Sunshine is good for the winter blues. Soak it up.

 We have had storms and gray skies and thunder and lightning and wind for days. Now I am sitting in the sunlight, rejoicing, taking weird photos for all the kiddies.

This is the United States of America now.

“Human nature favors the tribal. Tribalism engenders violence. It was ever thus and so it will ever be.” 

                             ― Kate Atkinson

This is really about Time.

“The most cherished goal in physics, as in bad romance novels, is unification.”
                                                         ― Lee Smolin

Letter from my sister, reprinted with permission

[A note of explanation. I received a letter from my sister today, included was a letter I wrote to her in 1998, along with a letter with comments on that letter and letter writing in general.]

Jan 8 - 2021

J_

As usual, I am in my office looking for a book I started—there are so many!

Anyway while going through piles of notes I found this letter from you—I loved rereading it. I think now more so because of the distance and time that has passed. So I have made a decision to reread and send most back to you.

The part about (blank) is a hoot! I kept the short story, The Green Man by Richard Calantropio, you even wrote in the margins and marked when he changed POV—I had to laugh. All of this is so like you.

I feel as though we have spent the afternoon together—And that's how important a letter really is. It's a piece of  frozen time, our life in that day—that moment in time where even the descriptions of chores, mundane things take on new meaning.

I love you

L_

[Reader, I wept. And am going to reread her letters to me, too.]

Love is like the wild rose-briar.

“Love is like the wild rose-briar; Friendship like the holly-tree. The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms, but which will bloom most constantly?” ― Emily Brontë

Giving it my all.

“I always believed that once you take a decision, you have to give it your all. However, by doing so you will eventually miss a piece of your heart, or should I say, you will miss a wagon of your locomotive; like a locomotive that switches tracks and heads in a new direction, taking the rest of the train, but leaving one (or five) behind, and within it, some of your behavior, actions, habits and dreams — right along with it. Well, that's what the consequences of our decisions are all about.

So every now and then, when I randomly think about my next step, goal or dream, I end up thinking about the old me Vs. me now.”
                        

                             ― Efrat Cybulkiewicz

Gray on a Sunny, winter day.

 

Franz von Stuck - Falling Stars

Franz von Stuck - Falling Stars

I am reading Little, Big, a story which has a theme of our little lives juxtaposed against bigger events, etc. It always makes me think of stars. All those suns or worlds, most already dead and gone, in the night sky and there I am sitting, looking at them, my little life, my little and tiny place in the universe, so small, it is like the invisible fairies of Little, Big, the ones never quite seen but there on the periphery. I am on the side of life that is fading. I am fading. Soon into oblivion. I used to shudder at such a thought but now, not exactly resigned, but quite realistic, I make a slight moan of protest and perhaps I will shudder later. Who knows. Right now I am too tired to act. 

First Selfie of 2021

 

It's a beautiful day. I went for a walk, then looked around my yard. There are still camellias blooming. I am still here, a wildflower in this savage garden called Life.