This bit of local heritage is just creepy enough to endear me to it. Surely something must be haunting the premises!



Do you not agree that two sizable wreaths with red bows would brighten up the place nicely? Perhaps I should be the wreath-elf and pound stakes into the doors tonight to hang them while the town slumbers on...

As the winter's first snowflakes drifted from the sky and blanketed town in a deceptive purity, a friend brought a gift to me from a distant and warmer place, dropping it into my open hands and causing love to cascade into this deceptive heart.



Deception is the real word for true love and friendship, I have learned with time; for it is in deceiving your own fear that you are able to love freely.

Simplicity amid the holiday madness.

Sadly, it only rained and thundered and blew like mad yesterday. No snow; no ice; no need for the Klondikes. But in our imaginations, it was Christmas Town!

Our tree's official name? "Choppy" !

:)

Today is a rainy, windy, blustery day - and we are going to brave the elements for a Christmas tree! We shall pull on our heavy Klondike boots, wrap our heads in woolen hats and mufflers, pull on our warmest coats made for sub-zero temperatures and ... drive to our local nursery.



If only it were that exciting!

A moment of panic gripped me as what I am stood on the threshold of what I could be; or, more disturbingly, what I was meant to be.



A lifetime of insecurities camouflaged to everyone but those who know me best; the things they are privy to is nothing less than piteous. You don't believe me? Ah well...

As I sat last night paralyzed, gnawing on the fingernails of fear, words appeared on the screen of my iphone - words from a daughter-turned-friend.

"It's not who you are that holds you back, it's who you think you're not."

Have you stood on that threshold alone and shaking, only to suddenly feel warm and unexpected hands pressed against your back? Angel hands prodding you on?

Christmas, indeed. This is how He comes.

'Tis the season for Blueberry Pie!

There are poets, words that move me, that pull my lungs out of my chest like a magnet with their passion and intimacy. Some of these I have quoted at gallimaufry. Mary Oliver, Rainer Maria Rilke, Seamus Heaney, Denise Levertov, Robert Bly, Thomas Merton; deeply introspective writers who are utterly transparent about their passions, their rage, their sins and tenderness, their ever-flowing love and beauty:

life as the mortal soul knows it to be.

It was not so long ago that I came to know a pianist, and not a poet, who writes with sound and touch; melody and texture; fullness and void. I would not have thought that music could be as poetic and raw as words.

Olivier Cavé

http://www.olivier-cave.com



My compliments.

Some have asked me why I bother to knit when I have so many other things to do. This is the reason why: for the joy of seeing someone you love pull your work out of their pocket and slip it on their hands, around their neck, over their head.



What an elation last week when this little eight year old girl unknowingly wrapped herself in my love for her. Her thought was simply to warm her freezing hands! But I knew that the mitts would someday warm her freezing heart... or mine.

xo