Here we are, extending into shooting stars

We were escorting Demeter home as the light faded, when I happened to glance over my left shoulder. 

Fighting free of the trees, I saw a peach-coloured moon, not quite ripe. It won't be full until Sunday, when it will be a Sturgeon Moon as well as a Blue Moon -- not because of being the second full moon of the month (it isn't), but because it's the third of four full moons within one season. The last one will be the Harvest Moon, which will rise just before the equinox brings the summer to a close. 

We saw Demeter safely into her apartment, then hurried home to see if younger daughter wished to join us on the roof for another look. 

We took the elevator to the fifth floor, and stepped out. 

The moon was largely hidden behind some treetops, and had shed much of its peachy glow. However, shining in scarlet between the trees, I saw Mars rising in the east, and the Resident Fan Boy spotted Venus, in her guise as the Evening Star, brilliant on the western horizon. 

I glanced up, and directly above was the first actual star of the night. I made a wish. 

I don't know how I missed this song in 2012. It was probably because I was otherwise occupied. Spotify has brought it to my attention. I rather love it.

Often I stop with his words on my mind

On All Saints' Day, the trees are raining leaves like heaven raining souls.

I'm striding up Cook Street, wearing my packsack, so my hands are free, and the leaves are swooping in my direction.  I catch two, and make wishes for my daughters.

When I did this in Ottawa, there were also wishes for myself, but they mostly involved returning to Victoria, and here I am, so I make carefully generic wishes for my girls.  Best not to get too specific with wishes made for others.

I've been watching films about Oscar Wilde lately, and both featured a quote from Lady Windermere's Fan (1892, Act Three):  "In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it."

This morning, I feel a brief November chill in my heart, but only time will tell.

Speaking of leaves and souls:

Fèy o, sove lavi mwen Nan mizè mwen ye wo
Fèy o, sove lavi mwen Nan mizè mwen ye wo
Pitit mwen malad Mwen kouri kay gangan, Simido
Pitit mwen malad Mwen kouri kay gangan
Si w bon gangan, sove lavi mwen
Nan mizè mwen ye wo Oh!

Willie works as the garden man;
He plants trees, he burns leaves,
He makes money for himself.
Often I stop with his words on my mind.
Do spacemen pass dead souls on their way to the moon?

(The lyrics of "Feuilles-oh" are in a Haitian Creole, and translate something like this:
Leaves, heal me from my pain Oh!
My child is sick I’m rushing to the voodoo priest’s, Simido
If he is a good healer, he will heal my pain)

Dressed in morning

Every October I feel the pull to go to graveyards and catch wishes.

It's not as ghoulish as it sounds.

I read in a children's book some years ago that if you catch a falling leaf before it hits the ground; you can make a wish on it.

Leaf-catching is a rather strange thing to be caught doing, particularly if one is a grown woman.

Not having a car, I can walk to Beechwood Cemetery in about twenty minutes. This year, I was determined to go early in the morning, as nearly all of my past expeditions have been in the afternoon or at sunset. I set out on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving Monday, taking advantage of the fact that younger daughter has had a lift to school these mornings.

Beechwood Cemetery was not altogether deserted, even before 9 am. The groundskeepers were roaring about in their lawn mowers, vans, and earth movers. An occasional coffee-clutcher made his or her way en route to school or work. Down near the chapel, people were parking their SUVs. A long-limbed lady in black picked her way through the markers.

However, most of the time, I was on my own, snapping pictures, trying to capture the barely-used morning light. Every now and then, I would glimpse a golden shower not far away and plant myself beneath it. You really have to spot a leaf while it's still very high in the air and swoop with it. That morning, I caught seven. That's a record for one autumn, let alone one morning! I made seven wishes, three of them for younger daughter. (Judging from the events of the past week, the wishes are either coming true in a way I don't yet understand, or were poorly phrased.)

As I made my way back, I saw a man engraving a headstone, apparently sand-blasting through a plastic stencil. Wearing a hood rather like an old-fashioned hairdryer completely over his head, he crouched like Gollum on the edge of Middle Earth, surrounded by tombstones in the shape of open books, all blank, all waiting for sad stories in the drifting cloud of mist and dust.

In "havenly" peace

I've always seen Christmas as a dark but brightly lit harbour, and the old year as a stately ship (or at least a ferry boat), slowly drawing in to the quay. This past week, I've felt the engines change, and despite the Christmas flurry around us, a drifting sensation as we close on the safety of land, if only for a brief time before we get shoved back out to sea in January.

