What an odd day!

Christmas is always a time to reunite with friends. The hysteria of the moment alerts one to the pressing need to do so. There isn't much else going on apart from the social ambitions - or perhaps it is the regret at avoiding or missing out on them. I haven't any such contrition, never have.  Every Season I attack the imperative with gusto and fulfill whatever magic I am capable of executing (including gifts, wreaths, floral arrangements, cards and whatever other accessories catch my eye during aimless rambles throughout the glittering merchant outlets). Christmas is highly charged for me!

Thus invigorated I called Vancouver.  "My mother died mid-September at 99", he told me.  At last - I thought - but instead said, "My sympathies". To which he replied, "Someday I have to tell you the full story.  But not now."

There are exceptions to this saccharin mysticism. Yet the so-called inescapable realities shouldn't be cause for dissolution. The New Year will soon remind us all that Time is running out; and that the object is not to perpetuate but relish. It behooves us to extract what flavour we can.  The challenge isn't preposterous purity but rather intelligent absorption.

How comical it is to be surprised by the serendipity of life - as though our perception of anything were other than topical. The coincidences of life are not by chance or luck! They are the very composition of our essence! Though we haven't a shred of control of providence we mustn't pretend to limit its anatomy.

Often I have been reminded of the unpredictable nature of life - the unpleasant and the pleasant. Surely there is no profit in elimination! Neither should we suffer the persuasion of intemperate consolation. The better resolve is the only one that is possible in any event, just keep going and hope for the best!  And leave the pettiness behind; it'll only haunt you in the end.

“Quickly, as if she were recalled by something over there, she turned to her canvas. There it was—her picture. Yes, with all its greens and blues, its lines running up and across, its attempt at something. It would be hung in the attics, she thought; it would be destroyed. But what did that matter? she asked herself, taking up her brush again. She looked at the steps; they were empty; she looked at her canvas; it was blurred. With a sudden intensity, as if she saw it clear for a second, she drew a line there, in the centre. It was done; it was finished. Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigue, I have had my vision.”

Excerpt From: Woolf, Virginia. “To The Lighthouse.” Public Domain