Winter Solstice

Today is the first day of the Winter Solstice (pinyin: dōngzhì) solar term:

冬至 

 

The first character is the one for winter, one of two times the name of the season appears in the name of a solar term (all seasons follow the same pattern: first a "Start of season" term, and later a term named for the astronomical event, solstice or equinox). I may have written this before: the second character conveys the idea of a destination point, the end of a journey. For example, it appears on underground trains, following the name of the end station, meaning "train goes to [end station]". It is a good description of the winter solstice - the end point, or the deepest point, of winter.



Big Snow

It is the second day of the Big Snow (pinyin: dàxuě) solar term.

大雪

No snow yet, although we did have a just a bit of mixed rain and snow late in the previous term, Small Snow. The weather has been cold, and what little snow settled on grass and bushes then has not melted yet, about one week later.

Small Snow

In the Chinese calendar, today is the first day of the Small Snow (pinyin: xiǎoxuě) solar term:

小雪

We are having some very cold (for the Northwest) days, but no snow. In fact, the weather is sunny and crisp. There is some frost in the mornings but no fog. 

Gettysburg Address

Today, November 19th, is the anniversary of Lincoln's delivery of the Gettysburg Address - 150 years to the day. The speech is famous for its conciseness. On that day in 1863, it followed another speech, now totally forgotten, that lasted for two hours.

Day of Saint Martin

Today, November 11th, is the day of St. Martin (of Tours, to be precise).

The day lends its name to the "estate di San Martino", which is the Italian name for Indian Summer.

It is also marked in Sweden as Mårtengås. Gås is a goose, and Mårten is, of course, the Swedish form of Martin. The association with the goose is specific to Nordic countries and is not rooted in the legend of the saint. Instead, I guess it stems from the fact that this is a good time to slaughter domestic geese (the wild ones have left the Nordic countries a couple of months ago). Geese eat grass, and accumulate fat in late summer. By now, green grass begins to be in short supply, because there has been frost for several weeks already, so there is no hope to fatten the geese any further.

Traditionally, a dish made of goose blood is served in Sweden on this day (I suppose that the reason is that blood does not keep very well, so it was probably consumed first; the meat can be kept longer, especially in cold weather; and geese are large enough to justify preserving the meat, as in the goose sausages and salted legs that are traditional in several places).

Start of Winter Solar Term

Last Thursday, November 8th, was the first day of the Start of Winter (pinyin: lìdōng) solar term:

立冬

As usual, this is the start of the season from a weather point of view; the winter solstice is marked by another solar term later in the year.

Descent of Frost

Today is the first day of the Descent of Frost (pinyin: shuāngjiàng ) solar term.

霜降

Again, the solar term seems to be in good agreement with the weather conditions in North China. Newspapers have reported that temperature is expected to drop below freezing in the Harbin region (formerly known as Manchuria), and the central heating systems for the city has been turned on, resulting in very heavy smog over the city. The reports indicate that thick fog was already hanging over the area.

It has been the same here for about ten days now. Last year we had a very pleasant Indian Summer well into October; this year, we have had little rain, but at best only afternoon sun, and on many days the fog has not burnt off at all.

Lawns get soaked in dew and never dry up, not even on the sunny afternoon, as I found out last Friday, when I did the last lawn trimming of the year, in preparation for winter - as the trimmer shook the grass, a cloud of pulverized water floated off. All very appropriate, since that was the Cold Dew solar term (which did not get its own entry in this blog, but hopefully next year - this is the good thing about circular time: nothing lasts, but nothing is lost forever).

It is also the time of the year when this family of mushrooms pushes up on the front lawn - they have been there every year:

 

I love them, because they remind me of the Dugtrio Pokémon.

 

Grain In Ear Solar Term

Today, June 6th, is the first day of the Grain In Ear (in Mandarin, mángzhòng) solar term.

