“I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.”
— Charles Dickens 🎄
“Christmas Eve traditions vary across countries. In France, Christmas is a time to connect with family, exchange gifts with loved ones, and attend the Midnight Mass. Kids put shoes near the fireplace so that Papa Noël leaves gifts behind. In Russia, Christmas is celebrated on January 7, as per the Orthodox calendar. Russians celebrate Christmas by having a family dinner, and meeting up with friends and family. Christmas in Italy is one long celebration, starting from December 24, that is Christmas Eve, going right up to January 6, the Epiphany. Nativity scenes, Christmas lights and decorations, traditional costumes, and feasting dominate the scene.” — Simran Khurana 🎄
“Blessed is the season, which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love.”
— Hamilton Wright Mabi
“You are fettered,” said Scrooge, trembling. “Tell me why?”
“I wear the chain I forged in life,” replied the Ghost. “I made it link by link, and yard by yard;
I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
“If little else, the brain is an educational toy.
The problem with possessing such an engaging toy is that other people want to play with it, too. Sometime they'd rather play with yours than theirs. Or they object if you play with yours in a different manner from the way they play with theirs. The result is, a few games out of a toy department of possibilities are universally and endlessly repeated. If you don't play some people's game, they say that you have "lost your marbles," not recognizing that, while Chinese checkers is indeed a fine pastime, a person may also play dominoes, chess, strip poker, tiddlywinks, drop-the-soap or Russian roulette with his brain.”
― Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
Approach of Winter
William Carlos Williams
The half-stripped trees
struck by a wind together,
bending all,
the leaves flutter drily
and refuse to let go
or driven like hail
stream bitterly out to one side
and fall
where the salvias, hard carmine,—
like no leaf that ever was—
edge the bare garden.
“There is an old Navajo warning that if you kill off the prairie dogs there will be no one to cry for rain … In fact, the burrowing animals, like prairie dogs, open breathing tubes in the Earth. The underground aquifers act like the diaphragm in human bodies; the moon as it passes raises and lowers the underground water table and the Earth breathes through the many fissures and tubes opened by the burrowing creatures. The exhalation of moisture-ladened air, filled with negative ions, helps create rain.” -- Stephen Harrod Buhner in Sacred Plant Medicine *
“The sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might:
He did his very best to make
The billows smooth and bright
And this was odd, because it was
The middle of the night.
The moon was shining sulkily,
Because she thought the sun
Had got no business to be there
After the day was done
“It’s very rude of him,” she said,
“To come and spoil the fun!”
The sea was wet as wet could be,
The sands were dry as dry.
You could not see a cloud, because
No cloud was in the sky:
No birds were flying overhead
There were no birds to fly.
In a Wonderland they lie
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die.”
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
The Silent Shepherds
Robinson Jeffers
I will have shepherds for my philosophers,
Tall dreary men lying on the hills all night
Watching the stars, let their dogs watch the sheep.
And I’ll have lunatics
For my poets, strolling from farm to farm, wild liars distorting
The country news into supernaturalism–
For all men to such minds are devils or gods–and that increases
Man’s dignity, man’s importance, necessary lies
Best told by fools.
Live with the anticipation that something incredible might happen at any time. — Sharon Gannon
Weekly Photo Challenge: Anticipation
Love After Love
Derek Walcott
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
Maverick Mist 