Merry Christmas!

'Tis the season to be jolly...

For the first time in the last few years, I actually had all my Christmas shopping and chores done well before our scheduled flight to Lisbon. Then, everything started going wrong... Two blizzards came, tonnes of snow, Heathrow airport shut down, our flight was cancelled, Ana came down with the flu on the same day, and now Clara's come down with it too. So,

Ho Ho Ho

this certainly fills my Christmas stocking to the brink.

Still, I managed to get to the supermarket - in a shopping trip that lasted for almost four hours due to the snow and black ice on untreated roads and general run up to Christmas madness - and I got everything we need to have ourselves a "merry little Christmas" in spite of it all (althought nothing makes up for not being with the rest of our much loved and missed family during this time of the year). The house is cozy and well supplied and we count ourselves lucky for not having been stuck at Heathrow or on a freezing motorway for hours or even days.

I'll never play or want to hear "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas again", though...

May your Christmases be merry, my blog friends!

December Brides

Bride of The Wind, Oskar Kokoschka, 1913/14


Bridal Bouquet

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

-- Mary Oliver --

My apologies for not answering comments lately. I'm afraid I'm not as faithful a blogger as I wish I were. Time slips through my fickle, mundane fingers much faster than I wish it would.