1. Mother asked father what he was watching on television while my father played solitaire in the living room, and he replied: "Thor", whereupon mother acquired a rather dazed look, and said, "Thor? How do you spell that?" "T-H-O-R." "What's that," mother asked. "A movie about Thor, the norse god of thunder and lightning." "Huh." (mother has definitely seen both Thor and the Avengers)
2. Quiddler victory. I think it's a spiritual gift. Unless against Matthew.. I think his spiritual gifting is stronger.
3. Art history study under the warmest of blankets
4. World's End in front of the fire at Matthew's
5. Snow
6. Staring through the bony trees that look like the rib cages of colossal beasts, layered with lichen and moss over every available surface, pointing to north on every facet, and into the mountains and the hills, splattered with powdered-sugar snow.
7. Thick mists swallowing the low-land marshes at the base of the hill and snaking with the creek through the tall brush covered with hoarfrost so even the spiderwebs are crystallized and beautifully articulated in white
8. Quietude and rain.
9. Books: V for Vendetta, The Story of Art, ee cummings Selected Poetry, Carl Sandburg Complete Poetry, Simic The Voice at 3:00 AM
10. Chips and salsa everywhere (mother actually procured a great assortment of my favorite foods. I think she bought enough so that if I ate only chips and salsa, or only anything, she'd probably have enough of that one thing. Home is a sort of happy-trap)
11. Journaling
12. Being completely in the country, and driving along country roads. There is something about driving along country roads that empties me of pain and fills me with joy. I don't even need to know I have pains to be uplifted. It's like not knowing what a burden gravity is until you can fly.
13. The family. They are the best.
14. Cookies (I don't even eat many cookies - read #10. But knowing that they are there increases the level of Christmas by a far sum)
15. Tree, candles, tea, fireplace, wreath, lights, music, snow - it's a Christmas wonderland
I love visiting my family, though I begin missing my friends the instant I leave them. The tranquility at home, however, is unmatched.
Frost the leaves and they are diamonds,
spider's webs are stained glass prisms
trapping winter wishes
in grasses beside the road
hart and hind leave hearts behind
crossing frozen streams that hide
among the hoarfrost patches
that linger beside the road
broad the fog's grey-gloved hand
that cossets now the argent land
whose silver hair and flaxen plains
are dormant now,
sleeping, beside the road
though the aspens shiver,
the pines share not their coat
the maples, naked, ice-chimes bear
the firs are clothed,
yet ice grows in their hair -
does the wind sing eerily
when birds and bees have disappeared?
whispering beside the road
---
The moose was here,
his musk is heavy in the mists
that shrouded his steps -
can you mask such magnificence?
his cleft toes clench
the earth so gently
he brushes past
the spider-webbed grass
reverently
how can one
walk so lightly
who bears a weight so heavy
I ponder this
as his footsteps carry me
deeper into the mists
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