We 3 Kinks of Orient Tar

Actually, we're more like wool-gatherers as we 3 kinks were sporting skeins of yummy indigo-hued yarn on our heads while hanging out in our hostess's kitchen in Montreal.  It's just something we do. 

From this post and the one below, you might surmise that I'm getting into a Christmas Mood.  Now, a Christmas Mood might be a good thing or a bad thing, but the Buddhists would say "not good/not bad, just is."  It is what it is.Whatever that is. 

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I must admit, with the recent snowfall, the Christmas lights that many houses and yards are displaying do reflect charmingly in the night white.  We witnessed many such delights on our way to yoga class tonight.  Oh, we don't attend any fancy Lulu Lemon attired hot yoga spots for our weekly stretch and centering dose; our little group meets in someone's finished basement room.  A room with a labyrinth painted on the wood floor underneath the carpets, no less.  We walked the labyrinth tonight.  I felt in a hurry to get to the middle but had to continue round and out and in and about at a slow, meditative pace.  And once I'd reached the middle, suddenly, unexpectedly, I had no choice but to continue moving on, outward, inward, until I found myself at the outer opening--unceremoniously and quietly expelled, like a dying breath, finished.  A labyrinth, I learned, reflects the Path of Life.

But I was talking about Christmas Moods and kinkiness and wooly ways.  Some years I'm very into the whole decorating for the holidays thing.  I have a few stalwartly unusual ornaments stashed in the attic and I usually finagle Pierre into chopping down a stunted pine tree from out back.  I make incredible Nanaimo Bars, disastrous shortbread, amazing California Fruit Cake, and macaroons that fall to pieces before you can lift them to your mouth.  Tradition, you know?  But this year we are going elsewhere for Christmas so the pressure is off.  No decorating.  No one is coming here.  No need to put up a jolly front.

I do like seeing outher people's decorated homes.  Mostly.  But I admit I have trouble understanding or tolerating those weird blow-up lawn ornaments that began cropping up a few years ago.  Do you have them where you live?  I'm sorry if I offend any one's sensibilities here, but I, personally, think those things are a god-awful blight upon any neighbourhood in which they appear.  Polar bears with top hats, Santa Claus with his bag of tricks, penguins with scarves, and to top it all off, a merry-go-round (that acutally goes round) inside a giant snow-globe with fake snowflakes flying, thanks to some monstrous generator roaring beside the house.  I suppose retired folks put the things up to please the grandkids.  What sort of example are they setting?!  What sort of aesthetic are they presenting to those innocent, unsuspecting, untrammelled minds?  Do they think they are installing a miniature, stationary Macy's Santa Claus Parade?  I just don't get it.

On my neighbourhood walk the other day, I noticed several examples of all the above-mentioned inflated atrocities.  They were repulsive and seductive at the same time, like an over-aged hooker.  "Practice tolerance," I thought to myself.  "They are not good or bad, they simply are."

The next day, however, I could not repress a small chuckle when I strolled through the same neighbourhood and discovered that all the air-filled Christmas lawn monstrosities had been deflated!  It seems that someone had skulked through the area in the dead of night and taken a small, sharp object to every last one of them.   Now, I do not in any way wish to promote vandalism of any sort:  I prefer to think of it as a desperate act of good taste.  And no, officer, it wasn't me! 

I was busy at home pulling the wool over my eyes.