The Month of the Flying Hemp Fibers

Spalis, in Lithuanian.  Means October.  And it's the same word as the word for the little filaments of hemp that float around (I'm told) when one makes rope.  Apparently, for whatever reason (the harvesting of plants presumably having something to do with it), autumn was the time when the ancient Balts sat down and made all their hemp into rope, in the course of which, a million tiny threads of the stuff were sent drifting into the air.  Such that later, when somebody thought to fix events in time and memory, when somebody asked when somebody's daughter was born, or when the bear got into so-and-so's hut and ate all his plums, the answer came, you know, when we were making the rope, when there was all that hemp dust in the air.  Spalis.  October.

Likewise Lapkritis, or November: the month when the leaves fall.  A little obvious, that one, but still.  And May: Gegužė, meaning cuckoo, the month when, between the lengthening days and the stupid freaking cuckoo birds who won't shut the bloody hell up, you're just going to start getting less sleep.

I don't know what it is, but something about this appeals to me, to an ancient element in me.  Lunch is pietus, which is the same as the word for South, lunch being the meal you eat when the sun is in the south.  Tomorrow is rytoj, the same root as the word for East; tomorrow is what will happen upon the new sunrise (and now I'm suddenly imagining Annie being done in Lithuanian...).  

This is basic stuff, not all that uncommon among world languages, and there are volumes upon volumes of theory out there on the handling of natural phenomena in different Indo-European tongues, but for some reason (probably only because Lithuanian is the language that's happening to me at the moment), through these linguistic quirks and underpinnings, I'm beginning to feel a unique connection to the deep, historical mind of Lithuania.  I feel like I get that medieval Lithuanian Mindaugas or Vytautas or whomever, sitting on his rock in his forest, roasting his pietus over a fire.  Watching the light change.  Watching the hemp fibers settle in the sun.