Rumi-nating

"Open the window in the center of your chest,
and let the spirits fly in and out."
~ Rumi

All morning long a black squirrel has been chasing a gray squirrel along the branches and up and down and round and round the trunks of the two maple trees outside my window. Another gray squirrel sits in the crook of a tree, munching peanuts, keeping an eye on the storm.

The sun has not come out from behind the clouds today. At 1 am last night it was -24 c but by 10 am the temperature had climbed to -4 c. Somehow, 20 degrees decided to come to town suddenly.

Mild winter weather is not good for ice lantern making. Two nights before New Year's Eve I started making the ice lantern. I envisioned it sitting on a bed of fir boughs on top of the snowbank by our front door, greeting passersby in the night. But the weather wouldn't cooperate. It wasn't freezing cold enough as I use a 4 gallon pail which needs days of sub zero weather to make a solid ice lantern. Meanwhile, I made the pillar candle that goes inside the ice lantern. I made it from scraps of old burgundy, blue and purple candles.

So, I've decided to change the due date: I'll have it ready for the heart of winter, anywhere from the 13th to the 19th of Tammikuu (January) in the old Finnish calendar.

"How can anyone say what happens, even if each of us
dips a pen a hundred million times into ink?"
~ Rumi