David and I went to a wonderful Christmas concert by the men's chorus Camarada at St. James Anglican Church last night. Tonight we're going to two parties. 'Tis the season!

Today is David's forty-second birthday. December 24 is my forty-fifth birthday. I'm getting old!

Playwright Maxwell Anderson said, "If you practice an art, be proud of it and make it proud of you... It may break your heart, but it will fill your heart before it breaks it; it will make you a person in your own right."

And, "A [writer] is usually thought of as a slightly benighted child of nature who somehow or other did it all on a Ouija board."

Novelist Edna O'Brien said, "It's a very baffling act, writing. Flaubert looked at the skies and spent three weeks trying to describe one. I mean, the sky exists anyhow; why should one want to put it down on paper?... It is as if the life lived has not been lived until it is set down in...words."

Poet Muriel Rukeyser said, "If there were no poetry on any day in the world, poetry would be invented that day. For there would be an intolerable hunger."

And, "The universe is made up of stories, not atoms."

"Look at children. Of course they may quarrel, but generally speaking they do not harbor ill feelings as much or as long as adults do. Most adults have the advantage of education over children, but what is the use of an education if they show a big smile while hiding negative feelings deep inside? Children don’t usually act in such a manner. If they feel angry with someone, they express it, and then it is finished. They can still play with that person the following day."

- His Holiness the Dalai Lama, "Imagine All The People"

Amy Hempel said, "I could claim any number of high-flown reasons for writing, just as you can explain certain dog behavior... But maybe it's that they're dogs, and that's what dogs do."

It's the birthday of painter and writer Emily Carr, born on Vancouver Island, Canada in 1871. Her parents died when she was young, and she was raised by her older sisters. She's best known for her landscape and native themed paintings. By the time of her death, she was considered the Canadian Van Gogh. She was also known as the "little old woman on the edge of nowhere." She kept a household of animals, which included a monkey, a pet rat, parrots, dogs, and other various wild creatures she had tamed.

She began writing after a heart attack restricted her ability to paint. She wrote Klee Wyck (1941), which won a Governor General's Award, and The House of All Sorts (1944). Most of her life stories, journals, and letters were published after she died in 1945.

Carr said, "It is not all bad, this getting old, ripening. After the fruit has got its growth it should juice up and mellow. God forbid I should live long enough to ferment and rot and fall to the ground in a squash."

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I love Emily Carr's paintings. Several years ago I saw a wonderful exhibition about her life and art at the provincial museum in Victoria. I also visited her grave, which is simply a corner of a family plot that has names carved into a horizontal concrete slab. There's no headstone. People have placed pine cones, feathers and other objects from nature around her name.

Novelist Ross Macdonald wrote, "Never sleep with anyone whose troubles are worse than your own."

Flaubert said, "The better a work is, the more it attracts criticism; it is like the fleas who rush to jump on white linens."

"Quivering,
wavering,
hard to guard, to hold in check: the mind.
The sage makes it straight--like a fletcher,
the shaft of an arrow."

-Dhammapada, 3, translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu