Himself.

Try, like some first human being, to say what you see and experience and love and lose. Do not write love-poems; avoid at first those forms that are too facile and commonplace: they are the most difficult, for it takes a great, fully matured power to give something of your own where good and even excellent traditions come to mind in quantity. Therefore save yourself from these general themes and seek those which your own everyday life offers you; describe your sorrows and desires, passing thoughts and the belief in some sort of beauty — describe all these with loving, quiet, humble sincerity, and use, to express yourself, the things in your environment, the images from your dreams, and the objects of your memory. If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place.

I know no advice for you save this: to go into yourself and test the deeps in which your life takes rise; at its source you will find the answer to the question whether you must create. Accept it, just as it sounds, without inquiring into it. Perhaps it will turn out that you are called to be an artist. Then take that destiny upon yourself and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking what recompense might come from outside. For the creator must be a world for himself and find everything in himself and in Nature to whom he has attached himself.

Rainer Maria Rilke, from Letters to a Young Poet

Happy Birthday, Conrad

Few people realize that their life, the very essence of their character, their capabilities and their audacities, are only the expression of their belief in the safety of their surroundings.  The mind is capable of anything – because everything is in it, all the past as well as the future.

Joseph Conrad, born on this day in 1857

Steadying.

Evenings at this point in the Oyster Months find this house engaged in the ancient and sacred rite of the Welsh Rarebit, repeated as needed ...

WELSH RAREBIT

Ingredients

• A knob of butter
• 1 tbsp flour
• 1 tsp Coleman's mustard powder
• ½ tsp cayenne pepper
• 1c. Guinness
• A very long splash of Worcestershire sauce
• 1lb. mature strong Cheddar, grated
• 4 pieces of toast

Method

1. Melt the butter in a pan, stir in the flour, and let this cook together until it smells biscuity but is not browning. Add the mustard powder and cayenne pepper, stir in the Guinness and Worcestershire sauce, then gently melt in the cheese.
2. When it’s all of one consistency, remove from the heat, pour out into a shallow container and allow to set. Spread on toast 1cm thick and place under the grill. Eat when bubbling golden brown. 
3. This makes a splendid savoury at the end of your meal, washed down with a glass of Port, or as a steadying snack.

Recipe courtesy of Fergus Henderson, from The Complete Nose to Tail

Thanks to Grandma Chenoweth.

Bearing.

Their bearing, which was simply the bearing of commonplace individuals going about their business in the assurance of perfect safety, was offensive to me like the outrageous flauntings of folly in the face of a danger it is unable to comprehend. I had no particular desire to enlighten them, but I had some difficulty in restraining myself from laughing in their faces, so full of stupid importance.

Joseph Conrad, from Heart of Darkness

Happy Birthday, Seurat

Seurat, Poplars, 1884

Let's go and get drunk on light again – it has the power to console.

George Seurat, born on this date in 1859

Happy Birthday, Callas

What is there in life if you do not work? There is only sensation, and there are only a few sensations— you cannot live on them. You can only live on work, by work, through work. How can you live with self-respect if you do not do things as well as lies in you?

Maria Callas, born on this day in 1923

Performing "Una voce poco fa", from Rossini's The Barber of Seville

Alive.

Edwards, Snowing, n/d

Every day is filled with opportunities to be amazed, surprised, enthralled—to experience the enchanting everyday. To stay eager. To be, in a word, alive.

Rob Walker, from The Art of Noticing: 131 Ways to Spark Creativity, Find Inspiration, and Discover Joy in the Everyday

Thanks to Kurt for the great image.

Frank Sinatra, "Mistletoe and Holly"

Released.

Styx released Equinox on this day in 1975.

"Light Up"...

Order an extra side of ranch with your chicken nachos.

Culture.

Seneca said, "Acts of cruelty are often a manifestation of personal insecurity or a lack of inner strength, rather than a sign of true power."

Dating back to the days of Woody Hayes, the legacy of Ohio’s thug culture (players and fans) endures. 

Leadership dictates culture.  What is permitted is promoted.

“Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes.”

Peter Drucker

Hand-Delivered.

Wyeth, Crescent, 1987

Every family has their Christmas traditions. Mine always involved the Reindeer Run.  As a young girl, my father (Nicky) and I would head south to Chadds Ford for our “Reindeer Run”.  The Reindeer Run was a fun-filled, week-long visit which my father and I made every year to see close friends and relatives in Chadds Ford. Daddy called our trip a reindeer run because instead of shipping all our Christmas presents to everybody there, we hand-delivered them.

Driving down the Jersey Turnpike, Daddy would try to calm me down (always unsuccessfully) and attempt to distract me by asking me to count the number of Christmas trees I saw along the way. I guess he figured I wouldn’t ask so often, “When are we going to get there?” He was wrong.

Finally, we’d pull into my grandparents’ driveway late in the evening. The first thing I would see, set on top of a large maypole which my grandmother, Betsy, placed by the woodshed, was a three-foot tall Christmas tree, covered with what seemed like thousands of tiny white lights. My grandparents, visible only from the waist up as they stood behind the double Dutch front door of their house, were smiling. They were waiting for Daddy and me to tumble out of the car into their enveloping hugs.

