February 2nd finds itself nestled precisely at the midpoint between the Winter Solstice, when Fall bid it’s adieu and the nights came before 5pm, and the Vernal Equinox, when Spring will break open it’s self, flowered and raining, officially for the year. This day boasts a full 10 hours, 13 minutes and 17 precious seconds of daylight, and they’ll only continue to get longer from here, straight through until our 9pms are burning brightly with the setting of Summer.

Celts of old, mine and likely your pagan ancestors, my grandmother’s direct forefathers, called the day Imbolc and worshiped their goddess of poetry, who’s name meant fiery arrow and she was called Brigid. Those ancient dancing druids would watch to see if snakes and badgers and other such undergroundlings would come out of their holes, and predict the end or extension of winter depending on the outcome.

Later the Christians, with their cloddy boots and disdain for all things traditionally wonderful, would transform the celebration into Candlemas, a lovely name indeed, and the saying purported…

If Candlemas Day is clear and bright,
winter will have another bite.
If Candlemas Day brings cloud and rain,
winter is gone and will not come again.

Eventually my grandfather’s people, the Pennsylvanian Germans, mixed the history of the celebrations together, switching a groundhog here for a badger there, trading the cloudcover of ol’ with a shadow of today. And so, regardless of bitter chills, temperatures sent from the countings of young children with only one hand, they go to Punxsutawny to watch dear Phil, that grandest of gerbilkin, to come up and gander for his shadow.

Alas, this year he failed to see it, and so, if their is any truth to those Celts, those Roman Christian soldiers, those German immigrants, then you in your north will be under snow for another six weeks. Fortunately, statistics — that great killer of wonderment and magick — have proven that Dearest Phil is wrong nearly 2/3rds of the time. So break out the shorts and switch the toboggan for the inner tube, Spring is, perhaps, on it’s way.

Then I look out the window and a young girl, bouncing short blond hair and she’s maybe 3 or 4 years old, goes running with all abandon, smiling like a daybreak and aimless in direction. How could anyone worry about death when there’s so much life all and everywhere around us.

One of the best things about celebrating your own little brand of the holidays is being able to set the date and make it your own little festival. We celebrated the coming of Spring on the Vernal Equinox, getting out and enjoying the day’s sunshine and walking around Squirrel Hill, where we took notice that the buds were already sprouting on the trees canopying above us and that the squirrel babies and returning songbirds were setting a changing pace on time. Relaxation and making our own time of the day came completely naturally, as there were no obligatory rituals that — though held at arbitrary times — carried punctuality checks at the door. The decision to watch a movie was as spontaneous as the one to stop in for a drink on the walk home, all motivated by desire rather than tradition.

On the other hand, today we traveled the 75 miles between our home in Pittsburgh to a restaurant in Johnstown to have a big Easter dinner with my parents and all of my mothers siblings. Between reserving a Zipcar and navigating highways and making the reservation time, all with the looming reality of a return drive ahead later that night, the entire day seemed nothing more than another work day. The holiday completely sapped from it all, the magic that might be inspired by candy and magical bunnies and the Resurrection all lost to stop lights and waiting in long buffet lines. Never mind the absurdity of the family’s decision this year to all get together in the restaurant of a Holiday Inn rather than congregate at one of the sister’s houses and small talk over home made meals.

Even if the difference isn’t associated with celebrating the changing seasons versus the more Christian side of Easter, perhaps it all comes down to an eventual movement of generations, where the younger one finally realizes that they have their own traditions to set, their own lives to establish and begin to pass on to their children, rather than returning to their parents ways again.

The bottled water was glistening particularly appealing as the barista, young and hipster, both in lifestyle choice and childbearing status, backed her actions with an all Modest Mouse mix CD as she took orders and delivered results. Everyone was happy, or at least not unhappy, likely due to the fact that none of us in the place seemed to have jobs to get to – they were all students or the retired, I am by all but the strictest definitions, unemployed. When it was my turn I seeped my desire for cold, cold water as accurately as I could through a still recovering panting and racing heart. Her smiling attractive pleasantries were a welcomed change from the disgruntled mumblings of my usual liquid coffee supplier and soon I was reading and writing and doing whatever it is I think is important for me to be doing, daily.

A giant map on the wall showed all of the countries of the world, there shapes at least and colored one of five hues. Canada is huge, I thought. Greenland is more North America than Old World. Why did they use red and pink?

