Half a year ago, in the glowing warmth of August, I wrote the previous entry of this blog, titled The Spiral of Time. I remember that moment with unusual clarity. It was the high light of summer — a light so expansive and intense, that it felt like a radiant, immersive whirlwind of inspiration.
For most of that season I had been writing outdoors, often by the water, held in the wide, fragrant embrace of northern summer.
From my journal at the time:
Now I rejoice — here I am, in my true cosmic address.
At the center of many cycles of time, at the still point, resting within the heart of a multilayered, luminous vortex.
Mid-August arrives in the North with a particular fullness. The earth grows heavy with ripening. The air is still warm, yet already edged with another kind of clarity. The light has turned golden, honeyed, as though time itself is thickening into sweetness.
I feel the same ripening in my writing. Months of work begin to bear fruit. Pages gather. Thoughts settle into shape. The spiral of days has granted me a joyful literary summer — one in which research and practice, thought and enchantment move freely together, woven into flowing currents of liquid threads.
And yet, even in this abundance of light, I feel the year beginning to turn.
The lake water cools, slowly. During moments of wild swimming the skin recognises the first sign of autumn — a chill that does not yet bite, but awakens.
Morning mist drifts across the water in thin veils. In the air there is already the darker scent of forest: rain, moss, and fecund earth, from which the hidden nation of mushrooms begins to rise.
Soon the Autumn Equinox will arrive. With it we cross into the darker half of the year.
It is time to descend, together with the living world, into another movement of the Spiral of Times — one that whispers: slow down. Cool the fever of motion. Allow rest. Come into the depths.
The summer Spiral of Times carried everything upward.
The potter’s wheel spun quickly beneath the hands. Form rose swiftly, as though the sun itself had set the motion turning.
Into the clay of words mixed the shimmer of water, the rustling of reeds, the hum of bees, and the fierce brightness of summer light. Thoughts lifted easily, carried by the currents warmed by the sun. Flocks of words rose, buoyant and quick, from the spinning center.
Everything seemed to unfold within one bright vortex — like a cloud of fire.
But when the Autumn Equinox arrived and the light began to fade, the spiral turned.
It no longer rose toward the sky. Instead it began to open downward, drawing toward depth — like the dark whirl of a cooling current.
The direction of growth changed.
From height toward depth.
Yet the wheel did not stop.
*
Winter came — first almost unnoticed, then as a vast white landscape.
Writing moved indoors, into quieter rooms. The turning of the spiral slowed. The wheel’s movement grew steadier, deeper.
My hands remained in the clay, but the gesture changed. No longer the swift ascent of summer, but a listening kind of shaping.
Other substances entered the clay of time: whispers of dreams, the milk of the bear-mother, the ancestral strength of roots. Deep time began to speak — like the low resonance of bedrock rising from within the earth, lifting crystals of granite toward the surface.
Outside the window, starry snow fell in silent constellations. Frosted birches stood luminous in their winter serenity.
Winter offered its beauty, as a gift of stillness, required for precise attention.
*
When the wheel turns slowly, one begins to see.
Every curve becomes visible. The pressure of the fingers reveals the path the form is taking.
The movement no longer seeks height, but precision.
It reveals what is essential — and what is not.
Throughout the winter, I watched the same movement unfold in my writing. What had risen quickly in the sunlit whirl of summer was given time to settle into its true form – quietly, with gravity.
Thoughts condensed. Texts clarified.
It was as if summer’s fire and winter’s ice had worked together.
Summer softened the clay.
Winter crystallised the form.
*
There are days when the works simply rest.
Three sisters whisper among themselves. Perhaps this material belongs here – or there? Will you take this — or that?
I do not intervene. Each work of the trilogy already carries its own will.
Now the text, clarified and crystallised, begins to call for images. For some time they have circled around the work, hovering, waiting, asking to enter.
They seem to say: we too wish to join the dance of matter.
But so far, they have been told: not yet.
Not quite yet…
*
Now, in the middle of March, another threshold approaches.
The Spring Equinox is near.
The days lengthen with astonishing speed. The first territorial songs of birds ring through the trees. Light begins to call the landscape back into growth, waking buds from their winter sleep.
The deep work of winter is still present. And yet, the light pouring through the window knows: it is time to rise.
The snow still carries beneath the feet, but day by day it loosens, fraying into delicate edges, as spring moves, singing, beneath the frozen crust.
The long journey of winter is nearing its end.
For me, the Spring Equinox is the turning latitude of the Spiral of Times.
Beyond it, the light begins its ascent once more — toward wings, toward sky, toward the sun.
And I pause, feeling a deep gratitude for the crystalline fruits of winter’s work.
The cycles continue to turn.
The farewells of ice and snow
melt gently, as waters of life
back into the fresh clay of life.