Merry Christmas

A Christmas candle is a lovely thing;
It makes no noise at all,
But softly gives itself away;
While quite unselfish, it grows small.

Eva K. Logue


At Christmas I no more desire a rose,
Than wish a snow in May's new-fangled shows;
But like of each thing that in season grows.

William Shakespeare

Le Lac

Ainsi, toujours poussés vers de nouveaux rivages,
Dans la nuit éternelle emportés sans retour,
Ne pourrons-nous jamais sur l'océan des âges,
Jeter l'ancre un seul jour?

Always pushed towards new shores like this,
Swept away into an eternal night, without return,
Can we never, on this ocean of days,
Throw down an anchor, for a single day?

Lamartine

apples

It is ridiculous, at this very moment, how much I want an apple.

Crunchy - preferably cold.

I think that apples, for me, at this particular time, are the epitimisation of matarialism. I truly believe that a material object (in this case, an apple) could improve my life immeasurably.

Oh Wikipedia, tell me something esoteric about materialism...

"The term is often associated with criticisms of consumption starting with Thorstein Veblen."



This guy.

Thorstein Bunde Veblen was a Norwegian-American sociologist and founder of the institutional economics movement. This movement focuses on understanding the role of human-made institutions have on economic behaviour, the purposive decisions of individuals, what affects these decisions, and how they shape the economy.

Good on you, Thorstein.

umbrella obsession

我高

"He who has known the contentment that comes simply through being content, will never again be otherwise than contented." - Tao Tê Ching

I have never felt
like just being
as much as I do right now.

Capitalism

Russian Dolls

They sit quietly within one another,
As though the steppe were not wide enough
For them all to stand alone.

With that hollowness inside of them,
I suppose it is natural
That they sought company in smaller versions of themselves.

Or perhaps
They did not want companionship,
But an anchor
So the wind would not sweep them away.

One day
They might grow tired of one another
And seperate a while, only to find themselves
Spreading
Like the seeds of a silverberry tree.












Note:

It is incredibly difficult to find the name of a tree that lives around the Eurasian Steppe that has syllables that are: Stressed unstreesed unstressed (unstressed) whose seeds are spread by the wind. In the end, I settled for silverberry.

"And seperate a while,
Only to find themselves
Spreading like the seeds of a silverberry tree."

or what I used above?

I had a "Russia" phase a little while back - Russka, by Edward Rutherford, and Russian Empires, by Philip Longworth, are two books I remember enjoying.

I'm not sure if I'd ever like to visit Russia, but I love the idea of Russia.

I'm quite interested, now, in finding some Russian poetry. And reading a bit more Tolstoy.