These paper boats of mine are meant to dance on the ripples of hours, and not reach any destination... Rabindranath Tagore

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past...F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby

We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the stories.
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On the way to the river are the old dormitories, used for something else now, with their fairy-tale turrets, painted white and gold and blue. When we think of the past it's the beautiful things we pick out. We want to believe it was all like that.
--from Margaret Atwood - The Handmaid's Tale

Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul.
- Joyce Carol Oates

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

A Christmas Carol


A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens. 1843


Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it. 

Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy tavern 

He carried his own low temperature always with him

 he iced his office

 and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.




not many knew
that the rich Scrooge
was once a poor child
a lonely child
trapped in a colourless world


joy
friendship
love
were meaningless ghosts

he himself had
no meaning


he could be a ghost


he could not connect with
ghosts


Scrooge the cold child became the cold man
absorbed in wealth
not spending it
not giving it
just
hoarding it


but this year
the ghosts of Christmas
would awaken
what he could have been
what he could be

he faced his own ghosts

they awakened his heart
they found rest
and stirred
his spirit


 the secret of finding joy
is giving joy


 
NOTE
Images adapted from Works of Charles Dickens. Avenel Books. 1978.





MY GOOD READS REVIEW
 A Christmas CarolA Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It is easy to get caught up in the colour and mystery and intrigue of the Christmas ghosts of A Christmas Carol. But I have read this story - usually at Christmas - a number of times. For once, I found myself pouring over the Christmas past - the 19th century London Scrooge as a lonely child, little more than a ghost himself. Somehow the older, selfish monster that he became was a sad reflection of why - perhaps a sad reflection of why many today still lock out the Christmas spirit. The story is an enchanting carol, celebrating a possible transformation from ghost to spirit.


View all my reviews

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wiseman is a good name for you, but maybe should be wise woman! Giving joy is definitely the key. Thanks. K.

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