Victoria Browning Wyeth

Fully-Lived.

Sir Winston on the arts, imagination, and other things related to a life fully-lived ...

The arts are essential to any complete national life. The State owes it to itself to sustain and encourage them. The country possesses in the Royal Academy an institution of wealth and power for the purpose of encouraging the arts of painting and sculpture….

The Prime Minister, who spoke with so much feeling and thought on this subject, has reminded us of the old saying that it is by art man gets nearest to the angels and farthest from the animals. Indeed it is a pregnant thought. Here you have a man with a brush and palette. With a dozen blobs of pigment he makes a certain pattern on one or two square yards of canvas, and something is created which carries its shining message of inspiration not only to all who are living with him on the world, but across hundreds of years to generations unborn. It lights the path and links the thought of one generation with another, and in the realm of price holds its own in intrinsic value with an ingot of gold. Evidently we are in the presence of a mystery which strikes down to the deepest foundations of human genius and of human glory. Ill fares the race which fails to salute the arts with the reverence and delight which are their due.

Winston Churchill, born on this day in 1874, from a speech given at The Royal Academy of Arts, 30 April 1938

If you are inclined - late in life though it be - to reconnoitre a foreign sphere of limitless extent, be persuaded that the first quality that is needed is Audacity. There really is no time for the deliberate approach. Two years of drawing-lessons, three years of copying woodcuts, five years of plaster casts - these are for the young. They have enough to bear. And this thorough grounding is for those who, hearing the call in the morning of their days, are able to make painting their paramount lifelong vocation. The truth and beauty of line and form which by the slightest touch or twist of the brush a real artist imparts to every feature of his design must be founded on long, hard, persevering apprenticeship and a practice so habitual that it has become instinctive. We must not be too ambitious. We cannot aspire to masterpieces. We may content ourselves with a joy ride in a paint-box. And for this Audacity is the only ticket.

Sir Winston Churchill, from Painting as a Pastime

Armed with a paint-box, one cannot be bored, one cannot be left at a loose end, one cannot "have several days on one's hands." One must not be too ambitious. One cannot aspire to masterpieces. We may content ourselves with a joy ride in a paint box. And, for this, audacity is the only ticket.  Just to paint is great fun. The colors are lovely to look at and delicious to squeeze out. Matching them, however crudely, with what you see is fascinating and absolutely absorbing. 

Sir Winston Churchill, from Painting as a Pastime

You cannot tell from appearances how things will go. Sometimes imagination makes things out far worse than they are; yet without imagination not much can be done. Those people who are imaginative see many more dangers than perhaps exist; certainly many more than will happen; but then they must also pray to be given that extra courage to carry this far-reaching imagination. But for everyone, surely, what we have gone through in this period - I am addressing myself to the School - surely from this period of ten months this is the lesson: never give in, never give in, never, never, never-in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy. We stood all alone a year ago, and to many countries it seemed that our account was closed, we were finished. All this tradition of ours, our songs, our School history, this part of the history of this country, were gone and finished and liquidated.

Winston Churchill, from his speech at the Harrow School, October 29, 1941

Excellent.

An excellent book ...

Keep.

Thanks, Walker's Arms.

Hear.

Frederick Buechner on the silence of Advent ...

But if you concentrate just for an instant, far off in the deeps of yourself somewhere you can feel the beating of your heart. For all its madness and lostness, not to mention your own, you can hear the world itself holding its breath.

Thanks, Kurt.

Traditions.

The Field on the ancient traditions of Christmas ...

In the hall of the rambling Elizabethan farmhouse of my childhood was a wide, inglenook fireplace. Every Christmas Eve, the gardener drag-ged in an enormous Yule log, balancing it with much heaving and grunting across the fire dogs. This would be lit by the remaining piece of the previous year’s log and the fire had to burn for the 12 days of Christmas. A roaring log fire when outside all is in the grip of bleak mid-winter and the wind thunders in the chimney is as much a part of Christmas Eve as the tree, the decorations and the holly, ivy and mistletoe. And as with so many of our Christmas traditions, its origins predate Christianity by at least a millennium.

The winter solstice, the shortest day and the longest night, occurs around 21 December and for a period of about a fortnight, our Neolithic ancestors and the Iron Age Celts lit huge bonfires to conquer the darkness and held sacrifices in a desperate plea for the sun to be reborn, bringing its promise of light, warmth, regrowth and fecundity. The tradition of burning a Yule log came to these islands after the collapse of the Roman Empire and the influx of tribes from Scandinavia. An entire tree trunk of oak or ash with the branches lopped off was dragged into the great halls of tribal Saxon chiefs and one end placed in the open fires. The halls were decorated with evergreens, holly, ivy and mistletoe, a custom inherited from the Roman mid-winter festival of Saturnalia, and during the 12 days of feasting to celebrate the return of the sun, the trunk was gradually fed into the fire so that it burnt continuously.

