To my boy, on his birthday

Sometimes numbers are just numbers, and sometime they baffle us with their improbability. When our babies grow into a full blown adulthood, one is quite baffled, no matter how one looks at the person who emerged.
I read this piece a while ago, from Dear Sugar to her earlier self. I gave it to my grown baby to read, in hopes it helps getting over the many humps still waiting for him along his future life.

Francesca Woodman

One more dead photographer being rediscovered by the media. She took her own life at a tender age of 22, leaving her photographic legacy to her parents to decipher and introduce to the world posthumously.
You can see more of her compelling work here.

Simon's Cat Double Holiday Cheer

Beware of your cats during the holiday season, everyone!

Winter Moon

Walking home last evening I saw the most incredible moon yet - hovering over the buildings bigger, brighter, luminous like no street light can ever be.
It said - come, come, come...

Hedgehogs

I finished reading "The Elegance of the Hedgehog" last week.
I kind of liked parts of it, the premise is a good one, and the literariness of it appealed to me, but I thought the ending is a complete cop out. I can't discuss it because it would be a spoiler if you haven't read it.
As a child, one of my favourite books was about a kid who is home sick and has only a hungry hedgehog as a companion. The illustrations were wonderful, and at the time, in my girlhood, hedgehogs would sometimes appear in our neighbourhood, not pets but the real things, wild ones, out on a tour of their habitat. We loved their visits but there were always cats and silly kids to disturb them and eventually they disappeared altogether.

Anyway, I looked up hedgehog on youtube, and lo and behold, there is a world out there full of hedgehog pets I'd never have guessed.

Finds

A great dancer from the 80's, Jorge Donn, and 20 years later, doing the same dance, but different, Silvie Guillem, the greatest dancer alive: This one I watched tonight on TFO, an incredible a Capella choir transforming orchestral music into vocal in the most wonderful way:

The Young Ones

It was my young one's birthday yesterday. I admit that I am past my prime in organizing parties, having done so for many years exhausted all my desires in that area of life. So it is up to them if they want to have a party. This young man baked a wonderful cake with a good friend, called his buddies to watch an old Hitchcock film, and had a great informal party where he made pizza and tea with them in our kitchen, ate and made a great mess, all under his own initiative.
All I had to do was roll some pizza dough and clean, which I was happy to do while listening to them laugh and be silly.
It's encouraging to see that our young ones can appreciate the simple things in life.

How To Defend Your Territory

Watch and lean. This will be my daily meditation from now on (the images minus the commentary).

Enduring challenges

Manliness consists not in bluff, bravado, or lordliness. It consists in daring to do the right and facing consequences, whether it is in matters social, political, or other. It consists in deeds, not in words. –Mahatma Gandhi

I only have one quibble about this quote - it is the stuff of womanliness as well. Either that or I have to be a man at least once a day in this life. I love being a woman, but there are certainly days I wish I were a man.

December - End of a Year

Yesterday we had first snow.
It blasted for a little bit, lingered a while and then melted and vanished as if it never happened. It as a sign of things to come, blasting winds and cold, gray days, months of cocooning with a blanket and a hearty soup at hand.
Men came into the shop to get a respite from the cold, and to buy warm clothes. Lets hope it's a sign for a good season.
I got yesterday a beautiful sweater and it adorns my mannequin now. Who will be the smart and elegant man to buy it? time will tell.
Soon it will look like this: