 Goodbye, 2020! This is a new year's eve really to celebrate, with our faces turned firmly away from the past (though not forgetting the many lessons we (should have) learned, and toward a future we can pray will be at least a bit less difficult and crazy.
 Coldest Christmas here in 2 decades. No snow of course, so I post this to remind those who are here of one of the reasons we are here.
 Walt Whitman:
"There was never any more inception than there is now, Nor any more youth or age than there is now; And will never be any more perfection than there is now, Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now." Much of what I'm reading argues (rightly, in my view) against the myth of "eternal progress" and urges us to focus on what is before us here and now. 2020 should have taught us something about this; ultimately the story we tell ourselves about being in control is at best a myth. (The guy in the White House is a pathetic model of to what the denial of this truth leads.) Today is the day we have received (all is gift, grace); let us rejoice and be glad in it. I believe that is a good motto with which to begin the new year.  David Hinton on ancient Chinese thought:
"Sea-mist drifts, ridge lines writhing and swelling, then eventually thins away. Valleys appear. Days pass into nights. Snows come. Seasons turn. Lives begin and end. Dynasties rise up and fall into ruin . . . Vast and deep, everything and everywhere: existence is alive somehow—magically, mysteriously, inexplicably alive. Nothing holds still . . . all dynamic energy in perpetual transformation. This is the most fundamental nature of existence . . ." I like ancient Chinese painting, and Hinton suggests that what it shows us is what he has described above. Much of what I'm working on right now is an attempt to show that too.  Grey, cloudy morning here (in St Pete), getting colder even as I write this. Perfect day to sleep in, or just dreamily recall earlier days, days of dreamlike beauty . . . I was told oncethat this (Big Sur) is not such a great place to live, the fog constantly rolls in from the sea, cold and dismal. Perhaps, but from here it looks like a world of dreamlike splendor.
 moon climbs
through spectrum of interweaving color while below earth darkens quiets slowly slips into Dream time |
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