Merry Christmas 🕯️🎄🕯️ "It is not sunlight, not moonlight, But a separate shining... Joy lives behind people's eyes." - Hilda Conkling (c. 1920) Carl Friedrich Moritz Müller. Christmas in the Cottage (1848).

#WhitmanWednesday 🌾 🕯️ "Sit awhile wayfarer, Here are biscuits to eat and here is milk to drink..." - Walt Whitman

~Christmas 2025~ The Pressed Gentian by John Greenleaf Whittier (1872) "The time of gifts has come again, And, on my northern window-pane, Outlined against the day's brief light, A Christmas token hangs in sight. 1/ Night by Frits Thaulow (1880).

🕯️ A warm buoyant glow Will a kind gesture imbue; Like Aurora in the East, A heart kindled anew. Arrival of the Christmas Tree, by Hans Andersen Brendekilde (c. 1900).

#MelvilleMonday 🕯️ 1/2 Thou that dost thy Christmas keep Lonesome on the torrid deep, But in thy 'Meteor' proudly sweep O'er the waves that vainly comb— Of thee we think, To thee we drink, And drain the glass, my gallant Tom! - Herman Melville, To Tom (c. 1884)

#MelvilleMonday 🕯️ ... Thou that, duty-led, dost roam Far from thy shepherd-brother's home— Shearer of the ocean-foam! To whom one Christmas may not come,— Of thee I think Till on its brink The glass shows tears, beloved Tom! - Herman Melville, To Tom (c. 1884) 2/2

#SundaySentence "As for me, I could leave the world with today in my eyes." - Truman Capote, A Christmas Memory (1956)

~ Christmas 2025 ~

"He saw no change since his last visit to this big, alms-giving, long-suffering city of the South, the cold weather paradise of the tramps." - O. Henry, Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking (1899)

"Doesn't Pa also say: There is no place I would rather speak than a cemetery, for there we are all on equal ground—there we not only stand on equal ground but there we also 'feel' that we are standing on equal ground..." - Vincent van Gogh (to brother Theo, 1878)

#WhitmanWednesday 🌾 ". . . . when it is better to be a bound booby and rogue in office at a high salary than the poorest free mechanic or farmer . . . . then only shall the instinct of liberty be discharged from that part of the earth." - Walt Whitman, c. 1855

#WhitmanWednesday 🌾 "Millet—he's a whole religion in himself: the best of democracy, the best of all well-bottomed faith, is in his pictures. The man who knows his Millet needs no creed." - Walt Whitman Jean-François Millet. The Gleaners. 1857.

"You see, it always strikes me and it is remarkable, when we see the image of unutterable and indescribable forsakenness - of loneliness - of poverty and misery, the end of things or their extremity - the thought of God comes to mind." - Vincent van Gogh (letter to brother Theo, 1878) 1/

#MelvilleMonday "I seem, in most of these verses, to have but placed a harp in a window, and noted the contrasted airs which wayward winds have played upon the strings." - Herman Melville, c. 1865 1/

🌾 #SundaySentence "Here is not merely a nation but a teeming nation of nations." - Walt Whitman, c. 1855

🕊️Christmas 2025🕯️ An Irish Christmas carol originating from County Wexford in the 15th or 16th century:

"In spite of everything I shall rise again: I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing." - Vincent van Gogh (letter to brother Theo, 1880) Head of a Woman. Vincent van Gogh, c. 1885. Head of a Fisherman. Vincent van Gogh, c. 1883.

"Yes, that painting by Millet 'The evening angelus', 'that's it'. That's rich, that's poetry." - Vincent van Gogh (letter to brother Theo, 1874) Jean-François Millet, The Angelus (c. 1858)

To clothe the fiery thought In simple words succeeds, For still the craft of genius is To mask a king in weeds. - Emerson From my wife's walk today:

"I have always suffered from what I think must be an overly acute awareness of the mingled aromas that emanate from the human concourse." - John Banville, The Sea (2005)

#TodaysPoem For human nature Hope remains alone Of all the deities; the rest are flown. Faith is departed; Truth and Honor dead; And all the Graces too, my friends, are fled. - Theognis of Megara, 540 BCE (transl., J. H. Frere, 1842)

#WhitmanWednesday 🌾 "I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise, […] Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man, Stuffed with the stuff that is coarse, and stuffed with the stuff that is fine, - Walt Whitman, c. 1855 1/

"There are moments when the past has a force so strong it seems one might be annihilated by it." - John Banville, The Sea (2005)