芒种

 

The Chinese name literally seems to mean something different. The first character refers to the awns or aristas of grain plants, those stiff whiskers that grow from the seed heads of plants like wheat; the second means something similar to cultivation. of course, "awn" could stand for the full ear.

In general, though, the seems to refer to the time when the ears of wheat are developing and maturing. It is change that happens rapidly at this time of the year, and, seen from a distance, in the space of a week or two really changes the texture of a wheat field. The color of the plant changes too. Wheat is a saturated green earlier in the spring, but during June it turns first a paler green, then yellow.

June was my favorite month when I was a kid. It is a beautiful time of clear days, with low humidity and warm, but not hot, temperatures. Strawberries used to ripen at this time (now they come from other climes, and are available year round). The small, aromatic wild strawberries used to ripen first, followed by the larger domesticated species. Nowadays, it is unusual to eat a truly fragrant strawberry. This is one of the things I regret most.

Start of Summer and Grain Full

I have been very busy at work all of May, and I have missed not one but two solar terms.

Start of Summer (pinyin lìxià), which is unconnected to summer solstice, began on May 6th.

立夏

 

 

The first character is a pictogram of a person standing up, and carries the general meaning of getting up, hence "getting up to do something", begin.

 

 

Grain Full (pinyin  xiǎomǎn) started on May 21st. 

 

小满

 

Although "grain full" is the usual translation, the literal meaning is more like "small full", which is a bit puzzling. Grain is not mentioned at all.

Memorial Day

Today, being Memorial Day, a US holiday devoted to the commemoration of those who died in war, seems like an appropriate time to post Milan Kundera's words on the topic of the eternal return, which are also a commentaries on the horrors of war and history in general. Here they are, from the opening chapter of L'insoutenable légèreté de l'être:


Le mythe de l'éternel retour affirme, par la négation, que la vie qui disparaît une fois pour toutes, qui ne revient pas, est semblable a une ombre, est sans poids, est morte d'avance, et fut-elle atroce, belle, splendide, cette atrocité, cette beauté, cette splendeur ne signifient rien. Il ne faut pas en tenir compte, pas plus que d'une guerre entre deux royaumes africains du XIVe siècle, qui n'a rien changé à la face du monde, bien que trois cent mille Noirs y aient trouvé la mort dans d'indescriptibles supplices.

Cela changera-t-il quelque chose à la guerre entre deux royaumes africains du XIVe siècle si elle se répète un nombre incalculable de fois dans l'éternel retour?

Oui: elle deviendra un bloc qui se dresse et perdure, et sa stupidité sera sans rémission.

Si la Révolution française devait éternellement se répéter, l’historiographie française serait moins fière de Robespierre. ….

Disons donc que l’idée de l’éternel retour désigne une perspective où les choses ne nous semblent pas telle que nous les connaissons : elles nous apparaissent sans la circonstance atténuante de leur fugacité. Cette circonstance atténuante nous empêche en effet de prononcer un quelconque verdict. Peut-on condamner ce qui est éphémère ?

… la profonde perversion morale inhérente à un monde fondé essentiellement sur l’inexistence du retour, car dans ce monde-là tout est d’avance pardonné et tout y est donc cyniquement permis.

My translation:

The myth of the eternal return states, in the negative, that life that disappears once and for all, that does not come back, is like a shadow, weightless, dead before its time; be it atrocious, beautiful, splendid, this atrocity, beauty, splendor do not mean anything. You do not need to take it into account any more than a war between two African kingdoms in the 14th century that did not change anything in the world, although three hundred thousand Black died among indescribable sufferings.

Would it change something if the war between the two African kingdoms of the 14th century repeated itself an incalculable number of times in the eternal return?

Yes: it would become a block that stands and lasts, and its stupidity would be inexcusable.

If the French revolution was to repeat itself in eternity, French historiography would be less proud of Robespierre. ....

