It is near the end of the year for many neo-Pagans and followers of Celtic spiritualities. October 31st marks the beginning of the new year according to their calendars, based on extrapolations from archaeological and traditional evidence. For the Celts marked their days like the Jewish: sunset to sunset.

A Tear In the Air sounds like two things to me: a tear, as a teardrop falling from the sky, as the rains of winter; or a tearing of the air, a harsh scream slashing across the sky. Two very different images, and yet both speak to the grief of death, the growing cold and the slicing winds, and the dying of the light.

As it happens, my life this month is full of light and life. The sun is shining spectacularly (something I’m relishing in preparation for a Seattle winter!); I have several social outings planned and several new projects occurring at work; I’m even making plans for November. I haven’t really planned for anything beyond the next week for a long time now.

But I’m also hemming and hawing over whether to participate in NaNoWriMo this year. I’ve also effectively given up on my job search for the year, since I am returning to Texas in little more than a month for a month-long stay. I’m nursing a cold, and an increasingly worse sore throat, which makes me even more lethargic than usual.

I’m trying to tear the air like a firework: make people believe I’m happy in a busy life, that I’m trying to make friends and make a life up here. But really I am mostly just falling from the sky like a teardrop, and lazily plopping onto the nearest branch. Being of two natures is perhaps a relevant theme for October, as it is the month in which the veils between the worlds grow thin and two things can occupy the same place at the same time. But I feel this is slightly different from my usual “mystery” of being of two natures, for that “being of two natures” actually creates a third–that which is both and in between. This mystery I’m trying to reconcile right now is more like the mystery of Persephone, who leaves the underworld to be with her mother for three months of the year. Which is her true nature: the maiden, the daughter of her mother in the upperworld, or the Queen of the Underworld? She has to hide each nature in each case, wherever she is.

Am I still depressed, or am I feeling just out of sorts? Have I always really been just a lethargic, lazy creature who pretended to be “productive”? Or am I really full of fire just temporarily smoking?

Anyway. I’m kind of fuzzy thanks to Tylenol Cold, so I’ll stop there. The myth of Persephone is perhaps a potent one to explore this October, one to make me stretch beyond my Celtic cloister of stories. I’ll have to think about it.