Time to Light the Fire
Through Smoke and Flame
This land we Claim
And in the ‘morrow
Begin again.
Today marks the festival of Bealtaine. One of four main holidays in the Celtic calendar, this was the festival of flame. The dawn of the light half of the year, Bealtaine was an ending and a beginning. It served as a point of metamorphosis, a chance for things to start anew.
Usually, I wouldn’t put much stock in the holiday. I never celebrated Bealtaine, except as a concept, and with a Christian upbringing, well, May Day was more likely. But in my research and what would generously be called my obsession with the Celtic mythos, I have found myself finding solace in the comfort it brings.
This last year has been hard for everyone. From the moment everything closed down, life shifted. For me, I had just grabbed a new job, the first step in my life as a professional writer, and the pandemic made things complicated. I could work from home, and I did, but it seemed all that more difficult to get the words out. I found myself falling into ruts, struggling day in day out to simply write anything, let alone the things I wanted to. And to be brutally honest, throughout the pandemic, that just kept getting worse.
Where before my writing had been a retreat, an escape, it became another prison. Every word I typed felt like a weight on my back, pushing me farther and farther from what I wanted to create. I had a book ready to edit, short stories ready to publish, poetry dying to be seen, and I just couldn’t bring myself to do anything about it. And every day I didn’t, made me feel worse.
This constant pressure haunted me, making it difficult to enjoy the better things, and even harder to want to do anything at all. My mental health degraded, old issues cropped up and shattered me and I just felt lost. I wanted inspiration to strike me, needed an outside intervention of some kind. But of course, nothing worked. Much like the majority of my friends and family in these hard times I was left grasping. The fire of my writing had blown out and I was desperately scrambling for a way to relight the embers.
I kept searching for months, trying to find something, anything to fix me. Until about a week ago I had nothing, then I remembered Bealtaine.
I set myself a deadline. Today would be the day I said enough, and as you’re reading this, well, I have at least started. From today I am beginning a blog, to be posted here, possibly weekly, maybe more often. With this blog I am sharing my Patreon, where I will be posting poetry, prose, and Songs (well lyrics at least), I might even share bits of my Work in Progress. The idea is to use Bealtaine as my starting point, to take the flame from the bonfire and use it to warm the embers of my own hearth. I have no idea if this will work, but it’s something.
Please, join me on this journey. Become a Patron if you can, it’s just a little every month and it’ll help me to keep this going. For those who can’t, well I’ll see you here. Whatever the case may be, I look forward to sitting by the fire and sharing stories again. I hope you find the time to sit for a spell.
In Ashen Fields
‘Neath broken Shields
And watch the sprout
Grow new
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