Stretching into Summer

Southern Solstice Swells

Lately I’ve been popping out podcasts - you can hear them all of course on your favourite app (Apple, Spotify etc.), search for Ravings from the Lucid Fringe, or within this Substack where they’re all hosted: last week’s edition was the latest on masculine archetypes, Spell-speaker, Wand-wielder and before that came Gods on Earth. So amidst this aural fecundity, a little meditation on the time of year. Blessings for yours!

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Budding wild figs are appearing now alongside green granadillas, as late spring swells its way into early summer. The water temperature in the bay has warmed up, and also on the western Atlantic/Antarctic current side of the peninsula. December is here, school is out, and the summer Solstice approaches.

Each year, it seems, less people are just hurtling towards the secular unconsciousness of “X-mas” and the randomness of NYE: less people look blank at the mention of the word Solstice, more people are finding ways to step into being present to the original celebration at this time of year, to tap into the energy of the long days and short nights. On top of the 25^th and the 31^st it might seem one public event too many, but then part of the energy that gives birth to summer is undoubtedly one of overflowing abundance.

What is this Solstice energy exactly? Of course, it’s the ancient acknowledgement of our annual southern moment of glory, while most of humanity sits in the darkest northern night. Since that entire anno is measured by the lengths of days, it’s perhaps the original marker of this whole time thing. An energy of anticipation of good things, like the surfers flooding the beaches now to catch the waves, in such numbers that they look – from the traffic jams on the coastal road – like a kelp forest has sprung up overnight. Our sunrise-facing beach is getting crowded before 6am, as we dive into the rolling waves, ample time to relish the pulse before a full day. Indulgence feels right, but it’s an indulgence of berries, of mangoes, of litchis fresh from the trees. The stodginess of colonial turkey recipes seems long adrift. (The other benefit of making more of Solstice is avoiding those intense Xmas Eve shopping mall queues).

It’s very much a time when warmth dominates, and warmed-up muscles move into action. November cranked up, as usual, in a flurry of invoices and desires. Too much to do, too little time: and not a moment’s pause. The promise of endless enticements that Christmas brings is driven down here by the endless days: and such promises are part of the culture with dollar signs attached. “Endless summer” is adjacent to “endless youth.” Long, golden days with no need to worry about death.

I was a summer baby, in a different hemisphere. My first summer memories were infamous years of seventies British “drought” (probably rather mild), a bizarre thought on such a boggy island; grass turned yellow, like in Africa. Where grass is frequently yellow; the savannah fields around Jo’burg visible when my plane first touched down as a young man, full of vigour, like the season. Yellow grass contrasts with the abundance of lushness in Durban, where we wilted in the humidity.

Summers might not, actually, be endless, but they can be long and hot. (At least here in South Africa, whose unofficial national catchphrase is “It’s sunny today in SA”.) Exhaustingly so, in the end. Squabbles flare up quickly, like the starlings attacking the workmen in my garden today. Tempers fray, and things get burned. Sometimes rubber tyres in dangerous but deliberate toxic piles on roads. Twenty years ago I burned stuff in a controlled way in the summer garden here, before there was a house, announcing myself to the spirits of the ‘empty’ plot. Midsummer pyres were a natural part of ancestral traditions; the homeopathic action of heat against heat, like a summer sweat lodge, helping to bring crazy wild chaotic abundant summer back into its place in the cycle.

That, of course, is the real point of acknowledging the Solstice. Summer’s wild energy and endlessness can also feel a little off kilter at times; of the four maths operations, it’s definitely the multiplier. Summer for me also means bugs, mosquitoes and fruit flies swarming exponentially as the temperatures crest; yellow summer beetles thundering through the house, red-brown Christmas beetles dive-bombing into carpets and sinks; bees, with luck, or hornets and wasps, one of which once made me swell like a balloon. In the thrill of life on the fast track, there’s dangers too: this time of year when South African roads get more and more mal than usual. How do we step back and take stock in a season of excess?

What is it at this time that calls us to the beaches? Sure, we cool off in the waves, we find a freshness and a little peace there, semi-naked, next to our ancestral tidal home. And we get to soak up more light, ever more. Sol stands up there in the heavens, warming us, encouraging us; small doses, again. In my foolish twenties Sol let rip on my skin, red and sore for days after: we only escaped with makeshift shadecloth. It’s a powerful force indeed, and what actually is it? In Portugal in 1915 a crowd of perhaps a hundred thousand, including a science professor who wrote of what they all experienced, witnessed the sun spinning like a disc, “loosened from the firmament”, able to be gazed on by the naked eye; a disc of power from some other dimension, not just the 3-D blazing ball we make lovely computer images of. A little cosmic giggle. S/he encourages us, tempts us out of our comfy hidey-holes, but he/she has boundaries too. Don’t mess. Show respect. Loving parent stuff. Our tiny inability to resist solar power I also felt as an interloper sitting in an air-conditioned hotel lobby in the heart of the Namib desert, escaping the blistering heat of the campsite and its rock-hidden scorpions, where even the pool just offered a mirage of relief.

And the little fires we light crackle with our intentions; the Solstice mandalas we make, the driftwood blessing boats we set sail. Multiple rituals have been part of my solstice days in the two decades since it became a thing to do in my world. Catching the early first rays, that energy on the ocean, yoga where sun salutations crackle. Our family exchanging gifts, delighted to be a little rebellious in the face of Mariah Carey in the malls. Breathing into the day; music and of course high-energy dance, dramatic creativity (once involving most of our street); nature time and nature sculptures; all the good things and all the abundance that’s already around us. And the sunset, last warm energy before a night we know will be delightfully short and not too chilly.

What is special about summer intentions? They really are put there to catch the flame-heat-waves, to ride and be amplified by this fructifying moment. And there’s something else we sense in this moment. It feels to me that gratitude’s natural home is here in the summer; the world offers so many possibilities for this in this season. Gratitude is a radical act: away from the mall, seeing all the good things we’re given by life. Those swelling fruits have had a lot of forces generating their cycles of growth from seeds; all that springtime energy that’s enabled the fullness.

Southern summer Solstice smacks straight into that quiet moment of Christmas birth, which is the message of that moment if we strip back from the commercials; we can’t help but be aware these days of the inward energies up north, focusing on one little candlelight in the dark rather than the Christmas lights here, that are almost invisible and never on before most kids are asleep anyway. But it surely won’t stop our party; indeed there’s a sense that we right now are the engine that keeps the lamp fires burning for the world. The actual heat of the year, of course, for us is just beginning: Solstice is a pilot light allowing it to flicker into action; nobody wants long winter holidays but the big South African break kicked off in Muizenberg last weekend with the annual start-of-summer concert at our local park. Jeremy Loops, Hot Water, Warongx. Chasing the sun and then chasing the shade, and bobbing along with the crowds on that grassy hillside, near our beach in the long day, not bothered by the sandy south-easter, miraculously. A little winking moment of hanging out with the teens and the tweens and the former teens and even the millenials finding their silliness again, because summer makes everyone younger. Even the frantic summer angle-grinders and construction drills, taking advantage of the better weather, are put down as builders’ holidays begin. Community, celebrating, dancing, breathing, loosening together in a big fat jol. Community that is then driven to clean beaches and walk for safe streets and plant trees and bushes and care for the surroundings. Summer energy drives it all, for the next solar trip. Give thanks.