Winter has come, 25 May 2020

At the shops today I saw a camp bed set up in the shopping mall just near the highway, with bulky bags and folded blankets.  The hunched over person in the nearby cafe cradling a take-away coffee  may have belonged to the bed. The cold wind blew, a few people hurried past nearly empty shops looking at the ground.The little incense burner of rough unglazed terracotta was made in Cyprus recently by an aged woman potter who sat on a low stool over her hand-turned wheel making vessels that had not changed substantially for hundreds of years. Burning incense made from pungent herbs cleanses the air, and the strong clouds of scented smoke seem to lift the mind away from the present. The small container is not unlike the cluster of small pots made to hold many kinds of seeds as a sacrifice for the Temple of Demeter and Persephone at Eleusis in Greece.The Mysteries held at the temple over three days inducted people into the central meaning of life, which you were not allowed to reveal on pain of death, once you had become an initiate. It remained secret for hundreds of years, but then in the early Christian era, someone broke faith and let it be known that the meaning of life was something to do with a grain of wheat.

Diana Wood Conroy 'Winter has come' watercolour on Arches paper, 15 x 21 cm, 25 May 2020.