*a cheery wave*

I am a cleaning queen today. Usually the impulse to clean comes about when I have an excessive amount of studying or essay writing to do... however, today it just arose out of a need to find a place for all of my Christmas cards. There's something very nostalgic about receiving letters in the post... despite the radical liberal in me that sees Christmas cards as a waste of tree and a piece of sparkly holiday religious propaganda (is that extreme? I think that's extreme) I still can't help but smile when I get one. Le sigh... I'm getting soft in my old age.  Moral of the story: Christmas cards make me clean. Or something. 

Speaking of sparkling happy things...I'm reminded of a passage from Proust (not surprisingly, as I live, eat and breath him these days):

'I enjoyed watching the glass jars which the village boys used to lower into the Vivonne to catch minnows, and which, filled by the stream, in which they in their turn were enclosed, at once "containers" whose transparent sides were like solidified water and "contents" plunged into a still larger container of liquid, flowing crystal, conjured up an image of coolness more delicious and more provoking than they would have done standing upon a table laid for dinner, by showing it as perpetually in flight between the impalpable water in which my hands could not grasp it and the insoluble glass in which my palate could not enjoy it.'

-Proust, Combray (201/2)

Klimt Water Nymphs (Silverfish) 1899

This is one of my favorite images from Proust (and also a lovely Klimt that fits in ever-so nicely). He translates the visual so well into text, with his obscenely long sentences, rich with possibilities of meaning. The image of the translucent minnow, a visual blur between water and glass, and glass and fish... form becomes content, content becomes form (eat your heart out, Haydn White [Eat your heart out? Seriously?]). It's a gorgeous image, and one of many examples why reading Proust isn't as torturous as it may at first seem. One gains a rich visual (as well as aural, but we'll save that for another day...) pleasure from Proust.

PS. "...The ancient Greeks had an expression (quoted by Plutarch as a 'Parable of Pythagoras') that translates as 'Eat not the heart.' It meant not to consume oneself with troubles or worries, which could be almost as devastating as eating one's heart." 

--James Rogers Dictionary of Cliches