Saturday, December 25, 2004

When evening came I walked out toward the pasture. The llamas stood up in their beds under the juniper boughs and galloped down out of the dark to see me, and so I took them an armful of hay and some oats and sang them a little tune. The full moon came over the hill in a caul. The membrane of icy cloud coming in ahead of tonight's expected snow places its whiteness in a diaphanous sack of color. The outermost layer is a luminous turquoise, going to a purply red that fades to orange, and then a gold that brightens to the colorless brilliance of the full disk at the center. If you stare at it you find yourself falling up toward the moon, as if the phenomenon were a funnel of soft cold welcoming light, and for a moment you think you can see in the gold-white narrowing a host of angels. Surely Dore was looking at such a moon when he conceived his Paradiso to illustrate Dante. We have come such a long way. And look, look how much remains before us. 6:31:59 PM    comment []

Alles klar, Herr Kommissar? Brian dances Christmas morning in his Christmas shirt to the sounds of the Big '80s. La-la-la- la-la-la... 10:23:57 AM    comment []