An old man who is the very definition of what my mind pictures when someone mentions the words “high school basketball coach” comes through the door, a young boy, bleached, blonde, probably 3 years old and still talking like a baby, in tow. A hispanic boy, short and with short hair, dark skin and wearing oversized clothing – white shirt and black gym shorts with two white stripes, perhaps the official clothing of his particular culture – leans against the magazine rack which had just recently been refilled as he drinks at whatever beverage his paper to-go cup holds. The old man sees him, and erupts with nostalgic happiness. They talk for probably 30 minutes or more about the old gang and what Jimmy Gomez is up to or how it’s sad what happened to Mikey Ray, but at least his brother Tim seems to be doing really well. “He’s a doctor now, right?”

They speak as though they know the neighborhood like the back of my hand knows my snotty nose on a cold winter’s wait for the bus. Then I realize that they’re not speaking about Oakland or Pittsburgh at all, but Los Angeles. The old man was their coach, maybe baseball, maybe basketball, it’s never made clear, but they go on and on – the hispanic kid slowly makes his way to a table and I imagine he’d rather not be having this conversation, but he’s polite, extremely polite and seems like perhaps one of the nicest people I’ve ever evesdropped on. Discussions of foreign travels, the old neighborhood and what people are doing with their lives now continues. I start to stare at something else, they fade off, and the day goes on about as normally as any day. Coffee, cigarette, typing at speeds sometimes just teetering under 100wpm, more coffee, my legs start shaking a little, I need to piss but this place keeps the door locked and I don’t trust the denizens to not steal my laptop if I leave it here, but neither do I have any desire to carry it with me into the stall.

Later that day a friend would come over, the boy would get home, and the lady and I would take them both up to Mellon Park, a vast hill of grass and gardens and stone walls that almost form a loose labyrinth, complete with statues of toads, lions defying gravity or standing majestic, lording over their domains as nearly naked and shapely women are forced to remember their Grecian lives in an as eternally carved from stone a lifestyle as they can muster. Flowers grow, clouds barely speckle the blue sky, and we drink cola and coffee as unopened bottles of wine dot our picnic, empty orange peels fill the air with the memory of the citrus we’ve eaten and we share blackberries the size of ping pong balls, though blacker and more squished/elongated than ping pong balls are used to being seen.

In earlier times we might all be sled riding or if I were alone, smoking grass and writing despondent college poetry, but today a small herd of owners and their dogs are playing fetch and all trying to get laid. The boy is running laps through the maze of garden, grove and stone. The lady is photographing it all for later recollection and helicopters fly low to the ground all around the surrounding neighborhoods. It’s one of the first times I’ve been truly happy in weeks, or at least I think that multiple times. Storm clouds whisper in and spread heat lighting spiderlike and fingering my peripheral vision. The sky is still quite blue, though, but the leaves rustle and the air sheds its lazy afternoon attitude in favor of the unmistakable chill of a coming thunderstorm. It’s not even nearly night yet, even as the evening sets heavy and the dogs and owners all leave. We clean up our mess and make our way home. In the span of fifteen minutes it goes from broad daylight to pitch black and dropping buckets of rain, each drop enough to water a starving African child for days, and here most of Pittsburgh is just letting it wash away their charcoal or carry cigarette butt fleets down street gutters and into the underbelly that is the modern day sewage system. I can’t see the moon, but it’s up there.

A friend gives me a ride to another friend’s house, so that I can buy greener cigarettes than Camel can provide and he offers me a beer even though he mentions he’s getting sick and doesn’t want to split a smoke with me. After it’s lit, though, he changes his mind and we start to discuss up-and-coming parties where he claims women will be modeling lingerie as we sip double or triple or triple double IPAs and other beers that I’ve been learned to drink, though I still don’t find as refreshing as a solid, frigid Miller Lite used to be. While we sit there the new fall lineup on NBC says the same old crime scene, lawyers and orders and two other people stop over for a purpose similar to mine own. They’re foreign, which is always fun – if not for their personalities then at least for the difference in the sound of the uninteresting things they say – and they’re philosophy students so I feel they’re likely very excellent people. Thinking such thoughts makes me feel a little too Bill & Ted, but seeing as how I’m typically on an Excellent Adventure, I run with it. We spark a secondary smoke, and given the propensity of this brand of burns tendency toward paranoia, I find an excuse to exit back into the Autumn night.