Let us therefore say that the idea of the eternal return describes a view in which things do not appear such as we know them: they appear without the attenuating circumstance of their fugacity. This attenuating circumstance prevents us from returning any verdict. Can we condemn something that is ephemeral?

... the deep moral perversion inherent to a world essentially based on the absence of return, because in that world everything is excused beforehand, therefore everything is cynically allowed.

Grain Rain

I missed one! The Grain Rain solar term started on April 20th!

谷雨

 

It has proven to be very appropriately named. We have had protracted, soaking rain: substantial, but not excessively hard. It is the time of the year when grain in the field has a growth spurt. We have had a few warm, sunny days in between, and they help grain (and lawn grass) grow, too. Overall, not a bad time to be a grass, or a wild rabbit. A cottontail is a regular visitor to my yard. And juncos always move about in pairs now, and just can't keep silent. The ones we see here are the Oregon variety; apparently this species has a lot of variability over its range. The binomial is Junco hyemalis, or the winter junco, but they are present year-round here. Linnaeus was aware of the species, and placed it in the finch genus, which indeed it resembles.

 



Pure and Bright

Today, April 5th, is the first day of the Pure and Bright (in Mandarin, qīngmíng) solar term.

清明

 

Pure and Bright might describe the weather as spring takes hold; or at least, what we hope for at this time of the year. It is also the name of one of the most important festivals of the Chinese year, sometimes called in English Tomb Sweeping Day, because that is what people traditionally do on this occasion. This is also a big day for burning paper money by the graves, in order to send it to the spirits of the ancestors. Filial piety being of huge importance in Chinese culture, these offerings to ancestors are a way to continue filial piety beyond the lifespan of one's parents.

Most major Chinese festivals have a set date on the calendar: the fifth day of the fifth month for the Dragon Boat Festival, or the seventh day of the seventh month for "Seventh Night" (Qixi, when the Weaver Star crosses the Milky Way to meet the Heavenly Shepherd, whom she is in love with). Qing Ming is unusual because it is takes place 15 days after the spring equinox, so it is a movable feast in the monthly calendar, but a fixed one in relation to the solar terms.

By the way, Qing Ming is actually the middle day of a three day period sometimes mentioned in Chinese poems, the Cold Food Festival. Traditionally, no fires were lit during these three days, so people ate cold food. Legend has that the festival commemorates a Jie Zhitui of the Warring States period, whose prince wanted him to come to court and take a responsibility role. Jie refused and hid on a mountain; the prince ordered fire to be set to the forest to "smoke him out", but Jie chose to die in the fire instead. The prince repented and instituted the three day fire-less period. I am not very convinced by this explanation, which sounds like a rationalization of an even older tradition. It also supports the idea that, if you are feudal prince, you can have your population atone for your errors.

Anyway, the first time I heard of the Qing Ming festival was in conjunction with a famous Song dynasty painting, which depicts the city of Kaifeng during the festival, with wonderful detail of the crowd, the houses and shops, and the boats on the river. This is just a tiny detail to give you a feeling for the style; you should see the entire scroll here.

 

Spring Equinox

Today, March 21th, is the Vernal Equinox, the day on which, anywhere you are on earth, day and night have the same duration.

It is also the first day of the Spring (or Vernal) Equinox (in Mandarin, chūnfēn) solar term.

春分

 

Not much to say about this solar term's name, really... Pretty matter-of-fact. Interesting that the charcter for equinox is the same that is used for minute (the 60th part of an hour), and for the 100th part of a yuan, the currency unit. These are all ideas associated with division, so maybe "divided part" is the core meaning of this character. It works well as a pictogram - the bottom part is the radical meaning knife (you can almost make out the picture of a cleaver), and the top part represents the thing being divided.

Insects Awakening II

Today, I went to see a friend, and outside his house was this little guy:

 

I know, technically it is not an insect!

 

In the afternoon, the sun came out, and I finally got around to cleaning up after the wood cutting I had done in midwinter. In the heap of cut wood, this maple twig was budding.

