Stories that make sense
Now.
Enough worrying about the future. Enough revisiting the past in the light of new information. Enough telling myself I’d do it right this time if I only I got a second chance. I only get now once, and it’s only polite to show up for it.
Peace.
Hope. For the world.
Hope, for the world.
Hope for the world.
Hope.
Thank you for hope.
Thank you for everything.
2023 taught me that the thing that worked up until yesterday may not work today – and that the thing that didn’t work a month ago may be exactly right for now.
And my intention for 2024 is therefore to pay attention and keep an open mind, trying things so long as they seem to have potential and to be compassionate.
Well, any sufficiently large number of light emitting diodes is indistinguishable from magic. Probably.
Only one person ever knew what they were getting into, had the choice whether or not to be human, knowing what that inevitably implies, and still did it, for all the rest of us.
… Three months pregnant (I would have said it was more, but the maths works out, and it’s true that we were only just starting to tell people) and with a lap full of cats. I spent a lot of last Christmas Eve making vegan pierogi. This year we’re getting it out of a packet (not vegan).
I don’t know where this year’s gone. (I mean, I know exactly why it’s gone, but that isn’t quite the same thing.) Which is unusual for me, because I usually make a point of being aware of where I am in time.
These last few days, though, it’s all seemed to settle down, though not on account on anything I’ve done myself. The Morville Year, which I’d bought and immediately lost in the extra safe place in which I’d hidden the present I bought at the same time, turned up (as did the present – too late for the birthday for which it was originally intended, but just in time for Christmas). I loved The Morville Hours and the way it moves gently through the cycle of the year, and have been looking forward to reading this, a collection of related articles.
Slow Time is an old friend, a book that’s encouraged me to explore the calendar and the traditions in which I grew up. And one thing that I have already noticed about organised children’s activities is that they are very keen on seasonal themes, so it ought to get easier from here on in.
One last thing. I was amused to note, firstly that I’d run out of my previous soap bar just in time to start the Christmas Spice one – and secondly, that the one I’ve just finished (and had been using all through Advent) was called Wake Up Call. If you know, you know.
This photo is from yesterday but the nacreous clouds were too lovely to pass up, even if I didn’t get a spectacular photo of them. The rest of the sky was pretty good, too.
Honestly, who knows? Part of the joy of this life is forgetting and then being reminded. A lot of details from this year are already vanishing into haze, and many were inflected with hormones such that, while I remember that there was joy or pain or sheer hell, I don’t remember how.
But this was a more simply memorable moment, opening an archive box that arrived in the post to find it full of individually wrapped presents from my team. For the most part work seems like a different universe, but I do have great colleagues, and it was lovely to catch up with those that I saw at the office the other day.
Stripping it right down this year. But it’s still tradition.
Kathleen Jowitt 