A black sky looms above me, speckled with white and lighter-than-black blue. I realize that the blackest parts aren’t the sky, and the lighter areas aren’t the clouds, but the opposite way, which puts nearly the entire sky behind cloud cover. Then I see it, enormous and ringing with a golden glowing gorgeousness that only the Harvest Moon can hold onto. Whatever it is, atmosphere or trajectory or pollution, that makes the moon larger at times is doing its job well. A few clouds ride in front, flimsy and unable to completely encompass our Earth’s firstborn satellite, in exactly the way that every Autumn painting has ever portrayed, as though werewolves were likely off having an orgy and drinking thick wine and unafraid to let their hair down on a Wednesday night. I’m happy to be walking around, alone, on this night, under this sky, a Camel light by my side and I get the urge to listen to music, but the all encompassing paranoia still riding up my spine and spinning through my head, making my eyes heavy and my thoughts more interesting tells me it’s best to keep my wits about me, at least as much as possible. Hearing an attacker, if one was out there, coming at you with death or violence or worse is better than being blindsided unaware, I presume. The slow and low flying helicopters still circle the sky above, and I begin to realize that they’re likely on a mission to find a killer, this assumed attacker that I had until now been able to put out of my mind as something my imagination had been allowed to toy with was suddenly so much more real. I contemplate the consequences of taking the stone footpath through the garden that would save me maybe 45 seconds off of my journey, the weight of my likely inability to console with myself the choice were I attacked while in there measured against the sheer pleasure that walking through it would provide. The sight and scent of flowers somehow seems valuable enough to risk the pains of death, and before I know it I’m in and out of the garden, on the other side.

Between his neighborhood and my own, both affluent areas full of grad students and people who used to be grad students but who are now making loads of money being scientists or robotics engineers or brain surgeons, there is a small strip of street that is speckled with ghetto. Nothing dangerous, usually, but the potential is there. One woman asks me for some change, I decline. Another asks me for a cigarette, I oblige. I work for my money and shouldn’t have to share it unless I choose to, but I throw that money away on cigarettes and giving them to someone who shares the addiction seems a worthy enough cause. Soon enough I’ve traversed the entire strip and am now in my own neighborhood, only a few steps away from the shortcut that will take me down to the very street I live on. A young kid, probably college age, is walking toward me and wearing some of the largest headphones I’ve ever seen. I laugh at myself a little, this kid isn’t afraid to listen to music at night – but neither should he need to be. He’s short and stuffed with muscles, Hispanic and wearing the familiar white shirt. I think how strange it would be if it were the same kid from this morning, then I remember him mentioning he just moved to my neighborhood when he and his coach had been at it earlier. That makes me smile, I remember the kids good nature and I’m almost home. The paranoia will subside once I’m within the familiar safety of my own space.

But he’s walking toward me, he changes his path as I change my own, attempting to avoid a head on collision. He’s not smiling, so it doesn’t seem like one of those awkward dances where two people are both trying to politely get out of the way and end up just making the same choices. He picks up and speed and begins running, full force and right at me. With one hand he pulls his headphones off and then raises it in the air, balled into a fist and he’s yelling something. I stop and get into some type of stance, is it karate, is it defensive end, what’s happening? I dig my feet into the sidewalk and get ready for the impact of whatever is about to happen as he gets so close I can already feel my jaw sounding with the pain of cracking bone and bleeding knuckles. His hand goes higher into the air and just as he’s no more than four feet away from me I spin to the side to avoid him, and he jumps out into South Negley Avenue and directs his attention across the street, flagging down a friend.

I keep walking, headed home and laughing my ass off, on the inside at least. When I get home my son is asleep, the rain is picking up and my girlfriend mentions that she couldn’t find the moon. I show it to her, hidden behind a growing pile of cloud, and we stand in the rain and hang out like we were new and young lovers. Eventually the rain dies out long enough for us to make a fire out of old newspapers, cardboard and what wood we have around. The rain picks up, the fire keeps on, and we drink wine until midnight marks a new day.

Beginning tomorrow the days will begin to grow shorter again, all through the summer and fall and only lengthening themselves again with the passing of Yule. But it’s an interestingly gradual slope. Today was reported to be 15hours, 41minutes and 19seconds long. Tomorrow will be just two seconds shorter than today. The day after 11 seconds shorter than that, the following day 16seconds, 20seconds, and so on and so forth, until in July we start to lose a minute or more everyday; in September we start to lose as many as 3minutes 10seconds per day, when it starts to round itself out and after a few weeks of consistently hovering around that area we start to lose less time everyday, though the nights do continue to come earlier and earlier.

The whole thing makes me think of Earth as a giant yo-yo floating off of the sun’s up-and-downy fingers.

Twenty some candles, all handmade by our little family, burn between the walls, the foresty calming walls of the living room and the jump out of bed bright yellow of the kitchen, either room the same as the other really, and they flicker as the sun goes down.

Candlemas officially begins as the streetlights replace the glow coming into our windows formerly provided by the sun. Man can replicate the sun for many intents and even more purposes, but no one seems to think of it that way.

Buttershots and hot cocoa mix together nicely, swirling steam through the air to mix with hot tomato soup and some avo, tomato, bread concoction. Everyone is feeling good and the world, for our part, seems perfectly contented.