 

 

It is a very moving thing to see plants that have been cut and removed from their environment and yet try to bud. Last week, some garlic cloves in the refrigerator, and even a red cabbage head that had been cut in half, had done just that. It is not surprising that the ancients thought of Spring as a goddess - it is not just the longer days and the milder temperatures that plants respond to, if they germinate in the dark, inside of a refrigerator.

The neighborhood cats have also been quite active. All of a sudden, there seem to be more of them out, and when you see one, there are always a few other nearby. As I picked up my firewood, I found that earthworms are seeking out each other, too. There are four of them in this picture, all tangled u with each other.

You will be relieved to know that I made sure they were safe back on the ground, and covered them up with some dirt. I am not one of those people who pass judgement on others' sexual costumes.

Insect Awakening

Yesterday, March 6th, was the first day of the "Insects Awakening" (in Mandarin, jīngzhé, literally, "awake the hibernating") solar term.

惊蛰 (驚蟄)

The left two signs are Simplified Cinese, the left two are Traditional. In both versions, the second sign contains the insect radical (it is the bottom part of the character). However, there is no specific mention of insects in the Chinese name. Those who awaken from the winter sleep could just as well be frogs or lizards.

 

Ozu and the Seasons

Six of Yasujiro Ozu's movies have titles that directly allude to seasons:

Early Spring (早春, 1956)
Late Spring (晩春, 1949)
Early Summer (麥秋, 1951; I think the title literally refers to the time of wheat or barley harvest)
The End of Summer (小早川家の秋, 1961; literally, The Autumn of the Kohayagawa Family)
An Autumn Afternoon (秋刀魚の味; 1962; literally, The Taste of Autumn Swordfish, which apparently is a type of macquerel)
Late Autumn (秋日和, 1969; literally, The Calm of an Autumn Day)

There is also the movie titled in translation Equinox Flower (彼岸花, 1958). The higanbana of the Japanese title is Lycoris radiata, the spider lily, which flowers in autumn, and is associated in Japan with funerals, and with meeting people you will not see again. Higan is a Buddhist festival which takes place twice a year, in spring and autumn, so I am not completely sure if this counts as a season word.

Overall, there is a lot of autumn, but maybe not as much as you would expect, considering that the recurring theme in Ozu's films is aging parents finally separating from their children, sometimes willingly, sometimes unwillingly.

Ozu, in my view, is one of the greatest film directors of all times, and probably the one I have watched the most (not counting John Ford and John Huston, whose westerns used to run again and again on television when I lived with my parents). Both visually and emotionally, there are few directors I enjoy more. Wim Wenders probably would agree; a lot of his Tokyo documentary, Tokyo-ga, is devoted to him. In that film, Wenders goes on a pilgrimage to Ozu's grave in Kamakura, and so did I, a few years ago:

 

The sign mu, engraved on Ozu's tombstone.

Kamakura, Japan.



Rain Water

Today, February 19th, is the first day of the Rain Water (in Mandarin, yǔshuǐ) solar term.

雨水

It is an intriguing name. I guess is suggests the change from snow to rain as we move towards spring.

 

 

On a related note, I saw the first Oregon grape (Mahonia aquifolium) flowers of the year. It was a sunny day, a bit on the cold side by our standards, but nothing compared to Chicago, where the temperature is -9 C, or Beijing, where it is -3 C.

Late Winter

It occurred to me yesterday that the way we talk about the time of the year is very much biased in favor of the warm seasons: we talk of  February-March as early spring, not late winter, and October is late summer, not early autumn.

I have begun to see flowers. Some plums have been blooming for over two weeks, and I saw (and smelled) witch-hazels (Hamamelis sp.) last week. I have not seen any Forsythia flowers yet, although I have a memory of them as being the earliest ones we used to get.

