lantern

halloween

whilst for me it was a celebration of samhain, moreso this year than any other....caught up in the words and images of yeats' "all souls night" but changing the glass of muscatel for a beer and waiting for a too recent, too important ghost to turn up for a drink and a rousing scream of "get it right up ye!" night of small madnesses and dance....and learning that there are certain people for whom death truly holds no dominion....as the welsh put it in the mabinogion, death is but the midpoint of a long life...

and learning more about friendships and the bonds which keep us sane, or insane, and more yeats echoing through my head...if you are judged by anyone then allow yourself to be judged only by the friends that you've made...as i look back across the chaos of years this seems more and more apt and while this road of a travel year...as others in the past have been...have been supported by the most amazing group of people who, when they read this may understand that while i have rarely felt a place to be home, not since the council cleansing of leith in the ancient days of the last century, the friendships which have allowed and protected me are the base from which i have been able to follow my own ragged paths; have offered knowledges and understandings which have sustained me and offered each receding shoreline a place of sanctuary and my daily gratitude. and upon this day, this festival of the dead, those upon both sides of the dividing silence continue in the joyous companionship of the heart, in that delightful belief that even in those places the map tells us, here be dragons, the road is never barren...and i look forward to the sounds of voices, the surrealism of words which await in whichever future lies across the coming days. freundschaft...

an outrageously open journal entry...