🌾 "My foothold is tenoned and mortised in granite, I laugh at what you call dissolution, And I know the amplitude of time." - Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, c. 1855

#MelvilleMonday "As for those majestic, magisterial truck-horses of the docks, I would as soon think of striking a judge on the bench, as to lay violent hand upon their holy hides." - Herman Melville (Redburn, Ch. 40)

"Heart of Darkness is not a parable about the loss of one man's soul to a wilderness of evil. It's a story about what it means to share implicitly the penalty of that loss, a story about the impossibility of innocence." - Verlyn Klinkenborg (from the Introduction)

#SundaySentence "The past beats inside me like a second heart." - John Banville, The Sea (2005)

#JosephConrad #HeartofDarkness "It takes place in an impalpable greyness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamour, without glory, [...] If such is the form of ultimate wisdom, then life is a greater riddle than some of us think it to be."

#JosephConrad #HeartofDarkness 'He had faith — don't you see? — he had the faith. He could get himself to believe anything — anything.' - The journalist (regarding Kurtz)

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, c. 1855 🌾 : Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you, You must travel it for yourself. It is not far . . . . it is within reach, Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know, […] 1/2

#JosephConrad #HeartofDarkness "I went no more near the remarkable man who had pronounced a judgment upon the adventures of his soul on this earth. The voice was gone. What else had been there?" Ch. 3

#JosephConrad #HeartofDarkness "Droll thing life is — that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself — that comes too late — a crop of unextinguishable regrets. I have wrestled with death."

#TodaysPoem The evening is so delicate the air is scarcely lavender or green . . . It is merely that two moths have whispered past— Merely the dust of their wings. - Harold Rosenberg (Stage-Note for a Sunset), 1932

From Oliver!🩶

I think I will do nothing for a long time but listen, And accrue what I hear into myself . . . . and let sounds contribute toward me. - Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, c. 1855 From my wife's walk yesterday:

#HeartofDarkness "She was savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent; there was something ominous and stately in her deliberate progress." - Joseph Conrad

#WhitmanWednesday 🌾 I play not a march for victors only . . . . I play great marches for conquered and slain persons. - Walt Whitman, 1855

#WhitmanWednesday 🌾 I exist as I am, that is enough... - Walt Whitman, 1855

#JosephConrad "They only showed that Mr Kurtz lacked restraint in the gratification of his various lusts, that there was something wanting in him—some small matter which, when the pressing need arose, could not be found under his magnificent eloquence." Ch. 3

Yesterday is History, 'Tis so far away – Yesterday is Poetry – 'Tis Philosophy – Yesterday is mystery – Where it is Today While we shrewdly speculate Flutter both away Emily Dickinson, c. 1873 (poem 1292)

#JosephConrad "Evidently the appetite for more ivory had got the better of the—what shall I say?—less material aspirations." Ch. 3

#MelvilleMonday "If there is poetry in my book about the sea, it is not because I deliberately put it there, but because no one could write truthfully about the sea and leave out the poetry." - Rachel Carson, 1952 Fitz Henry Lane. Owl's Head, Penobscot Bay, Maine. 1862.

#JosephConrad "If the absolutely pure, uncalculating, unpractical spirit of adventure had ever ruled a human being, it ruled this be-patched youth. I almost envied him the possession of this modest and clear flame." Ch. 3

On that specific Pillow Our projects flit away - The Night's tremendous Morrow And whether sleep will stay Or usher us - a stranger - To situations new The effort to comprise it Is all the soul can do. - Emily Dickinson, c. 1881 ED's draft written on the back of an envelope and a paper scrap:

#SundaySentence "We knew him in those unprotected days when we were content to hold in our hands our lives and our property." - Joseph Conrad (Karain: A Memory)

#JosephConrad "He had no restraint, no restraint— just like Kurtz—a tree swayed by the wind. […] Oh! he was heavy, heavy; heavier than any man on earth, I should imagine. Then without more ado I tipped him overboard." Ch. 2

#JosephConrad "He won't be forgotten. Whatever he was, he was not common." Ch. 2

My wife and I started our holiday movie-watching season with this 1939 gem.🎥 From the Shalin Liu Performance Center, a beautiful 350-seat concert hall in Rockport, Massachusetts:

#JosephConrad "The thing was to know what he belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own. That was the reflection that made you creepy all over. […] He had taken a high seat amongst the devils of the land — I mean literally." Ch. 2

~Thanksgiving~ This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is, This is the common air that bathes the globe. - Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, c. 1855