may first

Happy May Day! One of these years I'm going to figure out where it is in this town they have a maypole and check it out. (I think they have one at Kennedy School, which is near!)

I didn't visit a maypole, but I did go for a walk and was BUSTED for leaving flowers around the park by a little old German lady. She was front following me for a long way. I could tell because she kept looking over her shoulder, sitting on benches, and generally lurking around about 100 feet in front of me. Of course I would turn around or look at the sky or play with my camera because she was acting so shifty I wasn't sure I wanted to hear whatever she had to say. (now that I think about it, it must have been a pretty hilarious sight with both of us in clumsy spy mode.) ANYWAY, I thought I'd ditched her (tied my shoe!), but I came around a corner and she jumped out of her car (!!!), which forced me to remove my earbuds and capitulate as gracefully as I could. The first thing she said was "I know it is you. It is you who are leaving the flowers. I saw you before here! I know it is you. Why do you do it?" I don't really have a ready to dispense cogent answer for this so I kind of shifted around and said "because it makes me happy." She wanted to know if it was in memory of anyone. No, no, not really. Are you sure? Yes, I'm sure. I do it because I think it looks pretty. (German "hmmph" in response to this.) WELL, it turns out she was giving me the third degree because she does the same thing at Laurelhurst park!! and was recently busted by someone there. ha ha ha! But she does it in memory of a friend who died, which is touching and makes me feel like some kind of flower/tree dilettante. BUT THEN somehow she made me say that I do it because it a) makes me happy b) I think it's pretty and c) it might make other people happy too. She totally surprised me by saying "I bet the trees like it," which was completely loopy and completely perfect, because of course I secretly hope that the trees like it, too.

Here are some pictures (various years) from the Beltane Fire Society celebration -- it always stirs up some kind of primal feeling when I see these. (Like "thank god the sun is back!") I think it would be something to see in person.

Here's the May Queen and her warrior princess court. I think this looks so cool! It's so interesting to compare this May Queen, with her ritual and court and bigass fire with pictures of the many high school May Queens. The Sad Crazy Lady I worked with last year was May Queen at her high school 35+ years ago, and wore a beautiful white dress (still has it, it's lovely), had a court and all that jazz, but it was more along the lines of prom queen or homecoming queen than flat out pagan queen of fertility. They didn't set the gym on fire.


speaking of fire... the Edinburgh festival apparently features a lot of red-painted naked people, which seems as it should be.

And here's some T.Rex! From Ride a White Swan, which features these seasonally appropriate lyrics: Wear a tall hat like a druid in the old days/ Wear a tall hat and a tattooed gown/ Ride a white swan like the people of the Beltane/ Wear your hair long, babe you can't go wrong



Hee hee! I love seeing all those groovy French teenagers doing their teen thing and trying to act cool while mugging for the cameras. Or not moving at all. The lip synching is really bad too, but it hardly matters! It reminds me of the Corny Collins show from Hairspray, but French and with T. Rex.