There is subjective self and there is objective other; there is cognition on the one hand and culture on the other - the individual and the collective. The interface is language; and life is, for the most part, splendid, though I would never dare presume to be anything more than I am, nor yet anything less, in terms of corporeal being, procreated and procreating, but Godless all the same; material resonance, giving rise to such lawless and feral wonderment. Ultimately, each to their own, which is all; all in all its glory purely in terms of human empiricism, which is all we've got. Ourselves and each other.

As a sufferer of SAD I acknowledge the solstice as a significant turning point in the year; it is also a time of personal ceremonial remembrance (my father died on Christmas Day 1963 when I was only two); thus Christmas becomes woven with all manner of images, both Christian and Folkloric - an abundance of Fiddle-Faddle Stuff indeed - which involves Monty James Ghost Stories dramatised on BBC4 (the recent View From A Hill was very fine, I thought) and although we never did go for the Queen's Speech, I could imagine her making a fair job of Walt Whitman:

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and
self-contain'd,
I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of
owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of
years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.

So they show their relations to me and I accept them,
They bring me tokens of myself, they evince them plainly in their
possession.

I wonder where they get those tokens,
Did I pass that way huge times ago and negligently drop them?

Myself moving forward then and now and forever,
Gathering and showing more always and with velocity,
Infinite and omnigenous, and the like of these among them,
Not too exclusive toward the reachers of my remembrancers,
Picking out here one that I love, and now go with him on brotherly terms.

A gigantic beauty of a stallion, fresh and responsive to my caresses,
Head high in the forehead, wide between the ears,
Limbs glossy and supple, tail dusting the ground,
Eyes full of sparkling wickedness, ears finely cut, flexibly moving.

His nostrils dilate as my heels embrace him,
His well-built limbs tremble with pleasure as we race around and return.

I but use you a minute, then I resign you, stallion,
Why do I need your paces when I myself out-gallop them?
Even as I stand or sit passing faster than you.

Gently, my Johnny, my Jingle-o!