that the contemporary household is a scene of barely contained chaos. I respect this approach but I also leave it to its own experts. As befits a homekeeper and a writer whose fundamental influence was a Depression era Oklahoma farm woman, I’ve never found time to be an obstacle in managing a home. In fact, I would say it’s just the opposite; that time is both the context and the cushion in which we are keeping a home. I would always rather slow down to savor than pause to taste. To me, appreciating the quality of life is inseparable from the very acts we commit in making a home: tasting the food we prepare, inhabiting the rooms we design and clean, nurturing the gardens we plant, honoring the meaning of the holidays we celebrate.
Here we return to the wheel, because it is not just a wheel that spins us through time but wheels that take us, along with wings, through time and across distance. It is the spring equinox as I write this, which places John and I at the midway point of a journey we have undertaken for the first half of this year, as we experiment with living bicoastally. Usually at this time of year, I am writing about early breezes filtering through my writer’s window, but today my writer’s window overlooks not a hollyhock bush in Astoria but palm trees in Los Angeles. The breeze rolls in from the Pacific to bracket golden days with cool evenings. I sit on the balcony with my laptop, wearing a tank top, my hair streaked blond, my skin layered with sunblock. My view is of stucco rooftops punctuated by spikes of hotel neon, the turquoise mirrors of swimming pools, the neverending snake of traffic on Hollywood Boulevard. A chattering unkindness of ravens that lives steps away in Runyon Canyon dispatches ambassadors to perch on the balcony railing. They appraise me with all-seeing black eyes, imparting messages with a bob of black head and a display of wingspan. They visit every morning, and scold with a clatter of wings and a cacophony of calls should they not find me waiting on the balcony.
Because of their placement midway between the solstices, we equate the equinoxes with symmetry and equilibrium, fulfillment and expectation. Once you’re here, it’s hard not to equate these qualities with California living. The California aesthetic is built upon sea coast and sunshine and informed by missions, wine country, the movie colony, the Barbary Coast. We have decorated our California urban home in oceanic tones of lagoon, navy and teal, with accents of the foamy white of breakers and the sparkling beige of beach sand. Turquoise art glass and pillows silkscreened with images of shore birds – hungry seagulls, regal herons, whimsical storks – gently complement mission furniture constructed from California oak. Framed movie posters line the walls. The wine rack in front of the fireplace is filled with bottles of California chardonnay and pinot noir. A vintage dish of blue sea glass holds the keys to the car.
Summertime seems far on this day when spring officially begins. By the summer solstice, we will have to make a decision whether to continue living bicoastally or to choose one city over the other. I have no idea what will happen. Not too long from now, wings and wheels will deliver me, safely I pray, back to New York City, where the pleasures of that city and the urban home we have built over twenty years of living there will unfold as spring rains progress to summer heat. We keep up with the pace of contemporary life, but the fundamental cycle of the seasons is constant. Each spoke on the wheel is an arrival and a departure. The wheel ever has spun, ever is spinning, ever shall spin. We shall always find ourselves at a point on that journey.
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