Another Lifetime: wishes

Thursday, December 24, 2009

wishes

Hello Dahhhhlings,

I had planned to post proper Happy Holiday wishes last night, but got all wrapped up in wrapping paper. I write this from work without any access to my photos, so I've decided to post the last stanza from one of my favorite Christmas poems, "Child's Christmas in Wales" by Dylan Thomas:

Looking through my
bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on
our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steady falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close
and holy darkness, and then I slept.

Something about the "close and holy darkness"..... I know this intimately, don't you? I hope you all have a wonderful holiday and that you are able to find peace and contentedness at the center of many moments, at the center of yourself.

Sending you wishes of
peace
serenity
pure
and
silent
as snow

Love,
S

3 comments:

kendalee said...: Oh Sheila, this is one of those poems I'd forgotten all about - last read it when I was at University I think... so a lifetime ago! Thank you for reminding me of it. "close and holy darkness"-something I occasionally feel when I am awake in the early hours... beautiful.

I hope you too are enjoying a gentle, peaceful few days, full of deep love and warm light. xo, K; December 26, 2009 at 11:00 AM
What About The Girl? said...: Hello darling Sheila,
It is snowing today (I'm sure you've noticed that as well..ha!)
Happy new year!
I am off to a place where there is no snow. I thought I'd drop by to give you hugs before the year ends!
I am so thankful to have found a friend in you.

Much love!
the girl ;-); December 31, 2009 at 8:34 AM
♥ Boomer ♥ said...: And a happy, happy, happy New Year to you and yours!; December 31, 2009 at 7:06 PM

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What I'm Reading

Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortenson

The Hour I First Believed, Wally Lamb

The Bookseller of Kabul, Åsne Seierstad

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, Maggie O'Farrell
"Esme stares at the spiked rocks. She stares and stares until they begin to lose their third dimension, until they begin to look unfamiliar, insubstantial. Like the way words said over and over become just a slurry of a sound. She says the word 'word' over and over in her head until she hears only 'dwur-dwur-dwur'. She is aware of those numbers, the two and the eight, trying to find a place to slip back in. They have been lurking at the edges where she pushed them and they are mounting an assault, a break-in. She won't have it. She will not."

The House of Seven Gables, Nathaniel Hawthorne
"But as for the old structure of our story, its white-oak frame, and its boards, shingles, and crumbling plaster, and even the huge, clustered chimney in the midst, seemed to constitute only the least and meanest part of its reality. So much of mankind's varied experience had passed there, -so much had been suffered, and something, too, enjoyed,- that the very timbers were oozy, as with the moisture of a heart."

The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
"She was sitting up now. My arm was around her and she was leaning back against me, and we were quite calm. She was looking into my eyes with that way she had of looking that made you wonder whether she really saw out of her own eyes. They would look on and on after every one else's eyes in the world would have stopped looking. She looked as though there were nothing on earth she would not look at like that, and really she was afraid of so many things"

The Life You Can Save: Acting now to end world poverty, Peter Singer
"In the United States, 97 percent of those classified by the Census Bureau as poor own a color TV. Three quarters of them own a car. Three quarters of them have air conditioning. All have access to health care. I am not quoting these figures to deny that the poor in the United States face genuine difficulties. Nevertheless, for most, these difficulties are of a different order than those of the world's poorest people."

Kiss Me Like a Stranger: My search for love and art, Gene Wilder

Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert
"I walked into an office building one afternoon in a hurry, dashed into the waiting elevator. As I rushed in, I caught an unexpected glimpse of myself in a security mirror's reflection. In that moment my brain did an odd thing-it fired off this split second message: 'Hey! You know her! That's a friend of yours!' And I actually ran forward toward my own reflection with a smile, ready to welcome that girl whose name I had lost but whose face was so familiar......Never forget that once upon a time, in an unguarded moment, you recognized yourself as a friend"

The Kindness of Strangers, Katrina Kittle

The Alchemist, Paolo Coelho, translated by Alan Clarke
"'Everyone on earth has a treasure that awaits him,' his heart said. 'We, people's hearts, seldom say much about those treasures, because people no longer want to go in search of them. We speak of them only to children. Later, we simply let life proceed, in its own direction, towards its own fate. But, unfortunately, very few follow the path laid out for them- the path to their Personal Legends, and to happiness. Most people see the world as a threatening place. So, we, their hearts, speak more and more softly. We never stop speaking out, but we begin to hope that our words won't be heard: we don't want people to suffer because they don't follow their hearts.'"

Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
"For this is the truth about our soul, he thought, our self, who fish-like inhabits deep seas and plies among obscurities threading her way between the boles of giant weeds, over sun-flickered spaces and on and on into gloom, cold, deep, inscrutable; suddenly she shoots to the surface and sports on the wind-wrinkled waves;"

The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
"The room hovered around me with great gentleness, as if the chairs and the tables and the walls were witholding their weight out of sympathy for my sudden frailty"

Another Lifetime

Thursday, December 24, 2009

wishes

3 comments:

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