Deep-embroidered quiet

Snow 1

Snow 2

Snow 3

Snow 4

Snow 5

It is still dark outside as I write this - the length of day is 5 hours 59 minutes - and the day will be rather dark as well, because it is raining. There is still some snow left, 3 cm of it, but not much will be remaining after today. The flu seems to be easing, or at least I finally got a full night's sleep, but I'm not yet in shape to go for a long walk in the forests and swamps.

These photographs were taken on December 24th when the flu hadn't yet hit.

(Posting title is from the poem Winter Journal: Fish Rises, Dark Brown Muscle Turns Over by Emily Wilson.)

There is no grief in this, only the old year

Fireworks 1

Fireworks 2

There were plenty of fireworks last night. When taking photographs of fireworks one should use a tripod, but I was too tired for that. Here are two photographs taken handheld, the first one contains an airplane, the moon, and some fireworks on the sky.

(Posting title is from the poem Chinese New Year by Lynda Hull.)

For if the tree implies a quiet place

Field

Barn

This morning I finished reading the science fiction novel Consider Phlebas, or actually re-reading it, this time in Finnish. I used to be a great fan of The Culture novels, but then I got bored with the space opera genre, and stopped reading them.

On the second reading Consider Phlebas isn't bad, even though the concept of a machine civilization that Iain M. Banks presents isn't believable. Fortunately, the Minds of The Culture are very much in the background in the novel.

I liked the black humour, and the complex relations between the characters. But I also noticed several trivial mistakes in the story, as if it had been written in a bit of a hurry. Anyway, maybe I'll continue re-reading the other books in the series, or some of the first ones at least.

The photographs were taken on December 24th, 2014.

(Posting title is from the poem The Waste Land by John Beer. The connection to Consider Phlebas is left as an exercise for the reader; it is trivial to a Mind.)