that’s a wrap

. . . or rather, an unwrap. twenty-five days of advent calendar presents for three kids (two kids and a boyfriend), plus a mix of presents that included specific requests and random surprises, all ordered, delivered, and wrapped. they have all been opened and everybody is moving on. this is a season when it feels good to spoil people, and let them feel entitled. and i hate passive aggressive messaging. so i’m not complaining, but i better start getting a little gratitude around here, starting in 2021…

snow frosted oak leaves

before and after

this is a circle of fullness and gratitude that is slowly being filled in as this year draws to a close, and 2021 waits just over there, full of hope and expectation.

dried peony blossoms

tease

one last image of these dried peonies before i deconstruct them for tomorrow’s composition.

dried peony blossoms

earth murmurs

these peony stems look like sound waves to me. the murmurs of mother earth. it reminded me of the famous joseph campbell and bill moyers interview about myths. it was released in 1988, but just as relevant as ever:

BILL MOYERS: You talk a lot about consciousness.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Yes.

BILL MOYERS: Most people hear that term and like me, have only a veiled understanding of it. What is it?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Jean and I are living in Hawaii, and we’re living right by the ocean. And we have a little lanai, a little porch, and there’s a coconut tree that grows up through the porch and it goes on up. And there’s a kind of vine, plant, big powerful thing with leaves like this, that has grown up the coconut tree. Now, that plant sends forth little feelers to go out and clutch the plant, and it knows where the plant is and what to do– where the tree is, and it grows up like this, and it opens a leaf, and that leaf immediately turns to where the sun is. Now, you can’t tell me that leaf doesn’t know where the sun is going to be. All of the leaves go just like that, what’s called heliotropism, turning toward where the sun is. That’s a form of consciousness. There is a plant consciousness, there is an animal consciousness. We share all of these things. You eat certain foods, and the bile knows whether there’s something there for it to go to work on. I mean, the whole thing is consciousness. I begin to feel more and more that the whole world is conscious; certainly the vegetable world is conscious, and when you live in the woods, as I did as a kid, you can see all these different consciousnesses relating to themselves.

BILL MOYERS: Scientists are beginning to talk quite openly about the Gaia principle.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: There you are, the whole planet as an organism.

BILL MOYERS: Mother Earth.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: And you see, if you will think of ourselves as coming out of the earth, rather than as being thrown in here from somewhere else, you know, thrown out of the earth, we are the earth, we are the consciousness of the earth. These are the eyes of the earth, and this is the voice of the earth. What else?

peony stems

a man for all seasons

i look forward to the tender, curly leaf edges of dock in spring, i look forward to hearty heads of dock in midsummer. i look forward to the emerging red seed stalks of dock in fall. i look forward to the dessicated coffee colored seed heads of dock in winter. i look forward, it might accurately be said, to dock.

curly dock in winter