It’s cold now. Cold means big sweaters and heavy blankets, which mean safety. I bought new slippers, in honor of the changing of the clocks. They mean, I know these look like they belong to an 80-year-old woman, but they’re comfy as heck. Cold means tea, and tea means a burnt tongue, which doesn’t have any enriching value besides reminding me of winters past.
It’s earlier now. Early means I wake before I need to, and fall asleep before I’m supposed to. At least it used to be that way. It isn’t anymore, because sleep and I are on a break. But it does mean that as I lay in bed staring ahead, I see the raindrops (on roses and whiskers on kittens) caught on my window, and the smell of it seeps through the walls. Do the raindrops look like tear drops as they cling to my face?
It’s darker now. Darkness means comfort and calm, and more hours of it should mean less time spent in a frenzy. Because frenzy leads to anxiety and anxiety leads to pain, so really I’m sitting here praying to the darkness: take away my pain.
I latch on to the hope that comes with change. It was fall. Now it’s winter. This was change. May the change bring with it all the good I wish for during my waking hours of staring at raindrops.
Yours truly,
Ella
It’s cozier now, and cozier leads to winter playlists. I put together a playlist for this season (yay!), called ‘Changing Clocks’, that you can find on Spotify (click the link or type ‘Changing Clocks’ into the search bar, it’s the top result, and then you can follow it to see when I add new songs).
Song Quote:
If the rain keeps falling and you can’t see the tears in my eyes, they say the night is daunting but we all need somewhere to hide. –It Could Be Better, Lewis Watson
P.s. Comment below if you caught the Friends reference in here!
Sick and Sick of It 
[…] this point I refer you back to “An Ode to the Changing of the Clocks”, because it is once again how I feel and I’ve been pining to feel this way for […]
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Very nice. I hope you get some good night sleep sometime and that the dreams are interesting.
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Yes, changing clock either way messes up your sleep cycles. I am not sure I really see much benefits of it.
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I like your ode, but I don’t think we should be changing clocks one way or another. This was started during WW II, and that ended long ago. Nature’s clock is fine with me!
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I don’t believe in coincidence. Tonight I came back from a “break” on WP, and wrote a post. Then someone commented. Then I remembered that you had liked one of my very first posts, close to a month ago, so I came over to check out your latest. This all happened after I came home from a concert, played in a small high school auditorium, by about 30 people average aged 65, (my guess) who play in a community “Big Band”. They played the “raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens” song. I don’t have words of wisdom, or even comfort, just wanted you to know that I think we are all in this thing together, and we are all connected in some weird and wonderful way, even if it is through a sweet old song, and I wish warmth, and wellness.
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That was very beautiful, although also painful to read at times. I hope you find the winter comfort and warmth you’re looking for.
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Ah, it is *totally* that time of year. Well said. :)
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M’lady Ella,
In humanity, Woman represents nature; and the perfect image of God is not Man alone, but Man and Woman. Hence their invincible, charming, fateful attraction; hence the intoxication of love, into which the dream of infinite creation plays, as well as the vague feeling that the Eternal Masculine and the Eternal Feminine enjoy a perfect union in the Heart of God. “Honor, therefore, be to Woman, on earth and in Heaven,” said Pythagoras, in harmony with all the ancient initiates. She makes us understand that great Woman, nature. Let her be Her sanctified image and help us to return by degrees to the great Soul of the World who gives birth, preserves and renews, — to the divine Cybele who bears the people of souls in her cloak of light!
Antiquity understood a major truth which the succeeding ages have all too greatly misunderstood. In order to fulfill her functions of wife and mother, woman needs instruction, a special initiation. Hence purely feminine initiation, that is, one entirely reserved for women, existed in India in Vedic times, and the woman was the priestess at the domestic altar. In Egypt this initiation dates back to the Mysteries of Isis. Orpheus organized it in Greece. Until the extermination of paganism it flourished in the Dionysian Mysteries as well as in the temples of Juno, Diana, Minerva and Ceres. It consisted in symbolic rites, ceremonies, nocturnal festivals and in special teaching given by the older priestesses or by the high priest, and dealt with the most intimate things of conjugal life. Advice and rules concerning the relationship between the sexes as well as information on times of the year and of each month favorable to successful conception were given. The greatest importance was placed upon physical and moral hygiene of the woman during pregnancy so that the sacred work, the creation of the child, might be accomplished according to divine laws. In brief, the science of conjugal life and the art of maternity were taught. The latter extended far beyond the birth of the child.
Until seven years of age, the children remained in the gyneceum, which the husband did not enter, under the exclusive care of the mother. The wisdom of antiquity considered the child to be a delicate plant which needs the arm of maternal environment in order not to become stunted. It was believed that the father would deform the child. Therefore in order to cause it to unfold properly the kisses and caresses of the mother were considered necessary. The powerful, enveloping love of woman is needed to defend the soul, frightened by the attacks of external life. Because in full consciousness she fulfilled these lofty functions considered divine by antiquity, woman was really the priestess of the family, the guardian of the sacred fire of life, the Vesta of the hearth. Feminine initiation therefore can be considered the true cause of the beauty of the race, of the power of generation, the continuance of families in ancient Greece and Rome.
