January, 2000 Monthly Feature : Each month I have been putting together some of my favourites to share with you. Archives
A Time for Dreaming
The pale sun hangs low and weak in the sky during the brief daylight hours. By four-thirty in the afternoon thick watercolor smears of magenta and violet are spreading gradually across the sky. By five p.m. the last remaining streaks of light pour behind the western skyline and the wintry darkness descends once again. As the snow floats down to the rock-hard earth, first a flake at a time, then finally in soft white curtains, an entirely new silence falls. Many times during the night I wake to listen, listen, but there is no sound at all. The silence is as thick and soft as wool. Is it dawn? I cannot tell. And so I drift back into my dreams.
Winter here is more than a physical climate, it is also a psychic climate. Sublimely beautiful and serenely silent, the embrace of winter draws us into daydreams and deep comforting sleep during endless winter evenings. Watching shadows dance on the ceiling while sipping a cup of warm Bourbon tea, the warmth from a fire burning low in the hearth sends our thoughts drifting far away. It is for many of us a time and season for inner reflection as we end the present year and prepare to enter the next year and chapter of our lives.
The piece of music I chose for this month is a delightful miniature dance, "Pavane of the Sleeping Beauty". It is from the ballet Ma Mère l'Oye, based on the Mother Goose folk stories. The piece opens to a folklike tune on the flute, with a counter melody played on the horn and violas. This is followed by a second flute theme, with cellos and basses providing the simplest of accompaniment. A clarinet and muted violins take up as the sleeping girl glides through her dreamworld, before a tolling bell on the harp brings the movement, and her sleep to a close.
Like Sleeping Beauty, it seems to us in January that the very earth is asleep, but within the silence Life is stirring. Now past the winter solstice, the seeds of spring have already begun to gather their energies for the great rebirth to come. As these seeds prepare for spring, so too do we - feeding on the dreams and wishes of long winter nights. The fruition of mid-winter dreams will come with the kiss of the Spring, the Prince. And, like Sleeping Beauty, we will open our eyes to a new and brilliant world.
Sweet dreaming.
K.M.G.
|
O soft embalmer of the still midnight, Shutting, with careful fingers and benign, Our gloom-pleas'd eyes, embower'd from the light, Enshaded in forgetfulness divine: O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close In midst of this thine hymn my willing eyes, Or wait the "Amen," ere thy poppy throws Around my bed its lulling charities. Then save me, or the passed day will shine Upon my pillow, breeding many woes,-- Save me from curious Conscience, that still lords Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole; Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards, And seal the hushed Casket of my Soul. |
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