Breaking Bad

Santa sat down with his pipe and thought:
"Should little Jimmy get a lump of coal?
He's been super bad, and I've seen the hole
in the middle of his soul. To fill it with a lot
of toys and shite will do him none good;
what he needs is coal. Coal, coal to ignite:
that pre-diamond, old as death wood;
the black pressure of time to light."

"Yes", thought Santa as he ruminated
with his pipe while stroking his beard.
"I've seen in my globe: Jimmy has hated,
he's not a good lad, he's filled with fear;
much to be pitied. But that's all stubble
burning before my deeper vision:
I see Jimmy burning his bad, untroubled;
self-shadows breaking down in radiant fission."

Adding Up

Poplar for the fence;
town was for coffee, tea, sugar
and selling fur. The natives
were unreliable workers.
Not that they did bad work,
but they had an intractable
sense of time and after
a day and a half would disappear.
The nights of migrating rabbits.
So many they made a carpet
flowing to the warp of the floor
under the shell of the moon.
What sticks out the most is Lutz -
him and the necessity of hitting
squirrels in the eye. Anyways,
Peter and Lutz would sit around
doing nothing, as times of leisure
generously given to homesteaders -
perhaps with tobacco, thinking about
potatoes, and after some time
Lutz would get up, and Peter said:
"Lutz, where are you going?"
Asking each time to amuse himself,
for Lutz like clockwork would answer,
"I am going to do sometinks."
This exchange was ritual every visit;
a Dane and a German,
some English between them.
Lutz, where are you going?
I am going to do sometinks.
Adding up hearth stones in the wilderness.

Winter of Discontent

More than any year previous - or perhaps unlike any year previous, I have been annoyed, burdened, depressed, and plain turned off by the Christmas preemptives. I have always been able to let it go and chalk it up to the world's sort of naive festive way of anticipating Christmas. It has never been from the standpoint of a snob, or "taking it in stride", but simply seeing the positive in it, and really I have never had to make an effort. I like the charm as much as anyone.

I'm not one to boast about how I put up decorations on Christmas Eve (I typically decorate around Gaudete), and while I give a spontaneous dearth-like sigh at the first lights going up at the start of November, I have never gone into the fray as it were. But I can't do it any more. By that I mean I don't have the strength any longer to deny or fend off the weight of depression that hits me, as when for instance someone wishes me a merry Christmas in the first week of December. You just kind of want to go under a rock and die. One of the stupid ironies of the conservative campaign to get corporations to say "Merry Christmas" to their customers is the banalizing of what a Christmas greeting ought to be. Really, I would actually be happier if someone in the time of Advent, which is not Christmas time, just cheerily said to me, "Season's Greetings!" Exactly.

I want Advent. I've always loved Advent, and have always wanted it be slowed down to the slowest possible capacity. And I don't like the warm purple Advent candles; I like the cold purple Advent candles.

I simply want to have the quiet presence of Jesus born in my heart - in the deep stillness. From that everything flows.

And those images of immigrant children and families in cages...how can one justify that?

Unruly

"He is Argentinian and unruly," a laughing Pope said to his private secretary, Georg Ganswein, who was seated next to him.

"Leave him, leave him to play here," the Pope said as the child rolled around in front of him on the carpet.

As the gathering continued, the child was allowed to stay roaming around the podium.

''This child cannot speak. He is mute, but he can communicate," Pope Francis said.

"He made me think of myself. Am I also so free in front of God?" the Pope asked.

He then prayed for the boy.

ABC News - 'Unruly' young boy runs on stage to Pope Francis


"He made me think of myself. Am I also so free in front of God?"

I love this Pope so much.

But Jesus said, "Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven." --Matthew 19:14

This means something

Not sure if it's a piece of the spaceship that broke off and landed in the field behind the backyard, or if it's one of their incubating pods. Maybe I should keep it watered. But who knew they used such low grade technology? They clearly know something we don't.

Love It

Love going to the Dollar Store, that last twilight outlet of the store rows, closest to the train tracks. 25 nifty brushes for 3 bucks. You pay that and more - far more - for just one brush at the art store or some ostentatious online Rusky outfit. "But, but!" LOL. Trust me - it's not so much the brush - though sometimes it is (especially with egg tempera) - it's how you use it. You can paint with just about anything. You have to bend that fork. In fact, it's the same with the fine brushes too - it's how you use them. The quality of an instrument does not subsume its proper and most fruitful use. It is the other way around. I love that arts and crafts section and the whole store with its Snickers and Mars bars doppelgangers. It's a place to dream in. Maybe it conjures that old A-Team feeling in me. Going to the Dollar Store is so Chestertonian.

You go too far

To artisan bakers.

Air pockets are desirable, but one needs surface area on which to put stuff, like jam.