By establishing a section for women in his institute, Pythagoras only refined and intensified what had existed before him. Through him, along with the rites and precepts, the woman initiates received the supreme principles of their function. Thus he gave to those who were worthy the consciousness of their role. He revealed to them the transfiguration of love in perfect marriage, in other words, the interpenetration of two souls at the very center of life and truth. In his power, man is the representative of principle and of creative mind. Woman personifies nature in its plastic force, in its marvelous earthly and divine achievements. Therefore, when these two beings succeed in entering into one another completely, into body, soul and spirit, they will form by themselves a miniature of the universe.
But in order to believe in God, woman needs to see Him living in man. For this reason, man must be initiated. Man alone, through his profound knowledge of life and his creative will, can fertilize the feminine soul, thus transforming it through the divine ideal. And the beloved woman transmits this ideal to him, multiplied in her vibrant thoughts, in her subtle sensations, in her profound insights. She transmits to him his image, transfigured by enthusiasm, because she becomes his ideal. For she brings this about through the power of love in her own soul. Through her his ideal becomes alive and visible; it becomes flesh and blood. Man creates through desire and will; woman physically and spiritually generates through love.
In her role as lover, wife, mother, or inspired one, woman is no less great, and is even more divine than man. For to love is to forget. Woman, forgetting herself, lost in her love, is always sublime. In this forgetfulness she finds her celestial rebirth, her crown of life, the immortal radiation of her being.
Love has reigned as master in literature for two centuries. This is not the purely sensual love which lights up at the beauty of the body, as with the ancient poets; neither is it the tasteless cult of an abstract, conventional ideal, as in the Middle Ages. No, this is love both sensual and psychic which, released in full freedom and in complete individual fantasy, gives itself unbounded expression.
Frequently the two sexes make war on one another, even in love. This takes the form of a revolt of woman against the egotism and brutality of man, the disdain of man for woman’s infidelity. Vanity, expressing itself in cries of flesh, and powerless rage of the victims of pleasure, makes them slaves of debauchery. Here, profound passions and attractions become all the more powerful when they are bettered by the worldly conventions of social institutions. Hence those loves, filled with tempest, moral collapse and tragic catastrophe, around which the modern novel and drama revolve almost exclusively.
Weary, finding God neither in science nor in religion, man seeks Him desperately in woman. And he does well, but it is only through the initiation into the great truths that he will find God in her, and she will find God in him. Between these souls who know neither each other nor themselves, who sometimes leave one another with curses, there is a deep thirst to penetrate one another and to find in this fusion impossible happiness. In spite of the aberrations and outbursts which result, this desperate search is necessary; it comes from a divine unconsciousness. It will be a vital point in the rebuilding of the future. For when man and woman have found each other through deep love and initiation, their union will be a radiating and creative power par excellence.
Psychic love, the love-passion of the soul, has entered literature comparatively recently, and through it, universal consciousness. But it has its origin in ancient initiation. If Greek literature scarcely lets the existence of psychic love be suspected, this is due to the fact that it was a profound secret of the Mysteries. Nevertheless, religious and philosophical tradition has preserved the trace of the initiate woman. Behind official poetry and philosophy a few female forms appear, half-veiled but luminous. We already know the Pythoness Theoclea who inspired Pythagoras; later will come the priestess Corinne, the often successful rival of Pindar, himself the most initiated of the Greek lyricists; finally, the mysterious Diotime appears in Plato’s Banquet to give the supreme revelation of love.
Beside these exceptional roles, the Greek woman exercised her function as a veritable priestess in the home and in the gyneceum. Those heroes, artists and poets whose songs, works in marble and sublime deeds we admire, were rightly her own creation. It was she who conceived them in the mystery of love, who molded them in her womb with the desire for beauty, who caused them to unfold by nestling them under her maternal wings. In addition, for a man and a woman who are truly initiated, the creation of the child has an infinitely more beautiful meaning, a greater import than otherwise. When father and mother know that the soul of the child exists before its earthly birth, conception becomes a sacred act, the call of a soul to incarnation. Between the incarnated soul and the mother is almost always a great degree of similarity. As evil, perverse women attract demonic spirits, tender mothers attract divine spirits. – By Pythagoras
All the best. With love, Neil.
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This time of year really make my Fibro worse but I too like the darkness earlier, fluffy slippers and I love to wear my flannel pjs.
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Beautifully written by you but somehow I missed the Friends reference.
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Rachel and Ross have a very famous “break”, the main line being “we were on a break!”. Now look again :)
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You know the show better than I do. I remember when they were on a break but I can’t see the reference. I live that you did it though. I often do the same type of thing on my blog. Sadly though I failed your test.
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Sleep and I are on a break :)
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