Saying goodbye to 2016 with gratitude

Saying goodbye to the year that has passed has become a New Year's Eve ritual for me. There's something about the thought that a whole year has passed and that a new one lies on the doorstep, waiting for me to enter, that tends to make me nostalgic, makes me think back on all that has happened during the year. The good as well as the bad.

Bad things happen to all of us and we know that it's not what happened to us, but the way we handled it that matters. So, on the last day of each year, I  page through those "bad" happenings one more time and then put that book away, relegated to the bottom shelf, right at the back!

I spend a bit more time thinking of all the "good" things that happened - the visits to my family, feeling grateful that we had another successful business year, being thankful for the bountiful rain we've had, thinking of the joy I felt every time I sold a painting and thanking the Universe that another year has passed with no serious health issues.

I therefore wish you a new year filled with wisdom - the wisdom to know how to accept all that has happened in your life and the wisdom to know when it is time to move on.

Langston Hughes said,
“Hold fast to dreams,
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird,
That cannot fly.”

Merry Christmas 2016

Take time during the rush of the holidays to enjoy the things in life that really matter. Take in the serene moments spent with friends and loved ones, and a good book, of course! May your heart be filled with joy and peace and may these holiday blessings linger in your home and stay with you throughout the year.

24th December reading

24th December
- by Mark Rutherford (1831-1913)

My housekeeper and her husband have begged for a holiday from this morning till Boxing-day, and I could not refuse. I can do without them for so short a time. I might have spent the Christmas with one of my children, but they live far away and travelling is now irksome to me.

I was seventy years old a month past. Besides, they are married and have their own friends, of whom I know nothing. I have locked the door of my cottage and shall walk to No-man's Corner.

It is a dark day; the sky is covered evenly with a thick cloud. There is no wind except a breath now and then from the north-east. It is not a frost, but it is cold, and a thick mist covers the landscape. It is no thicker in the river bottom than on the hills; it is everywhere the same. The field-paths are in many places a foot deep in mud, for the autumn has been wet. They are ploughing the Ten Acres, and the plough is going along the top ridge so that horses and men are distinctly outlined, two men and four horses, but the pace is slow, for the ground is very heavy. I can just hear the ploughman talking to his team.

The upturned earth is more beautiful in these parts than I have seen it elsewhere--a rich, reddish brown, for there is iron in it. The sides of the clods which are smoothed by the ploughshare shine like silver even in this dull light. I pass through the hop-garden. The poles are stacked and a beginning has just been made with the weeds. A little further on is the farmhouse. It lies in the hollow and there is no road to it, save a cart-track. The nearest hard road is half a mile distant. The footpath crosses the farmyard. The house is whitewashed plaster and black-timbered, and surrounded by cattle-pens in which the oxen and cows stand almost up to their knees in slush. A motionless ox looks over the bar of his pen and turns his eyes to me and my dog as we pass. It is now twelve, and it is the dinner-hour. The horses have stopped work and are steaming with sweat under the hayrick. The men are sitting in the barn. Leaving the farmyard I go down to the brook which steals round the wood and stop for a few minutes on the foot-bridge. I can hear the little stream in the gully about twenty feet below, continually changing its note, which nevertheless is always the same. In the wood not a leaf falls. O eternal sleep, death of the passions, the burial of failures, follies, bitter recollections, the end of fears, welcome sleep!

(Novelist and essayist William Hale White (who wrote under the pen name of Mark Rutherford) served as a civil servant in the British Admiralty before publishing his first major work (The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford, Dissenting Minister) at the age of 50. White's early writings, says Professor Angus Ross, were "anonymous personal confessions of his loss of faith in Calvinist certainty, written with a tough irony and knowledge of London low life."

In the short essay "24th December" (which was published in More Pages From a Journal, OUP, 1910), Rutherford appears to be offering little more than a series of desultory observations on the countryside--until he arrives at his powerful elegiac lament in the final sentence.)

The world between the covers of books

As a child I could never have dreamt that there were such goings-on in the world between the covers of books, such sandstorms and ice blasts of words ... such staggering peace, such heartache, such enormous laughter, such and so many blinding bright lights, splashing all over the pages in a million bits and pieces, all of which were words, words, words, and each of which were alive forever in its own delight and glory and oddity and light. But once discovered (at the age of about 7), all those feelings have become a part of my life. For days after reading a poignant book, I would live in a daze of White Fang and his tribulations, or the story of Muzhik, nicknamed Strider, a Piebald born in the night; and by the morning, having been licked over by my mother, already stood on his feet. There is no more thoroughbred horse in the world than Muzhik.

Every time I enter a book store, this poem comes to mind :

I keep collecting books I know I'll never, never read; 

My husband and daughter tell me so, 

And yet I never heed. 

"Please make me," says some wistful tome, 

"A wee bit of yourself." 

And so I take my treasure home, 

And tuck it in a shelf.

And now my very shelves complain; 

They jam and over-spill. 

They say: "Why don't you ease our strain?" 

"some day," I say, "I will." 

So book by book they plead and sigh; 

I pick and dip and scan; 

Then put them back, 

distrest that I am such a busy woman. 

I have many unread books on my shelves - some bought for their topic, some bought for their beautiful cover and some bought because they were highly recommended. Amongst the topics, my much-read  favourites are those about succulents, trees and grasses of Southern Africa, butterfly identification, water gardening and snakes and reptiles. And, of course, my much-used Ian Sinclaire's Field Guide to The Birds of Southern Africa.

Untouched on my shelves is a yoga instruction book, wealth management, how to be yourself, Pride and Prejudice, Rich Man, Poor Man and a few other "should have" topics, and one day I will get around to them!