Endless superstitions were attached to it: the sparks spiralling upwards were believed to represent the successful birth of different species of livestock; the ash protected the house from natural disasters and if mixed with water, was a general cure-all for both humans and animals. Difficulty in lighting the Yule log was considered ominous; if the flames cast a person’s shadow without the head, it presaged their death in the coming year and it was a complete calamity for everyone if the fire went out.

Thanks, Buff. 

Closer.

THE SECRET SONG of the CHRISTMAS TREE

Step closer, please, and hear my song.

It won’t take long, it won’t take long.

I hold my secret in the frost

I keep my secret in the cold

I hold it tight; it can’t get lost:

A secret as shiny as gold.

Fly me high through winter air

Take me over freezing seas

Place me in the bright lights’ glare

Stand me in the icy breeze.

Step closer now and hear my tune

Lit by the beaming Christmas moon.

I had to go, I could not stay

Beneath the distant stars so high,

My secret hidden, locked away

As fragile as a sigh.

I’m here to stand as people stare

As babies point and parents smile

And magic fills the gleaming air

Crowds slow down and stand awhile.

Step closer, please, and hear my song.

It won’t take long, it won’t take long.

In a country far away

The light shone on the saw,

I felt unsteady, felt me sway

Crashed down to the floor.

But something happened as I fell

I felt some magic start to shift

Inside me like a secret spell

Like falling snow begins to drift.

Step closer now and hear my tune

Lit by the beaming Christmas moon.

In the corner of your watching eye

Here’s my secret: hard to prove.

My well-lit branches wave goodbye:

When nobody’s looking, I move.

I stroll around Trafalgar Square

Then quickly I am back in place.

But surely I was over there?

I see it in your face!

I am the mobile Christmas tree

My secret’s safe with you.

Step over here and you will see

I’m walking. Yes, it’s true!

Step closer, please, and hear my song.

It won’t take long, it won’t take long.

Ian McMillan

Felicity.

From "Christmas," found in Washington Irving's The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon ...

Of all the old festivals, however, that of Christmas awakens the strongest and most heartfelt associations. There is a tone of solemn and sacred feeling that blends with our conviviality, and lifts the spirit to a state of hallowed and elevated enjoyment. The services of the church about this season are extremely tender and inspiring. They dwell on the beautiful story of the origin of our faith, and the pastoral scenes that accompanied its announcement. They gradually increase in fervour and pathos during the season of Advent, until they break forth in full jubilee on the morning that brought peace and good-will to men. I do not know a grander effect of music on the moral feelings than to hear the full choir and the pealing organ performing a Christmas anthem in a cathedral, and filling every part of the vast pile with triumphant harmony.

It is a beautiful arrangement, also, derived from days of yore, that this festival, which commemorates the announcement of the religion of peace and love, has been made the season for gathering together of family connections, and drawing closer again those bands of kindred hearts which the cares and pleasures and sorrows of the world are continually operating to cast loose; of calling back the children of a family who have launched forth in life, and wandered widely asunder, once more to assemble about the paternal hearth, that rallying-place of the affections, there to grow young and loving again among the endearing mementoes of childhood.

There is something in the very season of the year that gives a charm to the festivity of Christmas. At other times we derive a great portion of our pleasures from the mere beauties of nature. Our feelings sally forth and dissipate themselves over the sunny landscape, and we "live abroad and everywhere." The song of the bird, the murmur of the stream, the breathing fragrance of spring, the soft voluptuousness of summer, the golden pomp of autumn; earth with its mantle of refreshing green, and heaven with its deep delicious blue and its cloudy magnificence, all fill us with mute but exquisite delight, and we revel in the luxury of mere sensation. But in the depth of winter, when nature lies despoiled of every charm, and wrapped in her shroud of sheeted snow, we turn for our gratifications to moral sources. The dreariness and desolation of the landscape, the short gloomy days and darksome nights, while they circumscribe our wanderings, shut in our feelings also from rambling abroad, and make us more keenly disposed for the pleasures of the social circle. Our thoughts are more concentrated; our friendly sympathies more aroused. We feel more sensibly the charm of each other's society, and are brought more closely together by dependence on each other for enjoyment. Heart calleth unto heart; and we draw our pleasures from the deep wells of living kindness, which lie in the quiet recesses of our bosoms; and which, when resorted to, furnish forth the pure element of domestic felicity.

The pitchy gloom without makes the heart dilate on entering the room filled with the glow and warmth of the evening fire. The ruddy blaze diffuses an artificial summer and sunshine through the room, and lights up each countenance into a kindlier welcome. Where does the honest face of hospitality expand into a broader and more cordial smile—where is the shy glance of love more sweetly eloquent—than by the winter fireside? and as the hollow blast of wintry wind rushes through the hall, claps the distant door, whistles about the casement, and rumbles down the chimney, what can be more grateful than that feeling of sober and sheltered security with which we look round upon the comfortable chamber and the scene of domestic hilarity?

Alexander, "Once in Royal David's City"

Performed by The Choir of King's College, Cambridge, directed by Stephen Cleobury ...