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Does gathering half-ripe nuts mean anything? Other than: "Autumn's coming"?
(This was part of a dream about Samhuinn. The festival was being celebrated by two tribes, the White Tribe, in wedding dresses, cricket whites, colonial suits, panama hats and white furs, and the Black Tribe, all top hats and tails and biker leathers and ninja costumes and black polo necks and bohemian berets. I knew them all but wasn't involved.
I watched them gather on opposite sides of the street to "walk through" the ritual, which wasn't (isn't) for months. Part of me was wondering which side to join. I knew the light-hearted, decadent, delightful White people better, but was very intrigued by the tightly knit community of clever, darkly humourous Black people (who were going to be responsible for bring winter in). The two tribes were very good friends with each other.
I wandered off into one of the numerous graveyards (people were holding tea-parties in them in typical English idealised summer garb, with delicate blue and white porcelain tea-sets, straw hats, Alice bands and stripey stockings, eating scones and jam tarts. There was a slow river running through one of the graveyards, and a widely-smiling, well-tanned Black man (one of the big important ones with a wide-brimmed black preacher's hat) was punting a whole load of ghostly, transparent people along it under the willow trees, their skeletons visible through their misty flesh, all laughing and playing dice games with their own knuckle bones) and noticed that one of the dead walnut trees had come back to life and its fruit was ripening, long before it was the season for such things. I picked off the nuts in their shells, pondering each of them, supposing that roasting them might ripen a few of them even more.
They tasted strange and bitter, but I could tell they weren't poisonous. They were essentially ready. I'd have to put some effort in to getting dinner out of them, but not much.
The summer revellers leaned over the walls of the graveyards to wave "yoo-hoo!"s to the Black and White tribes, who were busily discussing, in a big, straggling group conversation, the likely effectiveness of the ritual they had just practiced...
It was all very low key and autumnal.) |
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