Christmas in Hades has much of the same comforting familiarity as anywhere else, I suppose, providing you do, in fact, take comfort in Christmas. Last Sunday, we were enveloped in the warmth and laughter of the annual Vinyl Café Christmas concert. I looked down from our loge upon a theatre jam-packed with pullover-wearing university types of all ages, and once again felt myself swept away by the performance of Matt Andersen who sang "People Get Ready" and "Silent Night" (and I'm not even that enamoured of "Silent Night"). John Sheard played "The Rocking Carol" and "O Little Town of Bethlehem" (the English version) and I was assailed by memories of Sunday School at the Unitarian Church of Edmonton. Actually, we sang another song to the tune of the latter:
The children of far-distant lands
With joyful song we greet
Hold out to us your friendly hands
Our circle to complete.
Around the world, so very wide,
Our circle it shall be
Goodwill and friendship need no tide
Nor ships to cross the sea.

As the week has passed, I saw the same sort of things you probably see as you have walked out these last days before Christmas: a family with one young blond girl in flowered snow boots carrying the potted poinsettia; two women sitting in a cafeteria, talking intently with the gift bags they've exchanged resting by their feet; a large blond dog trotting in and out of the traffic jam on Beechwood Avenue.

Wait -- you don't usually see that last item? Yes, I thought it was odd, too. I was on my way to the post office when I saw the dog and heard the frantic woman in pursuit: "Puppy! Here, puppy!" He gave her a "You talkin' to me?" look and continued to wend his way between the cars, some of which were impatiently trying to move. She followed, increasingly frantic: "Puppy! Puppy!"

Hmmn, I thought. She doesn't know his name. He trotted up the opposite sidewalk, very quickly, without actually running (he was very large), and the woman called ahead to a man waiting at the walk signal. I saw him duck, but the dog reappeared, now smack in the middle of the intersection of St Patrick and the Vanier Parkway which has a record of being one of the five most dangerous intersections in Ottawa. Another man appeared, clutching a red leash, and after some heart-stopping circling the dog managed to get to the traffic island on the far side, next to the Saint Patrick bridge, then loped toward the cycling path that follows the Rideau River, where he could theoretically proceed relatively unimpeded along the edge of Vanier, clear to Riverside. There was a car parked near the traffic light, bearing a sign reading "Pet Care Cab". I had the sinking feeling that this dog was being kenneled for the holiday and had escaped his caregivers. Yikes. It's one thing to lose your own dog, but someone else's dog...

May you never lose your dog. Or someone else's dog. May young children bring you love offerings and may you share a meal with an old friend. Most of all, may you find yourself in the warm and comforting dark of this holiday harbour, in the company of those who love you.

Merry Christmas.

Catch a falling star leaf

Are all superstitions delusions or proof of impossibly magical thinking? I think superstitions can be useful metaphors. Take lucky pennies (and I do, at every opportunity). I found five last weekend, and I saw them because I was not rushing, I happened to look down, and I was willing to stoop to scoop them up. The Resident Fan Boy is fond of saying that luck is preparation plus opportunity. A lucky penny illustrates that nicely. If I'm with someone, I hand it to them, saying: Find a penny, give it away; have good luck for the rest of the day. That's not magical thinking; that's a reminder.

So every autumn, I try to catch falling leaves. It's actually devilishly difficult. If the wind is high, they whoosh above my head. If the wind is low, there are few leaves that appear to drift lazily down, but dip and slip off in a random directions even as I reach. Others fall in scores just where I'm not standing. See, I read in a book in the school library that every leaf caught while falling is good for a wish. I aim for six leaves each year, three leaves per the two most desperate desires from my own personal Mirror of Erised. (Check Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets if you don't catch that reference. That J.K. Rowling knows some dark truths about the human psyche.)

Thus, every tree becomes a tree of dreams: fiery ones, crimson and scarlet ones


and golden ones.

And what prevents me from catching leaves? Sometimes someone is approaching me and I feel too self-conscious, sometimes I simply don't have the speed or agility, sometimes I don't want to trespass or get run over, sometimes my arms are full, and sometimes a child is holding my hand. See? It is a metaphor...

This morning, I made the time to catch leaves, but I always seemed to be standing in the wrong place. As I made my way down the hill, a gust blew a shower of them across the street, and I swept my arms towards my chest, looked down and two golden maple leafs were clutched to my left collarbone. I kissed each and made my wishes, tucking them in my breast pocket. A few minutes later, an ash leaf sailed by and I simply reached out and snatched it from the air. This brings my total to four because last week when I was taking most of these pictures (in fact, it was while I was taking this very picture), a leaf swooped down and landed on my left shoulder. I tell you, my friends, in all my years of leaf-catching and wish-snatching, that has never happened before. Nor is likely to happen again.

Oh, and as for my Mirror of Erised wishes? They may be on their way, but no signs yet. And if I tell you what they are, everyone knows they'll never come true. (No, nothing to do with David Tennant...)