There is no question in my mind that I should be writing Christmas cards rather than emailing them.  The issue is not the price of stamps (although that does surprise me something fierce);  it is the deterioration of my handwriting.  I am being punished for teasing my mother about her illegible handwriting;  our relatives always joked about how long her letters lasted because it took days to decipher them.  I am beginning to understand.

Apparently I am not the only one whose writing hand is disobedient.  It is not coordination, because I can word-process like a demon.  (I blame this skill, by the way, on my father, who signed me up for typing lessons in the SUMMER of Grade 10.   He said I would be glad later, because I certainly wasn't overjoyed at the time.  He was right, of course, but neither of us had foreseen the future, in which little, less, or no handwriting is a social expectation.  In this brave new digital world, the first casualty has been cursive.)  Quite aside from the issue of legibility, kids print now if they hand-write at all and amazingly, few can even read cursive.  My favourite older adult corrective to this development is Jeanne Robertson's;   a lanky former Miss North Carolina in spike heels, Robertson is hilarious;  watch her stand-up "Learning Cursive" on YouTube ( would give you the link if I knew how).  An admirable solution.

But while I have the knowledge and even the old writing callus of cursive, I now lack the requisite patience to form correct shapes.  So much for my smug superiority to Jon, never having been summoned to campus to read my exams aloud.  Now neither Jon nor I can read our own notes, let alone one another's.  Last week I left a quick note to him which read "Go to the grocery store and to your mother's."  Luckily I arrived home while he was still puzzling about why he should go and what he would be expected to find.  I had meant to write "Gone."  Close.  No cigar.  

So in the spirit of fond memory, I offer this thirty-year old calligraphic tribute to friendship.  If you can read this, you are OLD.  The upside is, of course, the presence of old friends, as well as the new ones who will stake out their own places in your heart.

My physics teacher in high school once spoke of growing up on a poor farm and studying by the light of a kerosene lantern.  I still picture him, leaning forward, face lit with concentration, against a dark backdrop, the kitchen lost in shadows.  Rembrandt caught his figures in such a way, lighting his focal point with a tiny point of pure white in a pooled field of colour.  Caravaggio, one of my favourites, was even more dramatic, his subjects limned with light.

David Mitchell's The Bone Clocks is  "a good read," as we addicts would put it.  Mitchell has a deft hand with imagery and there were several I wanted to remember.  However, I was reading it in Overdrive on the iPad and the software will not allow any copying, so I started a text document to write them down.  Only gradually did I realize that many of them focused on light.   He writes that "(b)y seven o'clock, twilight is draping the attic in blues, grays and blacks.  The little lamp on the piano glows daffodil yellow."  Our piano has just such a lamp and, yes, its light in winter is warmly comforting.  At a key moment in the novel, "motes of dust swirl in the sunshine slanting down the wall of books.  Golden pollen."  What a gorgeous image of both the illumination and fertility of knowledge!

Absence of light is at best ambiguous:  "In the velvet darkness, I see her smile.  A blade of happiness slips between my ribs."  John Milton had to create an oxymoron to evoke Hell as "darkness visible," an image I far prefer to Orwell's prosaic "double plus ungood" to pinpoint the worst we can imagine.  In literature, as in life, the presence or threat of darkness serves only to highlight the promise of light.  

Solstice is almost upon us.  We will soon be tilting back towards the sun.  And so, too do our days pass.  This canvas,  which was started yesterday,  is an attempt to capture that moment when the day is almost over  but there remains a glowing cobalt world.  And the faith that light will return.

I've been fielding the odd phone call lately, reassuring friends that I am perfectly well and that we have neither departed for the Orient nor been lost at sea.  I confess that December is pretty thin as far as journalling is concerned.  I consider myself to be doing well if I can keep the wave of Christmas chaos out of the main floor.  Beyond that, no promises.  So in the spirit of Total Overload, I offer only my December 16th post of last year with the motto:  "Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose."


Most of our canoes (5 plus a kayak) have flotation devices.  These are simply big tough air-bags which are designed to discourage the vessels from sinking like stones.  This is particularly important when we are tripping on less-traveled rivers.  While Jon becomes more and more completely relaxed, I am feverishly visualizing the stages that a body (mine) will go through after I drown.  So the bags are a great comfort to me and are, besides, brightly coloured (so the search and rescue helicopter can locate my body).  On a sunny day they are cozy to curl up to.  Jewell even snoozed on them, although she had a tendency to toboggan off them in the rapids.  Flotation:  all good.

It is a week before Christmas and I caught myself thinking about this as we walked along in the pouring rain tonight.  The flotation devices I was passing were somewhat more frivolous in intent:  most of them were Santas, complete with interior lights and bouncing with seasonal excitement.  For several years I have been planning an entrepreneurial coup inspired by these hot-air gentlemen.  Now if I tell you, you must promise not to steal my thunder or hot air.......

To appreciate the brilliance of this concept you have to think like a pre-Christmas woman.  I know you can do this.  Now review the lists you are working from:  Christmas gift thinking/finding/hauling/wrapping/carding/delivering;  Christmas cards writing/sending/reading;  special people meeting/phoning/emailing/entertaining;  Christmas decorations unboxing/untangling/arranging/dangling;  Christmas food deciding/shopping/hauling/storing/baking/cooking/table-setting/ serving/cleaning up.  And, of yes, there is the Christmas house cleaning/paring/ dusting/polishing.  Anyway, that's the short-list.

So here's the pitch:

an inflatable wife/mother/sister/daughter/professional!  But unlike Santa, she will fully inflate only in the mornings, and will gradually lose air throughout each day.  After Christmas morning, she simply remains collapsed on the grass.  Isn't that a money-maker?

What do you think?

I still think someone could make a fortune with this.  That, and a teeshirt to be worn underneath regular clothes, which can be ripped off to reveal the phrase "Just Shoot Me."  There you go:  my two best (only) entrepreneurial ideas.  Merry Christmas.  

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