May I?

• Bridgid's Cross
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May 1 is one of the few days of the year that composes a complete sentence, as long as one is willing to squint. Unlike its commanding sister, March 4th, May 1 is a question. It is a day that asks your permission, though it remains cagey as to its exact intent. It is not every day that wonders at consent. If only January and its dawning new year could be this polite, rather than coating our window with ice a half-inch thick without so much as a "by your leave." May I? is a game of rummy, but I never had any skill with cards beyond telling the future of strangers. Perhaps this is May 1st's actual request: if it can be allowed to predict what is to come. We may not like it's foretelling, but it is courteous enough to give us the chance to refuse its prophecy. Mythology is rife with those who tried to escape their destiny and were duly punished for their hubris, but that doesn't mean we wouldn't like to be given the illusion of free will.

Two hundred and forty-four days stretch before us in this year, yet it is seductive to believe those will last forever. The nights are shorter, and our animal brains want to think they will stay this way, allowing the daytime frolicking, the light of discovery, to shake away our cobwebs. We stand halfway between the spring equinox and summer solstice, poised briefly between blooming and ripeness. The harvest will come, as the wheel of the year demands it must, but we need not think of anything but the profusion of our sown seeds.

The beginning of May is rife with hope. It is the fulfillment of the spring equinox, the foreplay of the summer solstice. Perhaps the stars call late March "spring," but few people above a certain latitude would be fool enough to holster their snow boots and ice scrapers. May 1st foreshadows the season to come, one garlanded with wildflowers and eager grass. Yes, the amorous buds leak pollen by the nostril-full, and the grass requires more constant cutting down than a schoolboy with his first foolish crush. Still, these inconveniences seem small indeed when one can again lounge beneath a blanket of stars, bold fireflies mimicking the twinkling of their celestial exemplars. Jonathan Coulton, postmodern bard, croons that the first of May is when you ought to "grab your favorite lady or at least your favorite lay" because it signals the start of outdoor affection, though his phrasing may have been blunter. We should forgive this. As the sun takes longer to set, we may too find ourselves pulled between indulgent floweriness--fertilized by forgotten jack-o-lanterns, brown pine needles clogging the vacuum, and moldering jellybeans from that one egg never found--and visceral brevity. What are all the lovely chirps, buzzes, and blinks but a direct "Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May Only Have Tonight, Oh No I Have Died"? We haven't a moment to spare.

May Day is also International Workers Day, often called Communist, either of Russian origin or because it honors labor. This is a time when grasshoppers grow fat off the land, and diligent ants begin their harvest without fear of freezing to the spot. Less famously but more fittingly than Christmas, May Day is red and green. The red roots grow in the blood of the workers. The green roots seek out our Pagan past and present. It's a holiday abhorred and banned by the puritan parliament of England hundreds of years ago, not wanting to be chased around the fire and threatened with anything as forbidden as a kiss.

May 1st played host to two historical firsts, both reversed because of the dark. In 1840, the first adhesive postage stamp--the Penny Black--was issued. Owing to its color, dishonest users would peel it from steamed envelopes after it was canceled and reuse it until caught, necessitating the creation of the Penny Red. Across the ocean and eighty years, Pluto was named in partial honor of the man whose efforts led to its discovery, Percival Lowell. However, and to the frustration of loyal amateur astronomers (or at least those of us who used celestial mnemonics involving very excellent mothers serving nine pizzas), it has since been demoted to dwarf status. It could be some comfort that objects of its size are now known as plutinos, but I doubt it is. The darkness cancels it out too well.

It could hardly be better than this is the very day in 1753 when Carl Linnaeus, the self-styled Prince of Botany, saw the publication of his seminal Species Plantarum, which formalized the use of binomial nomenclature, the application of two names to each living thing. No longer did we have to suffer with the inexact crassness of calling the common dandelion "the piss-a-bed," owing to its supposed diuretic properties, not when we could fancily call it taraxacum californicum. Many plants were named for their medicinal prowess and, given the nature of humanity, many were reputed to possess aphrodisiac properties. Linnaeus sorted these into something a bit clearer and less salacious, though he was not above saddling bivalves with names like fornicata when the mood struck him. To him, nature was God's fan fiction and was thereby bursting with sexual pairings that were so much tamer in the canon. Biologists have altered most of the worst of these, especially given Linnaeus's fixation between the female genitalia and the shape of certain clams, but a few slip through in his honor.

After all, isn't being able to give something its proper name--even more so a proper name in a language we do not otherwise speak--the hallmark of magic? Can we honestly blame a scientist author for implying more randiness to the natural world than it was strictly due with our heads full of the perfume of May 1st?

On this day, let us walk sunwise and wash our faces clean with morning dew or the water of holy wells, even if the well is no further than our taps. If we are loyal and kind to them, the aos si, the fairy folk, might be willing to look the other way. It is our intention that makes the holiness, and all water flows from the same source, even if it may have passed through some reverse osmosis filtration getting to your lips. The sacred water of this day is supposed to keep us young and sexy, but all we need is a playful mindset (though it's far less fun to play when dehydrated). Toss a coin in a well or give it to someone in need to do well. Let us walk between fire for their blessing, even if this crucible is nothing more than continuing to remain upright with the sun at our backs as we face each day. For the daring of us, jump over the fire and let it burn away all those things we have carried into this year that no longer serve us. Light your candles from this fire so that Beltane's light can follow you into the year. Then, plow the ashes into your field so that it may nourish what needs to grow. This is a time of fecundity, where crops we have sown and believe inert spring up in a night. The dark may eventually come to cancel out fun, to obscure us, but it doesn't come today.