A car alarm is wailing into the alleys and sidewalked streets around the local Borders. I think to tell someone inside that perhaps they could put an announcement over the loudspeaker that a blue Forester’s alarm is sounding, but then I realize it’s actually an aqua Forester and the girl behind the main desk is wearing headphones stuffed into her intimidatingly bitchy-attractive head and so I keep going, assuming that the car will work itself out. A coffee order and my usual overtipping later I’m headed back outside. The alarm is still sounding. I think about how I really should tell someone to avoid the owner coming to a drained battery later that night but then I light a cigarette and notice various aspects of the world that take precedence.

A bike store is going in on the third floor of the building in front of me and I wonder what antics will be gotten up to while bikers share the elevator with granola moms coming out of the organic children’s clothing store. A pair of gloves are laying next to a car, nice gloves, leather, but covered in salt and snowy grime. I think about picking them up but what would I do with them? Lay them ontop of the car they’re next to, I guess, but what if they’re not that car’s owner’s winter wear? Then they’d be left with salt stains and the annoyance of touching someone else’s dirty gloves.

Sitting down for a cigarette and finishing my coffee, the warmth of a lucky middleWinter day reminds me to smile, and so I do, and people see me smiling. They either wonder why I’m smiling or just smile themselves, back at me or just to themselves, it doesn’t matter. The contagion spreads, or so I hope.

13 tangelos, 3 pounds of bananas, a bag of apples, a red pepper, some thick bread and a jar of “Old World Drinking Chocolate” later I’m on my way home. I stop to pick up some liquor. I buy another coffee, this time from Starbucks. I don’t necessarily have a problem with Starbucks. I drink it and smoke another cigarette.

As I pass the Borders, the car alarm is still going off. I give another half-thought to telling someone, but no one’s around except for two construction workers. Then I hear them talking about the alarm and they start walking towards the car as though there’s something that can be done. I don’t stick around for the results.

Day is a just a crack of a sliver today as Night comes early like a knock on the door you weren’t expecting, and holds fast around the stars. The Winter Queen is in full swing as she kicks off her official full on start today and promises months ahead of slippery soles and stinging fingers, winds whistling piercing off-tunes through our ears and long waits for busses on corners where arctic makes its daily drive by. She takes off her gloves and taps the clouds to drop snowflakes from the sky and plunge us straight into the sleeping season.

But even still, the baby Sun God is peek-a-booing with us, dodging in between clouds where it can and smiling wide for its new life. Everyday he gets stronger and stronger, until eventually he’ll beat the Night all together and we’ll be roasting marshmallows over open fires under the Summer sky.

But for now, even as we may be looking forward to another long and thick sit with the Winter Queen, Yule is upon us, beginning with Yule’s Eve. A time for reminiscing and remembering, both for the point of smiling at the good times we’ve had but also for rethinking the bad times and how we might avoid them in the coming next year. We made candles this year out of bees wax, one for each, and lit them together, placed them around eggnog and milky chocolate, and made our ways to bed to see if any jolly old men might wander their way down into the home to find it all.

Yule’s Eve is the past, and Yule is the present. A day for complete and total relaxation and enjoyment, a day to appreciate every moment of the day, particularly as it is so short, and cozy up with thick drinks and sweet treats into the night…

And tomorrow we’ll finish it all up with Yule After, the day to look into our new year and use the lessons from the one passing to try and lead us into the places we want to be…

A yule tree stands proud, basically a short palm with a few colored bulbs – one for each of us, decorated by some family member in seasons greetings’ past with our names on them – umbrellas the night’s presents, and promises for two more days worth of tearing, scissoring, ripping and opening, two more days worth ontop of this night’s smiling, surprising, playing, singing and storytelling. A father reads a poem, a mother recants a tale, a boy’s eyes light up. Blinking fairy lights and soft white overheads from the kitchen pour into the darkness and mingle to the tune of Wii games and gurgling creme liqueur bellies.

We all fall asleep in the spirit of Wintery warmth, under our blankets and in eachother’s thoughts. Cozy has never been such a good word.

And what a day for the Moon Baby to come a-crawling, slow, steady, up over the trees and through their leaves and between cloud and stinging through the air where even the stars don’t come to meet with man. December 5th is also Sinterklaasen, the day the mythical sleigh-beller comes ringing, though not in his Coca Cola truck or some flighty reindeer drawn aeroship, but simply as a man, holding a curved stick and coming to collect a short list of what young boys or girls might want for their Yule Tide treasures.

The child and his father, having done their laundry, eaten their dinner, and walked the Winter-bound streets of waning MiddleYear, made their motions home, the moon seemingly leading their way. The younger of the two boys placed his shoes by the fireplace, dropped a single golden walnut into the left and the short list of wishes slipped in behind it, they lit a candle and made tucked-in for their nightly exhaustion…