The next New Moon is Tuesday, December 12. Hoping I can find someplace dark, so I can view as many stars as possible.. 🌟
I originally made this mix *tape* in 1996, then recycled on CD in 2015, now taking on a new life as a Spotify playlist in 2023. I assure you that, although the mood starts out bleak, it actually was made very thoughtfully and deliberately, following an arc of melancholy to hope to redemption. Had to substitute a few songs that weren't available from the original playlist 30 years ago, but it retains the intent. I'm going to curl up on the couch and test-drive it now. Hope you enjoy and, if you listen, let me know what you think...💔💖
BOOK: A Million Little Stars: A Kids’ Book about Loss, Love, and Healing by Amanda Loraine Lynch, Candice Davis (Editor), Bonnie Lemaire (Illustrator)
POEM: Advent by Heather Christle
POEM: Advent by Heather Christle
It's hopeless, the stars, the books
about stars, they can't help themselves
and how could you not love them for it
here in the new week with animals
burying food and everything outlined
in cold and even friends, it's hopeless,
this mess, this season, all that
is lost and tickets and strangers,
what can I say, only sitting here
on this dark bench waiting for what
I don't know, I want this world
to remain with me, this holy tumult,
which does not know it loves me
and you, friends, spectacular driveways,
an orange, the vanishing year.
Sincerely, the Sky by David Hernandez
Yes, I see you down there
looking up into my vastness.
What are you hoping
to find on my vacant face,
there within the margins
of telephone wires?
You should know I am only
bright blue now because of physics:
molecules break and scatter
my light from the sun
more than any other color.
You know my variations—
azure at noon, navy by midnight.
How often I find you
then on your patio, pajamaed
and distressed, head thrown
back so your eyes can pick apart
not the darker version of myself
but the carousel of stars.
To you I am merely background.
You barely hear my voice.
Remember I am most vibrant
when air breaks my light.
Do something with your brokenness.
The Silence of the Stars by David Wagoner
QUOTE: “Everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives is but a mote suspended in a sunbeam... a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark.” ~ Carl Sagan
When Laurens van der Post one night
In the Kalihari Desert told the Bushmen
He couldn't hear the stars
Singing, they didn't believe him. They looked at him,
Half-smiling. They examined his face
To see whether he was joking
Or deceiving them. Then two of those small men
Who plant nothing, who have almost
Nothing to hunt, who live
On almost nothing, and with no one
But themselves, led him away
From the crackling thorn-scrub fire
And stood with him under the night sky
And listened. One of them whispered,
Do you not hear them now?
And van der Post listened, not wanting
To disbelieve, but had to answer,
No. They walked him slowly
Like a sick man to the small dim
Circle of firelight and told him
They were terribly sorry,
And he felt even sorrier
For himself and blamed his ancestors
For their strange loss of hearing,
Which was his loss now. On some clear nights
When nearby houses have turned off their televisions,
When the traffic dwindles, when through streets
Are between sirens and the jets overhead
Are between crossings, when the wind
Is hanging fire in the fir trees,
And the long-eared owl in the neighboring grove
Between calls is regarding his own darkness,
I look at the stars again as I first did
To school myself in the names of constellations
And remember my first sense of their terrible distance,
I can still hear what I thought
At the edge of silence were the inside jokes
Of my heartbeat, my arterial traffic,
The C above high C of my inner ear, myself
Tunelessly humming, but now I know what they are:
My fair share of the music of the spheres
And clusters of ripening stars,
Of the songs from the throats of the old gods
Still tending even tone-deaf creatures
Through their exiles in the desert.
QUOTE: “Everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives is but a mote suspended in a sunbeam... a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark.” ~ Carl Sagan
“When he shall die, take him and cut him out in little stars, and he will make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night and pay no worship to the garish sun.” ~ William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
"The Moon. Pause here. You are deep in the heart of the darkest nights. The world is hushed. The trees are dwelling in their roots, and the earth's small creatures have gone to ground. Turn inward and listen to the stories of your deepest self, allowing The Moon to illuminate your hidden spaces." ~ Wild Wisdom calendar, December, The Moon
