Ides of Winter

It's hard to believe that we're already at the Ides of Winter, half-way between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox.  What convinces me about the change in season is the extra light we're getting in the evenings now that the sun is setting later.  

The sky has been mostly cloudy.  I haven't been able to see the Green Comet, C2022 E3(ZFT) at all.  We did have a few nights clear enough to see Polaris and the Big Dipper, but not dark enough to for the comet to show up.  I tried to take photos in the evening and morning, pointing my camera in the general direction of the sky, but it simply can't be made to take an exposure that's long enough to capture something fainter than a magnitude 5 object.  I did get some photos of Venus and Saturn close to each other, along with the Moon.  About a week later, I managed to get some photos of the conjunction of the Moon and Mars near Aldebaran. 

I've finished attending a Zoom seminar on the ancient Egyptian Books of What Is In the Netherworld.  What I've gotten out of it so far is that ancient Egyptians (which is a loose term considering the source material spans from about 2550 BCE to about 1060 BCE)  really liked their dichotomies (order / chaos, night / day,  living / dead,  manifest / unmanifest), and they use a manifold number of images and symbols to represent setting up a neutral area, timeless and spaceless, wherein the dichotomies are united and cosmic processes rejuvenated.   The ouroboros is one such image, as is an egg.  There's also significance attached to spitting and swallowing in the Netherworld, similar to myths like the one of Ceridwen swallowing Gwion and giving birth to Taliesin later–only with snakes and the sun.

On the writing front, I finally finished the short story, ran it by a reading group, and am editing it.  The ending needs work, as it's really not tying up some loose ends in the way that it should; it couldn't hurt to tighten up the story generally, and I've done that to some extent.  

On the dreams front, I've been having them, but I haven't been writing them down. One or two have been sexy; the majority have been more like soundtracks or me thinking through what-if scenarios.  There was one the other night that involved a cobra near my calves and had an ancient Egypt feel to it, but that's as mythic/magical as they've been.  Otherwise, it been things like Mark and I were going to buy the old rental I lived in when I was at Reed and which was nicknamed "The Motel Six."