My watch does this (shows an exciting pattern of rays) eight times a year: on the two solstices, the two equinoxes, and the four 'cross-quarter' days between those four.
(So does kleinbl00's.)
This one reminds me it's Imbolc or Brigid's Day or the beginning of spring. It also tells me it's full moon RIGHT NOW (as does peering out of the window).
It's traditionally a time for feasting, which goes nicely with eightbitsamurai's Grubski challenge. It's also considered a time for spring cleaning (natch) and setting goals into motion which goes nicely with rezzeJ's recurring goals thread. The first day of spring also happens to coincide with the latest Pubski thread.
Solstices and equinoxes are observable astronomical phenomena; cross-quarter days can be calculated from those observations. For that reason alone, I think of them as more important in the year than those odd, floating special days some traditions cherish. They're fixed by invisible threads in the latticework of the year as planet whirls around star.
What markers are special in your year? How do they prompt you to think about time? Do you experience it as an eternal round or a linear march?
The one on the left is my wife's. It's been through two cases and four straps. The one in the middle is the first one I had, which had its brain replaced, and then it had its original case replaced, so it's 0% original, which is too bad 'cuz it had a double-digit serial number. The one on the right is the one I bought when I made the mistake of sending the one in the middle off to my dad to fix the case. It took me four years to crack it loose. My wife suggested I point out that Imbolc was only celebrated as the first day of spring by the Celts. Everyone else waits for the equinox. I, myself am fond of cross-quarters. We got married on Beltane for a few different reasons: 1) An anniversary that moves around appeals to me. 2) It often lines up with Cinco De Mayo. 3) The year we married the numbers added up. It was pretty dope. Supposedly we even had a coven of witnesses but that was more accidental than anything.
She's right, of course. I'm surrounded by too many wannabe nouveau-Celts. The Celts also have a different concept of when a 'day' actually starts, if I recall correctly; the day ends and the next day begins at dusk, rather than at sunrise, or at midnight. So says Caeser: The Gauls claim all to be descended from Father Dis [a god of death, darkness and the underworld], declaring that this is the tradition preserved by the Druids. For this reason they measure periods of time not by days but by nights; and in celebrating birthdays, the first of the month, and new year’s day, they go on the principle that the day begins at night.
Not very spring-like around me. I spent 2 hours yesterday digging my driveway out from under 10" of snow before work in 10 degree weather with a stiff wind. At times like these, the arrival of spring seems like a remote and unlikely possibility, even if we know it's an inescapable eventuality.
I got a pair of Salomon's this year, and though they were pretty expensive ($160), they're worth every penny. So long as they're properly laced you won't feel a drop of moisture on your feet. I love them, and they would be a bargain at $200. Anyway, unbeknownst to me when I wrote the above comment, I developed a nasty cold later in the evening. Fucking snow shoveling. I once vowed that I would never own a house precisely because of this type of bullshit. I'm not, so far as I can tell, a man of principle.
Luckily, birthdays seem to be about a year apart which seems about the right amount of time to be any one age. My year is marked also by three main holidays: Rosh Hashana, Chanukah, and Passover. There's a circularity about those holidays. They roll around about as often as birthdays. My family gathers round in varying numbers. There's usually a full moon. This year there will also be a total eclipse of the moon on Passover (April 4 - between Good Friday and Easter Sunday). Even though there's circularity and reoccurrence in the holidays of the year, we generally approach them in new ways as older people, but also as new and different people and more or less evolved from the previous year....so linear. If you don't evolve, there might be a divorce and you are left out of the celebrations and out of the family. The older members of the family get old and die. My siblings and cousins are now the older members of the family just as our parents were before us. I could be convinced that the linear is an illusion or perhaps a particularity within a larger circular eternity.What markers are special in your year? How do they prompt you to think about time? Do you experience it as an eternal round or a linear march?
My year is marked by birthdays - but there's a definite linearity about birthdays. One counts them only in one direction.
What a nice post, thanks for sharing your awesome watch's declaration of spring. Here it was beautiful today, though it just felt like a beautiful winters day. For me, spring is most often marked by a change in scent on the breeze. I can never describe it, but you know it when you smell it and I would guess most everyone reading this has experienced it. I guess time for me is linear. I think about it too much. I also think about getting to a place, a moment etc too often. This robs me of my current place and moment.
Back when I was in primary school, we used to make Brigid's crosses out of rushes on St. Brigid's Day (though it was always held to fall on the first, but I guess that's part of the shift from Gaelic festival to Christian tradition). I had completely forgotten about Brigid's Day until I saw this post. It brings back memories, and explains why I saw a dude with a Brigid's cross in his bag on the train the other day.
One day after spring, I stumble across this rather splendid animation showing in real time the journey of a single photon of light from its birth in the sun and through the solar system. Takes forever. No wonder eightbitsamurai is still cold over in the Pubski thread. We think of light travel as instantaneous because we're little creatures on a tiny world but since relativity we now know if you're little, you're brief.