Amazement.

Dear Friends,

This just in from a co-worker, and oh!  It is amazing!  You will gasp, laugh, and weep at the beauty and whimsy of it all.  I am reading a book, which I know you would love, called The Book of Delights, and I think maybe this film of Polly Verity heralds the beginning of a new Dodo Feature: The Delight of the Day.   It won't be everyday, of course, just like the song of the day; you will get it when it comes, and no sooner, but, be ready to be delighted!

Over/Under

Dear Beloved,

What can I do?  I cannot fathom when my over-joy and my over-enthusiasm slide into over-bearing!

I want to be demure, of course, like the dickens I do!  As we all do, like the Edwardian novels, but I get carried away by delight with the planet.  I am tumbling down the hill of possibilities face first and everyone around me is horrified.  It seems a shame that our most ingrained attributes are merely annoying and irritating to the Rest of the World.  I know that often that group includes you.

On the opposite side of the coin, there is me, and my sometimes frustration with what seems like apathy.  I get angry that you don't want to run down the street to the Byzantine basilica, or yet another ice cream stand.  How can you shun these delights?

 I read a fine expression of this feeling in Tove Jansson's book Sculptor's Daughter.  She tells of a frustrated woman who is making a mosaic of pebbles on some steps.  Ms. Jansson asks the woman why she doesn't seem to like playing, and writes that she "got fed up with her because she wasn't happy.  I don't like it when people find life difficult.  It gives me a bad conscience and then I get angry and begin to feel that they might as well go somewhere else." 

Late Fall Light.

Dear Near and Far,

It's like an Albert Bierstadt painting, isn't it?  I never say that we "are blessed," because that takes away our power to be pouty or joyous, pitiful or cranky, and gives it all to an impersonal (higher?) power.  What I say, is that beauty is everywhere, and it is free for the taking.  There are delights aplenty out there.

In Chinese painting of long ago, especially of the celebrated Song Dynasty, the artists specialized in landscapes with atmospheric perspective.  It looked like this image of the creek bed, and like this. 
Atmospheric, or aerial perspective refers to the misty, undefined areas in a painting serving as indicators of distance between objects in the near and far.  In other words, we read the mountains in the back as farther away from us because they are softer, blurred, less distinct.
 
Between now and then, abide in the misty interstices between near and far; there will be more on delight anon.

Oh my!

Dear Wheeled,

Look at this delight- can you live without them?  I wonder if I can.  I will let you know later, I guess. 

Another Delight.

Dear Little Darlings,

Please come over and play bicycles with me!  You won't need your helmet, and I have scads of drum sticks, so hurry over soon!