Midsummer Magic

'Lovers to bed; tis almost fairy time...'

Midsummer's Eve. Twilight and twinkling lights time. Midnight and magic and mayhem. But alas, it's raining relentlessly here in Ireland. There's no chance of wandering outside for a walk even, never mind building a bonfire or planning a woodland sleepover. Oh well.

For me Midsummer has a magical ring to it ever since reading Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', a tale of magic, mischief and mayhem ensuing after a few Athenian lovers wander into a wood on Midsummer night and find themselves at the mercy of some rogue fairies. Oberon and Titania namely, Puck specifically. Cue fairy dust, love spells and lots of mixed up love affairs involving humans, a fairy king and queen and an ass (of the donkey variety). 'The course of true love never did run smooth' after all  as this play proves. 

Midsummer is a time of course for love and lovers as the play shows. Apparently June is the best month for marriage. The full moon in June is called the 'Honey Moon,' as it's supposed to be the best time to collect honey. Roses, so typically associated with romance, are the flower of June. And June is so-called after the Roman goddess Juno, god of marriage. And midsummer is a time of mayhem and all kinds of unsettling and strange goings-on in love. You've been warned...!

Anyway, in keeping with the spirit of midsummer, I thought I'd mix things up a little by  adding some mixed media. So I'm sharing some pictures I found on a truly captivating  picture website www.weheartit.com in a unexpected incident of serendipity. A picture is worth a thousand words and all that.... hmm, as a writer I don't know if I'd agree with that, but I do know that a clever caption can add so much to a picture. The site is full of inspirational images and you can't help but get inspired while browsing.  So, out of sheer inspiration here's what I came up with for a verbal accompaniment to  these whimsical finds:

Wishes are thoughts manifested by belief.

My Pandora box of possibilities...

As fragile as spider-webs...and as strong, my wishes stick







 all images from weheartit.com by tumblr 
Give me more gestation time and I'm sure I'll get a few haikus, if not poems out of these random reflections! (Watch this space...)  Visual aids are such  a great incentive to writing and looking at these cleverly constructed pictures you can see the link between the two mediums,

how they both are aesthetic expressions of emotions,  ideas and thoughts. Great how creativity allows us to give the 'airy nothing' of our emotional existence as Shakespeare puts it, a tangible something isn't it? 

Have a magical midsummer, full of inspiration and exhilaration! 


~ Siobhán.

'The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.'
-Theseus, 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'