In this issue

1. My image of the week

2. Frontispiece

3. A hymn to the opening of the day and the wonder of a garden

4. Seeing like a Moth

5. Fevered Mind Links (to make your Sunday morning coffee go cold)

6. Bookends

My image of the week

-Thich Nhat Hanh

Frontispiece

-Spike Milligan

A 20th birthday of sorts

Today marks the twentieth birthday-of sorts. Well, twenty issues since Breathing Light began. So that’s twenty issues, four per month for a total of five months. 

Has it really been that long?

Each week, Anna from Revue puts out a newsletter of her own for all of us in her stable (and an enormous stable it must be!)  It is full of helpful advice, tips and tricks, and ways to extend our individual newsletters' reach.

Last week’s advice was about how to take a holiday break (apparently, we all deserve a break at Christmas) and how to gently ease your audience out into the current of time for a short period. The thought did occur to me, but when I mentioned it to several trusted friends, I was well and truly told what they thought of that for an idea and put in my place. 

So I will be carrying on over the holidays.

And why not?

Anyway, what is a holiday when you see each day as one? When you live each one as such?

When you are doing what you love and love what you are doing, there is no need to look forward to the holidays, because you are already in the middle of one. Hence, there is no TGIF (Thank God It’s Friday), or its opposite, OFTIM (Oh F***, Tomorrow Is Monday). 

I guess that when you are marching to the beat of someone else’s drum, then you’re not in charge of your own life and your own destiny. Nobody deserves to be a cubicle slave. We are all worth more than that.

Perhaps that is why there is a lot of journalism at the moment around the idea of The Great Resignation. 

On the other hand, maybe lockdowns and the pandemic are what we need as a species, society, and individuals to make us think about what is really important to us.

 Maybe it’s the quality rather than the quantity in our life that matters.

A hymn to the opening of the day and the wonder of a garden

“Tess was awake before dawn — at the marginal minute of the dark when the grove is still mute, save for one prophetic bird who sings with a clear-voiced conviction that he at least knows the correct time of day, the rest preserving silence as if equally convinced that he is mistaken.”

― Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Each morning is very sacred for me (I think I’ve written about that several times!), But it doesn’t hurt to repeat it. You see, I’m becoming increasingly aware that the finish line is a lot closer than the start line (unless somebody invents Methuselah pills).

Saturday, which is newsletter day, starts like many others. I normally rise around 5 am. because I want to get up, go outside and run my mind’s restless fingers through the hair of the wind that has been sighing outside my window during the night. 

Occasionally, if I’m lucky, I will be able to go and listen to the silver fall of rain upon my lawn and the more staccato drum on the corrugated plastic covering my porch. Then again, since I tend to get up several times during the night, I have the joy of watching the passage of Orion as it arcs and tumbles across the sky. 

The cherry trees on my south boundary act as a rearguard to hold back the chilly southerly wind, fingering the fretboard of the air. In the moonlight, inscrutable clouds intent on their own purpose slither slowly past, silent sheep in the vast fields of the night on their way to mysterious pastures north.

There is a wondrous mystery to this time, a balancing of night and day, of darkness and coming light. It really comes down to a matter of minutes, when the inky gloom of darkness raises its eyebrows and begins to surrender to the flowering wonder of the Sun's approach.

I will often wander around my garden, feeling the subtle energies of the different plants and their whispered conversations. As the light rises, I will look at the vegetables I’ve planted, greet them and stare in fascination at the way they are unfurling their leaves and thrusting upwards towards the warmth of the day. 

For weeks now, I have watched the taewa (Maaori potatoes), which have been lurking in their black polythene bags, sulking deep within the rich potting mix where I planted them. I have whispered to them and cajoled them into breaking the surface and beginning their climb towards the sky. And they have mostly ignored me. Or so it seemed. Until one morning, peering anxiously into their inky fastness, I observed a subtle leaf tip prising apart the cracked surface and tentatively poking its head through the gap. They all seem to have the idea now and compete to see who will get the largest and soonest.

The comfrey I transplanted under the cherry tree has caught on as well. Three leaves give me the bird, defying my best attempts to doom it to despair.

People have asked me if I am lonely living here on my own, but who could be lonely with so many conversations to be had?  I can happily wander around for hours, observing and talking to all these different plant lifeforms, conversing with them and learning from the wisdom they have to offer.

And then there are the lilies. After weeks of taunting me with their possibility, suddenly they have burst into life, spreading their arms in supplication to the light and the entrance of the day. Perhaps I will go out when the moon is reaching down to them, and the moths are circling, writing their own erratic paths on the vellum of the night, and attempt to make their likeness under the silver light.

