Mallard Pair at the Creek |
Tuesday, December 27, 2022
Wild Ducks, Wild Life
Sunday, December 25, 2022
Fifteen Years Ago
Christmas Eve. Our train speeds through the countryside north from Marseilles toward Paris. I sit by the window, my husband on the aisle, our daughters behind us with their books and music, their innocent laughter. Outside is a bucolic scene, a vast uncluttered landscape, the occasional cottage and garden, low stone wall, trees, all covered in a thick, gauzy snow-like frost. I cannot take my eyes from the beauty of it, the stillness, the repose, mile after mile as far as the eye can see. Nor can I look from the face reflected in the glass, the one superimposed over the sparkling winter white, the one filled with endless sadness as it watches me watching the world go by.
Paris overflows with Christmas. We have dinner, climb the stairs of the Eiffel Tower, float down the Seine in cold so brutal it forces me back inside the boat. We walk along the river, past the closed booksellers stands. Later we happen upon Notre Dame and enter the vestibule of the packed cathedral, filled with warmth and candlelight and hymns to the glory of God. After, in our hotel, gifts exchanged, I lie awake, waiting not for Santa, but for resolution, for absolution, knowing that here, in the City of Lights, in the most romantic place in the world, in the wet, the gray, the cold, the charm, the beauty, the history, the love, the last vestiges of an already crumbling marriage have finally been swept away.
Written to a prompt in a group I'm part of. Limit 250 words about a celebration, any kind.
Tuesday, December 20, 2022
Oh Holy Week
Here we are at my favorite week of the year. More favorite even than my birthday week which is saying a lot. It's not because it is the week before Christmas, though that plays a part. The true roots of this love predate the church; they grow from the ground of the earth herself, for this is Winter Solstice week. Where I live this is when the cold really arrives, and with it, rain, if we are lucky, and thick fog that blankets the ground, makes ghosts of trees, brings a quiet stillness that is as palpable as it is profound. This year has also brought sunny, baby blue mornings covered in frost and ice.
I walk the earth as if I have awakened in wonderland and am swept away at its marvelous beauty; the world swaddled like a newborn; the way tiny ice crystals lay on the ground, on dead leaves, on fence tops, on the bowed heads of spent roses. How it sparkles in the sun as though it is actual snow while mist rises up like the thinning veil between the worlds—beckoning. This week is alive, it is melancholy, it is dark, it is joyous, it is precious. I want nothing more than to go out early, revel in it, capture it, and then to hunker down to a fire, a lit candle, my dog on my lap, a soulful book, Loreena McKennitt's A Winter Garden playing on a never-ending loop.
Then I want to freeze time right here. Hold close this feeling of holiness that saturates everything, this tender hand of reverence, this wanting to bow down in devotion, like the roses; a devotee, a disciple, a spellbound lover. This waking dream that holds the gift of darkness, the cherished time of rest, of burrowing and nesting, of inception and incubation, of magic and miracles. Both journey and destination. Where time goes is always the question, always a mystery, but never more so than now, with age plus the pandemic, time has warped itself into an unknown and unrecognizable stranger; its shadow in constant pursuit. In a whisper November becomes December and now here we are, tomorrow is the Solstice.
Walk through the veil. Embrace it as you would a dearest loved one. Right here, right now in your own heart of hearts; don't miss a moment. Let its loveliness sweep you away, its crystalline elegance; fall headlong into its mystery, its breathless poetry, those late mornings and early nights. Fill yourself, sweet one, for the dark is never long enough; always finite; tomorrow light and darkness meet; light will prevail.
Happy Winter Solstice.
~💗~
Sunday, December 11, 2022
The Magic of the Sycamore Tree
The sycamore awakens the feminine energies of intuition,
beauty and nourishment all around us. It can open us to
the energies of love and Nature and all their magnificent
aspects. The sycamore will augment all connections to
Nature, and its appearance in our life encourages us to
draw upon the realm of Nature for health, abundance
and inspiration.
Thursday, December 1, 2022
The Magic of Midwinter
Female California Quail |
Melancholy were the sounds on a winter's night.
~Virginia Woolf