The Patience of Odin
Legend says that Great Father hung for perhaps millennia upon the World Tree, with only a bag of runes to keep him company. Sacrificing one eye for higher knowledge, for infinite intellect; Odin spent his time waiting and pondering the existence in this universe. Upon the branches of Yggdrasil, the Father of the Gods witness the eternal wheel that is Ragnarok; where Gamr consumes the sun and moon itself.

For to Him time moves so slowly, that the future is the same as the past all under the eternal clock that is the present. For Odin there are no hands of time, no bindings of age or reason, the minutes reach an absolute zero that mortals can never know.

That is how I feel as I wait for my honey to bloom into the nectar of the gods. As the instant world gratifies around me I sit and stare at the eternal drink, hoping to sip it one day. Will this be the Mead of Suttungr? The Mead of Poetry, its white milk pushing the boundaries of senses and sense? Suffocating in Intelligence?

I do not know, I cannot know, for mead is beyond rushing, beyond perhaps time itself. While we wither and decay, die slowly by the kiss of Hela, mead only becomes better with time. Like Merlin, our golden ambrosia ages backwards, improving in all its senses as we step upon step into the grave.

I sit up, spending way too much time looking at my mead, and wonder what to do with the fermenting time. So what does everyone else do to pass the time between honey and mead?

Labels: Mead-Making

  ¶ Thursday, July 10, 2008