At the end of December, as the longest night of the year slowly seeps into the room, I light candles and make a Didukh. I weave this keeper of ancestral stories out of dry wheat stalks and distant memories of a sheaf that my grandfather brought into the house on Christmas Eve. “Didukh in the house, trouble out of the house,” he would say as he placed it under the icons framed by rushnyks, embroidered towels that decorated the walls of every room at my grandparents’ place.
Every planting season starts with pots, soil and seeds scattered on my living room floor like stars strewn across the night sky. A cosmic chaos of new beginnings, an assortment of legume galaxies, constellations of leafy greens, flowery nebulas and herb clusters. Speckled beans flexing their curvy backs. Translucent gems of corn glistening in the … Continue reading Sowing Magic
Winter and spring have been playing a game of musical chairs lately. Some days winter seems to win. All that pent-up energy, unreleased during the past few months, keeps erupting in mushy clumps. They swirl toward the ground in slow motion as if trying to postpone their inevitable demise. But their fight against gravity is … Continue reading Becoming Spring
I’m falling into fall’s softness. Its embrace, tender and tinged with sadness. Last flowers like a parting kiss. I turn my face toward the sun; its light streaming through the canopy sets the forest aglow. A soothing rhythm of seasons swirls all around me. The world is a kaleidoscope of colour, continuously rearranged by weather’s … Continue reading Falling
Stories of Entangled Life 