Maurita

Time flies.  Suns rise and shadows fall.
Let time go by.  Love is forever over all.

"Painting is like having a bad mistress who spends and spends and it's never enough ... I tell myself that even if a tolerable study comes out of it from time to time, it would have been cheaper to buy it from somebody else."

~Van Gogh

One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul and yet no one ever come to sit by it. Passersby see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on the way.

Vincent Van Gogh (1853 - 1890)

Every time I paint a portrait, I lose a friend.

-John Singer Sargent

I've always had an affinity for the Misfits on that cold little island in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.  Maybe I'm a misfit myself; never exquisitely beautiful or successful or GOOD at anything.  Or maybe because I have a really bad habit of giving things from my heart that no one really wants.

On my sixth Christmas I gave my teenage brother a Troll with orange hair.  He was  dressed in a caveman sort of outfit I had made for him along with a bathing suit for Barbie.  Two days after Christmas I found Troll standing forlornly on the corner of the dresser by my bedroom door.  Rejected.  Things I have put great thought and effort into have often failed to find their way into the hearts of others...and I'm left to wonder why my gifts never match real dreams.

Does anyone ever really get their heart's desire  for Christmas?  Did Jesus really want gold, frankincense and myhrr?  And why is there so much pleasure in giving until you see the look of horror on someone's face when they open a gift...or when your gift is met with silence?

I think the only answer is to stop giving.

We'll have to cancel Christmas.