Christmas Calm

Another Sunday morning and I’m drinking a cup of Italian blend. I have a coffee advent calendar. I gave one to a friend of mine and each morning we exchange a text. . Toasted marshmallow, Hazelnut blend, Vanilla bean. Each day it is a different flavour. It has been a laugh to share these flavours with each other first thing in the morning.

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I have been reading a beautiful book. Orhan Pamuk’s Memories of Distant Mountains. The print is tiny so I’m doing a read/listen to the book. The narrator is Tolga Safer and is very good.

Chat GPT summarises it as:

“Memories of Distant Mountains: Illustrated Notebooks, 2008–2022 is a reflective, hybrid book by Turkish author, Orhan Pamuk that blends short prose pieces with his own drawings, watercolours, and notebook pages.

Summary:
The book is a curated selection from Pamuk’s personal notebooks kept over more than a decade. Rather than a single narrative, it offers fragments—memories, observations, dreams, travel notes, literary ideas, and meditations on art, politics, love, and aging. The “distant mountains” of the title function as a metaphor for memory, longing, and the unreachable ideals that shape a writer’s inner life.

Pamuk reflects on:

• The act of writing: doubt, discipline, imagination, and the solitude of the novelist
• Time and memory: how personal and collective histories blur and resurface
• Places: especially Istanbul, but also cities and landscapes encountered through travel
• Art and seeing: how drawing and writing complement each other as ways of thinking
• Politics and identity: subtle, personal responses to censorship, nationalism, and freedom

The visual elements—sketches of faces, rooms, streets, and imagined scenes—are not illustrations of the text so much as parallel thoughts, reinforcing the sense that the reader is inside the author’s mind as it wanders.”

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It is such a beautiful book and I am going through it slowly. The journals are beautiful and there is so much to see and to think about.

One of my favourite passages is:

There is an illustration of his journal on every page.

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Other than immersing myself in this beautiful story I have been pleasantly busy.

Our senior’s group had our end of year Christmas dinner. There were 16 of us and it was a lovely meal with lots of laughs. Some of the older ladies were quite hilarious after a couple of glasses of bubbles. I was the driver so okay.😁🎄😁

My exercise went well this week with three trips to the gym. A pilates class, a Barre’ class and then my trainer putting me through my paces followed by our weekly coffee and conversation solving the world’s problems. We look forward to this each week. I never want to go to the exercise classes but feel so good when finished. It feels good to stay strong.

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Yesterday the South Hobart community had their big Christmas market at the church grounds. It was a lovely day so I hopped on the bus for the three km trip down the road and took my camera. I got a few snaps of some happy people I chatted to who allowed me to take their photos. I’ll share a couple of them below.

Permission was given by-

I told her I loved her look. She whispered to me behind her hand she bought the dress in an op (thrift) shop and she hoped it would be ok. It is a lovely dress.

Many things to look at.

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Tasmania had some scary fires last week and that is always the worry of summer weather that we are beginning to get off and on.

Sixteen homes were destroyed up the east coast of the state. The winds were high as well as the temperatures. Each day of high winds bring a bit of nervousness to Australians during summer weather. But the communities sure pull together and help everyone. It always seems it takes a disaster for people to be kind to each other and interact. People are funny that way.

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But enough of that. I hope everyone is staying sane during the Christmas rush. I for one am happy when it’s over. It has become such a commercial event and so many now will not enjoy all the hype we see in the shops and the media. We will have a quiet day with a good book and a bit of lovely food. But we don’t go all out. Our tree is small on the kitchen table and the ones who enjoy it most seems to be the cats. Something different in the house for them. It is also near a big window that has birds outdoors in the bushes. 

I am looking forward to a new year and I will leave it at that. New books for book group. New activities for photography. A couple are scheduled. One photographing birds in a large lagoon. A forest full of fungi. Walking on some new trails I’ve not been on before. More exercise.

❤️ Make time for calmness during the Christmas season. ❤️