Beautiful Cynicism III

Someday, emerging at last from the violent insight
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Happy holidays!

Wednesday, 29 December 2010 | 15:38

www.someecards.com

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Brain freeze & other problems

Monday, 6 December 2010 | 22:23

I wandered the hallowed halls of consumerism this evening, making my annual wintry pilgrimage to the mall in search of random trinkets to be excitedly unwrapped three weeks from now. While I adore the Christmas season, and for me the holiday is decidedly secular, I generally despise the Christmas shopping season and all that goes with it. The visual onslaught of signs screaming SALE! DISCOUNT! DEALS! in seizure-inducing colours and fonts; the pouty children demanding this or that toy right now; the pushy crowds willing to trample anyone who dare come between them and the last Tickle Me Elmo doll on the shelf… But today was different, perhaps due to the fact that the dates are still in the single digits. Or maybe the change was in me: I went to the mall with a purpose, namely a shopping list three names long. An hour and a half passed, and I walked away – bags full, wallet empty, a sense of accomplishment floating around me. Is this not the very definition of an empty accomplishment?

As I weaved my way through the crowds I observed my fellow consumers. There were happy couples, teenagers with attitude, elderly ladies badgering their grown sons, harried-looking mums with tots in tow. I moved among them effortlessly, never really feeling a part of it all. I think I may have actually been smiling.
My family gathers together on Christmas Day, but remains within each smaller immediate family unit for Christmas Eve. I realised that this will be the first Christmas Eve that I spend alone in nearly a decade, my family unit having been decreased from a cozy two to a solitary one. As I walked across the bus loop to the street, I thought of the ghosts of Christmases past, and thought for a moment that I had become one. I felt unmistakably ‘of the past’, as though a fraction of a moment from some indistinct winter long gone had been displaced to the present day. Maybe it was the way the light hit the ice on the pavement, or the way the snow smelled as it fell on my face, but I was suddenly utterly convinced that I was about to hop on a westbound bus and head for my grandparents’ house, which I called home, and where I would find my Baba hard at work canning something or other in the kitchen, whilst my Dzizi dozed on the chesterfield while a football game played loudly on the TV. Life is so very different now.

Instead, I headed east, taking the bus downtown. Seeing the traffic snarl at The Bay, and knowing I was armed with the appropriate fuzzy winter accoutrements and a pocketful of music, I decided to walk the rest of the way home. Blocked streets gave way to deserted, if slippery, sidewalks, and I walked uninterrupted all the way to the village. The falling snow glowed green by the light of the giant Christmas tree at Great-West Life; as I stepped on to Osborne Bridge I looked down at the icy river and noticed that someone had made a snow angel right on the riverbank. Ten years in and these Winnipeg winters still feel magical. After awhile it gets tedious, and I complain as loudly as anyone else about the bitterly cold winds – but early on in the season I’m still in awe by the sheer preposterousness of the snow’s whiteness, the water’s iciness, the wind’s sting. In some ways I’m glad this place still doesn’t feel like home, because I think if it did, I’d lose that sense of wonder.

In the village, three strapping young lads walking just ahead of me started a snowball fight; when one errant sphere nearly hit me, all three stopped to apologise profusely. So many perfectly lovely human beings, so many handsome men… yet we tend to think only of those who show no interest in us, or who happen to be the “ones that got away”. Are we really that vain? Is it really all about winning after all? Or are we just all emotional masochists at heart?

I may be an atheist who loves Christmas, but I’ve never felt the need to defend that seeming contradiction. For me, Jesus is not the reason for the season, nor is it all about packages, boxes, and bags, as the Grinch said after his change of heart. It’s just another excuse to draw those you love and who love you near; to talk, laugh, eat, drink, and sing; to celebrate being alive and being together – albeit against a backdrop of old timey music and twinkly lights. Now that’s a holiday I can get behind.

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Happy Mother’s Day

Sunday, 9 May 2010 | 8:17

La beauté des mères dépasse infiniment la gloire de la nature.

Christian Bobin

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Après l’hiver, la résurrection

Sunday, 4 April 2010 | 16:23

Une pluie douce et rafraîchissante suivi par du grand soleil. Des couleurs vives et une lumière éclatante. Un repas gourmand après des cérémonies solennelles. Des rires, des plaisanteries, des chansons; la famille, les amis, l’amour… Joyeuses Pâques.

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St. P

Wednesday, 17 March 2010 | 18:42

Dirty, mucky snow melting in the shade of a sunset. Peach yogurt and litchi liqueur whilst waiting for the hot water tank to reset after loads of laundry, so that I may settle in to a hot bath. All around me: boxes, cleaning, moving, upcoming upheaval. Spring: a time of change, turning over of new leaves, dawn of a new day…

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V-day

Sunday, 14 February 2010 | 10:34

Happiness is only possible as an ongoing project. The pursuit of the thing, it turns out, is the thing itself.

Amanda Marcotte

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The Driveway

Thursday, 4 February 2010 | 6:40

We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future. ~George Bernard Shaw

And yet, recollections there are: and many, at that. And yes, looking towards and preparing for the future are important – but so is remembering the past, which is what shapes us, from one little HPB to Miss Orange…

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Better late than never (I)

Wednesday, 13 January 2010 | 2:01

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Sto lat!

Wednesday, 6 January 2010 | 0:01

So glad you’re you. And so glad you’re a part of me.

Happy birthday :)

Photo: sleepishly @ Flickr

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End of (holi)days

Saturday, 2 January 2010 | 3:06

Every man should be born again on the first day of January. Start with a fresh page. Take up one hole more in the buckle if necessary, or let down one, according to circumstances; but on the first of January let every man gird himself once more, with his face to the front, and take no interest in the things that were and are past.

Henry Ward Beecher

Photo: AquaSixio @ Deviant Art

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…in with the new

Friday, 1 January 2010 | 13:12

Yes, that about sums up my New Year’s Eve and the birth of 2010. Drinking, singing, munching, laughing, and generally rocking out: it’s all good. Happy New Year! :)

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Out with the old

Thursday, 31 December 2009 | 12:03

New Year’s eve is like every other night; there is no pause in the march of the universe, no breathless moment of silence among created things that the passage of another twelve months may be noted; and yet no man has quite the same thoughts this evening that come with the coming of darkness on other nights.

Hamilton Wright Mabie

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Festivity fatigue?

Tuesday, 29 December 2009 | 4:19


Photo: MotyPest @ Deviantart

And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so?
It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags!
And he puzzled and puzzled ’till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before.
What if Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store? What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more?

Dr. Seuss

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And to all a good night

Sunday, 27 December 2009 | 2:33

I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.

Charles Dickens

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Post-script

Saturday, 26 December 2009 | 13:02

Presents have been opened, food has been eaten, laughter has been shared: ghosts of yet another Christmas past. Now, on to Boxing Day sales? I think not: this year, nothing but rest is on my agenda. Which is not to say that I’m complaining. :)

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Curiosity killed the cat, you know…

La cynique est... Végétarienne. Activist. Socialiste. Perfectionistic. Stubborn. Attentive. Curvy. Quiet. Rebelle. Feminine. Sensible. Opinionated. Généralement anxieuse. A closeted idealist.

Cet espace est... Un lieu bilingue, libre et ouvert, without censorship (unless you're an evil spammer, in which case I will happily drive a stake through your heart and proudly display your head on a pike), plein de poésie et de beauté (espérons). Now put on your reading glasses and get busy.

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