There is the joyous ritual of the first coffee, usually not long after the sun has lifted the shutters of the night. Then, I will go into my studio, put on ethereal and meditative music, and begin to work. There is something to be said for sitting in a state of balance as the earth rolls away to the east.

And then the sun emerges above the house next door, a celestial decorator who coats my kitchen in shimmering gold. The light finds its way across the lounge and down the hall and slathers warm yellow light on my desk and screens.

I will wrap my hands around my coffee cup and, for a time, sit in balance.

And be grateful.

For gratitude is the doorway of connection to the wonder of All That Is and to the wonder of life.

Seeing like a Moth

Fevered Mind Links (to make your Sunday morning coffee go cold)

Winter Trees as a Portal to Aliveness — www.themarginalian.org

There is something about the skeletal splendor of winter trees — so vascular, so axonal, so pulmonary — that fills the lung of life with a special atmosphere of aliveness.

Letters to an Emerging Creative: Getting Noticed — www.thebigidea.nz

As a decorated arts writer and critic, Andrew Wood has seen and experienced most of what the creative industry has to offer. In his first open letter to emerging creatives, he detailed everything you need to know about getting started. This time, it's about getting noticed.

Newfound type of storm is a 1,000-km-wide puddle in the sky — newatlas.com

A new type of storm has been discovered in the skies over the Indian Ocean. Named “atmospheric lakes,” these events are slow-moving pools of concentrated water vapor that can last for days.

Dark Chocolate, Orange & Chilli Croissant Pudding — www.nzherald.co.nz

If you're looking for a sweet treat, look no further than our Dark Chocolate, Orange...

Before I Grew Up: A Stunning Illustrated Elegy of Life, Loss, Our Search for Light, and Loneliness as a Crucible of Creativity — www.themarginalian.org

Childhood is one great brush-stroke of loneliness, thick and pastel-colored, its edges blurring out into the whole landscape of life. In this blur of being by ourselves, we learn to be ourselves.

Must-Have Spice Blends That Culinary Experts Swear By — www.huffpost.com

These seasonings can add a big hit of flavor to your cooking.While some chefs turn up their noses at spice blends ― such as everything bagel seasoning or Old Bay, for example ― these flavorful seasonings can be a real asset in the kitchen.

Christmas in the Middle Ages

Ensemble: Für Frühe Musik Augsburg Album: Weihnachten im Mittelalter - Christmas in the Middle Ages

100 Adobe Photoshop Tricks and Tips You May Not Know — fstoppers.com

Adobe Photoshop is one of the most complex pieces of software in the industry. While it is relatively easy to do the basics as a beginner, it has layers of depth that go far past where even many experts go. In this video, learn over 100 different tricks and tips.

Celtic Ritual December : Celtic Sacred Calendar — www.chalicecentre.net

In December, at the very darkest time of the year, we head towards the Winter Solstice, when the new light is born out of the womb of winter.

This Artist’s Oil Paintings of Women Are Considered the Most Realistic in the World — mymodernmet.com

Creating portraits that are startlingly lifelike, Chinese artist Leng Jun is a master of hyperrealism. The accomplished painter is particularly known for his detailed oil paintings of women, where every wisp of hair and fiber of clothing is rendered to perfection.

Buried Avocado House disappears into beautiful Mexican landscape — newatlas.com

Commissioned to design a vacation home in an avocado field while leaving the field itself as intact as possible, Francisco Pardo Arquitecto decided on the radical approach of burying the home.

End Papers

― Eckhart Tolle

And so we arrive on the shores of Christmas after crossing the stormy sea of 2021, hoping that it will be a time of peace and rest and that our next journey out of the harbour will be a kinder one.

As if.

Here in the South of the world, it is a time of barbecues, backyard cricket and warm, sunny days. Not so much for those of you living above the Equator, in Canada, the US, Ireland and the UK, where the nights are long and the snowdrifts high.

We have come to the Winter/Summer Solstice when light and dark sit in balance.

We are about to enter the Twelve Days of Christmas, from December 25 to January 6, a tradition dating from earliest times, and indeed the 4th Century, when the Church Of Rome overlaid the Festival of the Sun with the Festival of the Son (you can read more here).

It may be a time of stress and rush for many of us, as if everything must be completed by December 24. So let us spare a thought for our tradies (tradespeople), who will be under pressure-" You want it when?"

It needn't be.

And let us give a thought to those amongst us for whom Christmas is a time of dread, despair and loneliness. A random gift, a phone call, perhaps even an invitation to lunch will make all the difference.

After the Siege of Christmas Passed, perhaps when we have time to reflect, we might read Wendel Berry's wonderful poem The Peace of Wild Things

Ngaa mihi nunui arohaa ki a koe,

ki a koorua

ki a koutou

ki a koutou katoa

Much love to you all.