At the same time, it does not feel like spring yet. It is fairly cold, and frequently wet. Most of all, when the sun does come out, it feels like winter sun. It is a fool's errand to try and put into words what I mean by that. I will instead notice that the quality of the light is what gives late summer, too, its distinctive feeling. Winter sun makes one want to find a place in the lee so one can bask. That never happens in full summer (except, maybe, to mad dogs and Englishmen).

Witch-hazel

Start of Spring and February

Tomorrow, February 4th, is the first day of the Start of Spring (in Mandarin, lìchūn) solar term.

立春

Obviously, this term represents the beginning of spring from a meteorological point of view, not an astronomical one; there will a "spring equinox" term later in the year.

Even thinking about the weather, this is somewhat optimistic, since we are just at the beginning of February, a month associated with great cold in the sculpture of the Romanesque churches of Europe:

February

Autun Cathedral, France
12th century

While the other months are usually represented by agricultural activities, February is the "dead of winter": the right thing to do is to sit indoors by the fire. And yet, here in the Pacific Northwest, the first blossoms appear on some plum trees in this month.

By the way, the Chinese term spring causes some confusion. Chinese New Year  does not arrive for another week, and it moves from year to year because the Chinese calendar is lunisolar; it can very well fall outside of the Start of Spring solar term. The Chinese name is 春节, chūnjie, literally Spring Festival, so the character for spring appears in all sorts of expressions and signs related to new year

Udon

Kama-age udon 釜揚うどん, or udon noodles in broth, are a winter seasonal food; apparently it also counts as a winter kigo in haiku poetry. Apparently the Japanese must have felt that eating a bowl of noodles in hot broth was a great thing to do.

Eight years ago today I was in Kyoto. In the morning, I woke up and found the city covered in snow. I spent the next few hours around the Higashiyama area, taking pictures like this one:

Kyoto Snow

February 2005

Digital

By noon, I was near the Sumitomo Museum, and I remembered a small place where I had had lunch on an earlier visit. On my second visit I had a fantastic bowl of udon in broth, which I still remember although I do not remember what else was in it. But I guess the kigo masters are right, it is the broth that is memorable on a snowy day!

Winter Food

Some foods are supposed to taste best in winter. My mother would put in this group rather hearty things, like salsiccia (sausage) with beans, or polenta (which she only serves with rich, tasty toppings, like ragu, known here as the sauce in spaghetti bolognaise). Further north, in Lombardy, people think of brasato, slow-cooked beef, as typically wintry. Choucroute alasacienne (sausage and sauerkraut) feels the same way.

Salsiccia, along with a number of other pork products like zampone and cotechino, does not keep very long. Pigs were traditionally slaughtered in December, probably because by December fodder was scarce and, in a world without refrigerators, the cold afforded more time to cure the meat or eat it fresh.

Nowadays, we can pretty much get any vegetable or fruit at any time of the year. It is great that food transportation enables South-American farmers to get some crumbs from the table of North-American affluence. Of course, this produce has to travel long distances and be stored, and it tastes like water (some people use stronger words). And when the grocery store tries to market New Zealand apples in Washington state, we are in refrigerators-to-eskimos territory.

From the point of view of enjoyment, I do not think we actually gain anything from the availability of out-of-season fruits and vegetables. We lose the interest of anticipation, and they are not good anyway.

My father used to rave about the flavor of leeks and cabbages, usually ones he had grown, and I used to think he was from another planet. I now realize that he is right. Today I made a zuppa, a soup, of farro (spelt, a variety of wheat) and winter vegetables. It was great, and it has to be eaten in winter.

Here is what I did: I sliced a small onion thin, fried it in oil with a half habanero pepper until it became soft, then added two espresso cups of spelt (espresso cups are a great measure of how many grains are needed for one person; my grandmother measured rice the same way). I stir fried for a couple of minutes, then I added a thinly-sliced cup of cabbage, and stir-fried that too for another minute. Then I added about two cups of water, a small carrot (sliced), and one celery stalk, also sliced. I brought everything to the boil, and took it off the fire. Three or four hours later, when it was time to eat, I warmed it up again. The spelt was just chewy enough.

