My dearest, thank you for the advent candle in the window precisely at five, just for me, even if you are otherwise, in your darkened house, invisible. I like the Finnish spelling - Adventti Kynttilä (my tongue trips over the t's - I wonder if each 't' is pronounced, like little road bumps causing one to slow down and savor the syllables that form each word) and had occasion to include in a short message to my Finnish friend today, I'm too still in the warm atmosphere of your Adventii Kynttilä - what a wonderful tradition, it deserves far more play than it seems to get over here in the States - quiet beautiful Advent somehow gets buried in all the noise.

I don't have much for you tonight my dearest. A sliver - tiny scythe - of moon, is to the left of the neighbor's towering pine, David to the pine's Goliath, at least from my perspective, from the aerie window. Because of course the moon, merely obscured by - what? - oh yes, behemoth shadow of the earth, isn't it, is huge and pale and alabaster and on the moon the neighbor's monster pine would be nothing in comparison...

When I woke this morning there was a dusting of snow on the ground. Later I went for a walk in the park, in a bit of a squall, but by the time I'd done the figure eight around the sun had come out and the park brightened and started turning green again and my mood brightened accordingly. Not that my mood was off - but I'm very affected by the light, and I find a dark morning, with a landscape in shades of utter black and white, very oppressive, and I start counting the months (oy) til spring, let's see, January 8, February 8, March 8, April 8 - dear God, no, please no, not four months of this. And of course it isn't really. But those breaks of sun make it - that, and flowers all over the house, and after the New Year, like Emily, I will force bulbs religiously - advent candles to summon spring, in herbaceous form.

I felt fortunate at the park though, to be able to collect beautifully cut short lengths of firewood. I saw the supply coming. Perhaps about ten days ago there was a fierce windstorm. I'd gone for a walk in the midst of it and out of prudence as the storm raged (it wasn't raining at that point, just very windy) I stayed out of the woods, especially a particularly short section to which it already looks as though great violence has been done, with massive trees uprooted, even in summer looking ravaged and sieged and very tumultuous - it's really quite mysterious - the petrified aftermath of a maelstrom. My instincts proved correct, because the following day there was a massive, huge, enormous, ancient hardwood tree of some sort that had split near the base and come crashing down across the path during the storm. On my walk that day, I had to venture a few feet off the path to where the trunk was low enough that I could simply grasp and clamber over it. Right-brain me was awed by tiny me and big huge toppled It, and left-brain me foresaw - a stack of firewood sometime in the near future in the parking lot. The other day a bulldozer appeared over the mowed meadow (are we done chopping everything down yet?) and today - the beautiful supply.

And so that's it, at least for now, darling, you know I could go on and on if I needed to in tortuous, endless knit-scarf fashion go on and on. But I won't.

I'm trying to get a message through to you sings - who? - on KZE. Yes, exactly. Love you. I always have.

XOXO