Winter Kept Us Warm

With this Winters 70+  temperatures, 

T. S. Eliot's line from The Waste Land is literally true.

Five years ago I wrote the following:

Saturday, December 11, 2010

Solstice Approaches

Another winter solstice arrives in ten days, this time with a total lunar eclipse. Outside, beyond the screen porch, the skeletons of oaks reach up to a sky pale as death. It is impossible not to think of mortality on such a day. 

It is noon, Darryl is still asleep upstairs, and I have watched a Swedish film about the troubled life a a woman photographer from World War 1 through the Twenties. Art arises out of  hard life experiences. No doubt, as I look around rooms of art, the huge Larry Connatser painting in front of me that hung on my mother's wall for decades, two people conversing in a cubist world of turbulence; The Picasso lithograph of two figures confronting one another with masks; the Huichol jaguar with a peyote button on its forehead; even the sculpted Buddha protected by a cobra. Art penetrates into the heart of life.

What better time to make merry, to decorate evergreen trees, to drink eggnog, and believe in sweet baby gods. The moon will turn blood red this Solstice as the dark winter caresses the Northern Hemisphere. Thus goes the cycle of death and rebirth. The New Year follows with dancing and champagne.

May your holidays be sacred, may they give birth to the angels of your highest selves. 

Peace,

Jameson