Big Cold

Tomorrow, January 20th, is the start of the "Big Cold" solar term in the Chinese calendar.

大寒



Big Cold is the last term of the year in the Chinese calendar. We are approaching Chinese New Year, which this year will fall on February 10th. Since Chinese New Year is a moveable feast, it may not belong here at all. However, unlike the Muslim months, it does predictably take place in this cold time of the year, so maybe I will.

The Big Cold term follows "Small Cold", which ends today. This year, here in Seattle, the term lived up to its name fairly well: the last four or five day have been around freezing, and in thick fog.

The Brown God Is Almost Forgotten

The seasons have gone much the same way as the river, T.S. Eliot's strong brown god: they are now

... only a problem confronting the builder of bridges.
The problem once solved, the brown god is almost forgotten
By the dwellers in cities - ever, however, implacable,
Keeping his seasons and rages, destroyer, reminder
Of what men choose to forget. Unhonoured, unpropitiated
By worshippers of the machine, but waiting, watching and waiting.

The Dry Salvages

 

 

The combination of the clock and electricity have really led us to ignore the seasons. The clock gives us a fixed time, independent of the sun, and makes us come home when it is pitch dark in winter, and mid-afternoon in summer. Electric lighting enables us to forget that the sun has even gone down; and by living in climate-controlled buildings, and driving everywhere, we forget that it is cold in winter and warm in summer.

 

I think we lose something in the process. The changing of the seasons is one of the wonders of nature, and it is worth getting off the iPad to pay attention to it. Moreover, dealing with the weather is part of what we are as animals, and we should respect what we are. We are not only brains connected by the Internet; we are also cold and warm, and hungry, and horny.

 

 



Kigo

季語

I came across this resource today: http://wkdfestivalsaijiki.blogspot.jp/2012/05/january-calendar.html. It is a web site entirely devoted to kigo (季語), the "seasonal words" used in Japanese poetry.

Kigos are a treasure trove of observations about the times of the year and what makes them distinctive. I am looking forward to spending some time on this site.



Small Cold

Tomorrow, January 6th, is the start of the "Small Cold" solar term in the Chinese calendar.

小寒



In parallel with the months, the Chinese also divide the year into 24 "solar terms" (节气 jiéqì, where 节is a node or a segment and 气 is the air or the weather). The names of the solar terms are based on the weather conditions prevailing in Central-North China, where Chinese culture developed.

I do not know when exactly these names became established, but they are old: the same names, almost character for character, are used in Japanese, which suggests that the system was already in use in the mid-7th century, when the Japanese adopted Chinese writing. The solar terms are used in Korea, too.

Cyclical Time

I believe it was Arnaldo Momigliano who pointed out that the idea of linear time entered European thought with the judeo-christian influences in late Antiquity. Linear time proceeds from Creation to Salvation to Final Judgment and the end of times, and all of this is pre-ordained ab initio.

But what is interesting to me here is the smaller scale of daily experience. In daily experience, time was essentially cyclical for all pre-modern societies:

The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteneth to his place where he arose.
 

... To every thing there is a season, and a time for every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted.

(Ecclesiastes, 1:5 and 3:1-2)

Anonimous - The Flammarion Engraving
 

Incipit

Yesterday was a cold, crisp day, with beautiful views of the mountains, all covered in snow. I spent the day in the back yard, cutting down trees, sectioning them, and putting them away as firewood.

I was reminded of this depiction of the month of December, one of Antelami's pictures of the months in Parma's Battistero:

In the afternoon, I went back into the house and ate a late lunch of red cabbage and garlic. And I thought: doing the works of the month and eating the vegetables of the season really feels quite good.