Morning Open Thread: Burning the Clocks

This author, who is on Pacific Coast Time, may sometimes show up later than when the post is published. That is a feature, not a bug. Other than that, site rulz rule.

So grab your cuppa, and join in!

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I was surfing the internet yesterday afternoon, looking for inspiration for this morning’s post, when I came across videos of an event in the English seaside town of Brighton & Hove, which has been held annually since 1995: Burning the Clocks. This Winter Solstice celebration is the brainchild of Same Sky, a charitable arts organization, financed by crowdfunding and the support of local businesses.

To participate, first you have to create your “clock,” using paper and willow to make a lantern – there are free lantern-making workshops for the disadvantaged, and advice for the craft-challenged. The clocks come in lots of sizes and shapes. 

Then all the clock-makers join in a parade of lit lanterns through the town to the bonfire on Brighton beach, and their clocks go to the flames, a symbol of the year that is ending, and a new beginning.

A fresh take on the ancient tradition of defying the longest night of the year with bonfires and torchlight processions.

I was also reminded of Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem, “Burning the Old Year.”

Burning the Old Year

. . .

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.

Notes friends tied to the doorknob,  

transparent scarlet paper,

sizzle like moth wings,

marry the air.

. . .

So much of any year is flammable,  

lists of vegetables, partial poems.  

Orange swirling flame of days,  

so little is a stone.

. . .

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,  

an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.  

I begin again with the smallest numbers.

. . .

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,  

only the things I didn’t do  

crackle after the blazing dies.

. . .

“Burning the Old Year” from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems–© 1995 by Naomi Shihab Nye

G’Morning MOTlies!