Tulum, Quintana Roo

53

may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old

may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
for even if it's sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young

and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there's never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile

-- ee cummings

Greetings from Xcalacoco, Quintana Roo

Christmas sunshine with be-ribboned Bean

On Christmas gifts

"To your enemy, forgiveness. To an opponent, tolerance. To a friend, your heart. To a customer, service. To all, charity. To every child, a good example. To yourself, respect." -- Oren Arnold (via Writer's Almanac)

Joni Mitchell - River (for Christmas in LA)

Christmas

The bells of waiting Advent ring,
The Tortoise stove is lit again
And lamp-oil light across the night
Has caught the streaks of winter rain
In many a stained-glass window sheen
From Crimson Lake to Hookers Green.

The holly in the windy hedge
And round the Manor House the yew
Will soon be stripped to deck the ledge,
The altar, font and arch and pew,
So that the villagers can say
'The church looks nice' on Christmas Day.

Provincial Public Houses blaze,
Corporation tramcars clang,
On lighted tenements I gaze,
Where paper decorations hang,
And bunting in the red Town Hall
Says 'Merry Christmas to you all'.

And London shops on Christmas Eve
Are strung with silver bells and flowers
As hurrying clerks the City leave
To pigeon-haunted classic towers,
And marbled clouds go scudding by
The many-steepled London sky.

And girls in slacks remember Dad,
And oafish louts remember Mum,
And sleepless children's hearts are glad.
And Christmas-morning bells say 'Come!'
Even to shining ones who dwell
Safe in the Dorchester Hotel.

And is it true,
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window's hue,
A Baby in an ox's stall ?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me ?

And is it true ? For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant,

No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare -
That God was man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine. 

 -- John Betjeman

Christmas: Darlene Love on Letterman (2004)

Strange light in the foothills

watercress beds in the Little Tujunga creek

bamboo

looking east

towards the national forest

Shyla in her Christmas coat

Hughie

storm clouds

Santa Lucia

Lussinatt, the festival of Santa Lucia is celebrated in Scandinavian countries on December 13. However, any time in advent is a good time to make these sweet saffron buns -- lussikatter. Ann, our Swedish au pair (she came to stay with us for a few months to learn English, but couldn't have been more than 17 -- I do remember, however, curiously, that her aunt was the famous opera singer, Elisabeth Söderström) spent an entire December day locked in the kitchen, mixing and rolling and baking.  The entire house smelled of sweet yeast and cardamom, my very favorite smell.

Here is the recipe:

Lussekatter
Lucia buns are the traditional treats handed out during the children’s procession and are a sweet bread or ‘boller’. The literal translation is ‘Lucia cats’. This is because of the characteristic winding tail design. The buns are also decorated with raisins.

50 grams of fresh yeast or 1 packet of dry yeast (note: sweet dough yeast is best to use)
150 grams butter
500mls of milk
1 gram of saffron (or half a teaspoon of turmeric)
150 grams of sugar 1/2 teaspoon of salt 2 teaspoons of cardamom
About 1.3 litres of plain flour (measure in a water jug)
For decoration: 1 beaten egg for glazing Raisins

Melt butter. Add milk. Crumble yeast in a mixing bowl in some of the lukewarm milk/butter mix. Then add rest of wet ingredients. (Skip this step if using dry yeast.) Mix in sugar salt cardamom and saffron. Add flour knead until a nice firm dough. (If using dry yeast add packet to flour before adding to the mix.) Cover in plastic wrap and let raise until double the size. Sprinkle some flour on a kneading area and knead dough well. Cut dough into pieces and roll them to long finger thick sausages. Shape them into the famous Lussekatter double spiral. Place on a baking sheet and cover in plastic. Allow to raise for 15 minutes. Glaze with beaten egg and decorate with raisins (usually one raisin in each eye of the swirl.) Bake at 225°C for 5-8 minutes (depending of size). Let them cool on a rack. They taste best lukewarm.

A Nocturnal upon Saint Lucy's Day

'TIS the year's midnight, and it is the day's,
Lucy's, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks ;
The sun is spent, and now his flasks
Send forth light squibs, no constant rays ;
The world's whole sap is sunk ;
The general balm th' hydroptic earth hath drunk,
Whither, as to the bed's-feet, life is shrunk,
Dead and interr'd ; yet all these seem to laugh,
Compared with me, who am their epitaph.

Study me then, you who shall lovers be
At the next world, that is, at the next spring ;
For I am every dead thing,
In whom Love wrought new alchemy.
For his art did express
A quintessence even from nothingness,
From dull privations, and lean emptiness ;
He ruin'd me, and I am re-begot
Of absence, darkness, death—things which are not.

All others, from all things, draw all that's good,
Life, soul, form, spirit, whence they being have ;
I, by Love's limbec, am the grave
Of all, that's nothing. Oft a flood
Have we two wept, and so
Drown'd the whole world, us two ; oft did we grow,
To be two chaoses, when we did show
Care to aught else ; and often absences
Withdrew our souls, and made us carcasses.

But I am by her death—which word wrongs her—
Of the first nothing the elixir grown ;
Were I a man, that I were one
I needs must know ; I should prefer,
If I were any beast,
Some ends, some means ; yea plants, yea stones detest,
And love ; all, all some properties invest.
If I an ordinary nothing were,
As shadow, a light, and body must be here.

But I am none ; nor will my sun renew.
You lovers, for whose sake the lesser sun
At this time to the Goat is run
To fetch new lust, and give it you,
Enjoy your summer all,
Since she enjoys her long night's festival.
Let me prepare towards her, and let me call
This hour her vigil, and her eve, since this
Both the year's and the day's deep midnight is.

-- John Donne

Winter light in Hudson, NY

Hudson, NY

The Royalton

Central Park, morning

Laurel Canyon morning

The Poet with His Face in His Hands

You want to cry aloud for your
mistakes. But to tell the truth the world
doesn't need anymore of that sound.
.

So if you're going to do it and can't
stop yourself, if your pretty mouth can't
hold it in, at least go by yourself across
.

the forty fields and the forty dark inclines
of rocks and water to the place where
the falls are flinging out their white sheets
.

like crazy, and there is a cave behind all that
jubilation and water fun and you can
stand there, under it, and roar all you
.

want and nothing will be disturbed; you can
drip with despair all afternoon and still,
on a green branch, its wings just lightly touched
.

by the passing foil of the water, the thrush,
puffing out its spotted breast, will sing
of the perfect, stone-hard beauty of everything.

-- Mary Oliver (via 3QD)

Madness & Love

“Jane, my little darling (so I will call you, for so you are), you don't know what you are talking about; you misjudge me again: it is not because she is mad I hate her. If you were mad, do you think I should hate you?" 

"I do indeed, sir." 

"Then you are mistaken, and you know nothing about me, and nothing about the sort of love of which I am capable. Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear. Your mind is my treasure, and if it were broken, it would be my treasure still: if you raved, my arms should confine you, and not a strait waistcoat--your grasp, even in fury, would have a charm for me: if you flew at me as wildly as that woman did this morning, I should receive you in an embrace, at least as fond as it would be restrictive. I should not shrink from you with disgust as I did from her: in your quiet moments you should have no watcher and no nurse but me; and I could hang over you with untiring tenderness, though you gave me no smile in return; and never weary of gazing into your eyes, though they had no longer a ray of recognition for me.” 

― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

Sunday Sunday

Dotsie

Fred & Cocomo

Ice at Middle Ranch

Magical bamboo forest

Greater Spotted

Tujunga Canyon sky

Spotteds, Hog's back