Skip to main content

Sealed.

Just like that, after several years of putting up a fight against the demise of sending Christmas cards (real live ones), it seems that we collectively kind of sighed and put them aside. We got a handful of cards this year. Yes, and that means I have five fingers.  I atleast made some vague effort before, but this year, no, I put it out of my mind. I got another five electronic cards and countless Facebook/Twitter/Email greetings instead.

I am an advocate for writing cards, for care packages and for letter writing, but even I have surrendered.  I want to want it more. I know we will miss something.  Down the line there will be a petering out of artifacts from this season, in this era.  I still treasure Christmas cards my mother was given, and that I gave my parents.  When I read ones from the time before that, I am rather in awe of the artistry that they feature, the humour that now seems stranger than funny, and the sentiments that echo down the line.  However, I can't help myself. The expense of sending cards undid the whole thing for me, sadly.  But there is another thing, it has been something I feel I "have to" do and more and more I am questioning what "has to be done" and I need to do.

As much as I love receiving mail, Christmas cards and the dreaded holiday letter, I know this is telling me something about the whole holiday deal. The Christmas cards shaky exit is telling me, think smaller, think more meaningful, think.

You never know, I might just send a letter in a couple of months, it just won't have a Christmas tree on it. Maybe next year, maybe not.


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I entered August without you.

 I won't visit you this month.  You won't call. I will raid your garden and you won't get any of the vegetables. I will make plans without telling you about them. We'll go to the store and not buy you one single thing. Whole books will be read and I will not tell you which ones. I will watch movies and not inform you. The nasturiums will ripen. Last month was different. I changed my schedule and took time off work to be with you.   I dropped all kinds of plans for us to be together. You sent me messages, I received them. I picked up food that I thought you would like at the store and sent you pictures of every beautiful thing I saw. I sang with you. We watched the Great Canadian Baking Show. You chose the recipe for the garlic scape pesto and gave me instructions for making the gooseberry jam. I am in August without you. You are in July.
1 comment
Read more

Keep telling yourself that.

We talk to ourselves everyday, all day (and night) for the whole of our lives. We started talking to ourselves before we knew we were a self, we forget what we said because we forget everything from before...when we were too young and busy developing our brain to remember those early years. There is still lingering residue of long forgotten conversations I have had with myself as a toddler sitting around in the crevices...sloughing off occasionally into words I tell myself still.   We talk non-stop, and not just with dialogue.  Our goosebumps communicate to us, our tingly feelings, our neurons, our peripheal vision.  They are all submitting data into our self and expecting us to react, respond or all to often, expecting what they are sending us will be ignored. After all that talking, you'd think we'd know what we think about most things, but occasionally we are stumped.  Unless we stop what we are doing and really concentrate sometimes that voice(s) ...
1 comment
Read more

The tiny little lie

"What I've discovered is that in art, as in music, there's a lot of truth-and then there's a lie. The artist is essentially creating his work to make this lie a truth, but he slides it in amongst all the others. The tiny little lie is the moment I live for, my moment. It's the moment that the audience falls in love."   Lady Gaga "There's a robot.  Do you see Mama his big eyes?  He's a tall Robot and he is right over there."  Do you see him?  Have you seen him before?  I was pleased to realize that I could. When I was about 6 or 7, I occasionally used to lie on my back at the foot of my bed and stare up a patch of stucco on the ceiling.  Repeatedly and for what seemed like ages at a time, I would stare up at a cluster of tiny peaks of stucco that I could see with my 6 year old eyes was a little village inhabited by little creatures (half human, half smurf) marching around it.  It was animated enough by the tiny shadows cast by those t...
2 comments
Read more