"All hail to the days that merit more praise
Than all the rest of the year,
And welcome the nights that double delights
As well for the poor and the peer!
Good fortune attend each merry man's friend
That doth but the best that he may,
Forgetting old wrongs with carols and songs
To drive the cold winter away."
~ In Praise of Christmas, (18th century England)
Merry Christmas to you!
ReplyDeleteMerry Christmas!
ReplyDeleteThank you for all your great posts.
Am on my way to vigil Christmas Mass shortly, wanted to wish you the same. You have provided me with many, many hours of enjoyment reading you writing and enjoying your photos. RichardK/Texas
ReplyDeleteMerry Christmas to you ...
ReplyDeleteI don't know why, but a couple of days ago, I came across a quotation, somewhere on the Internet. I liked it, so I copied it - in pencil - into my notebook.
It might seem slightly out of context as a Christmas Greeting, since it deals with an aspect of "arabic" thought and civilisation.
To me, this does not matter much, since I have abandoned the concept of religion in a narrow sense. This said, I am still interested in the meandering ways of the soul. (Yes, I do prefer this term over the bleakly scientific 'psyche'.)
More than once, it occurred to me to compare these movements of the soul to calligraphy or to an arabesque, (an "ornamental design consisting of intertwined flowing lines, originally found in ancient Islamic art", according to the ODE); and it is more in this abstract sense that "arab thought" matters to me.
The ways in which all this is linked in my mind with your blog are multiple: French language, in which I found the quotation in question; calligraphy on your home-made greeting card (done with your roughly sharpened, red carpenter's pencil, as one might suppose); water, which plays some role in your pictorial elements, be it droplet-small on a window surface, as a refreshing creek, or ocean-wide:
La pensée arabe se répète comme l'eau jaillissante;
de même que la musique arabe est mélodique et non harmonique;
de même que le temps est comme une spirale et non comme une trajectoire.
Ahmad al-Badawi
Christmas greetings from Europe
A Blessed Christmas to you, your words and photos have been a blessing and gift to me this past year.
ReplyDeleteMerci à vous tous, pour tout vos pensées.
ReplyDeleteAnd I am grateful for all of you!
I don't take the time, throughout the year, to comment on your work, but do look forward to a new blog article, and savor each of them. Thank you for sharing your heart and talent with us. Merry Christmas!
ReplyDelete