Fraser and His Scottish Garden:The Wagon at Christmas, Paintnotes the Frost,the Fire ,the Water Bluestars

The solar axis now reaching its' furthest point of rise- Its darklong dip from way back in June- Solstice to Solstice, ever eastward.
This season of darkness at its' peak of lost light, like a boat reaching the highwater mid point of the canal, and teetering on the edge; just before its descent gradually in one direction or the other. Northwest? Southeast?
Yet fading back to Christmases past-..... Kitchen mysteries, Rumballs, Cheeseballs, those little coconut fondant Christmas trees, in various primary food colourings- dipped in semi-sweet semi-bitter dark chocolate at the base to represent the 'trunk' of course.- And all the other snowy dusted ginger bread houses, angels, stars, bells, ribbons and polysemous notions....coalescing in a maelstrom of blizzard consciousness...tumbling at random from the wellspring of memory- so layered; that the effect is that of a waterfall- in a dark funicular crevasse of ice and frosted hoar- falling out of the universal 'black hole' , from a great inner chambered height. Falling into light, that is the light of reason and cognition. Still falling fast, no upper or lower end visible in sight, and the psyche of the rememberer- suspended in the midst of this falling mass.
The transformation of the sensate sentient demarcation between the expectant pagan mysticism of Christmas eve- where everything and anything seems possible... , to that of the next day, embering coolly in the ashes of last nights fire, the pathetic evidential crumbs- and the empty glass.
And yet!, there in the whitewalls of the blasting white in morning cold, reflected in the as yet unlit glass baubles and tinsel frosted gray coldness of the gormless tree., whose sparkle had shimmered hot and mystical in the up lit darkness of the previous evening firelight and eggnog, nutmeg dusted, and smoked oysters in tabasco and lemon besides, trempette a l'oignon and ruffles with ripples, iced Coca cola and fried cranberrys and Camembert...... the blasting white in morning cold , rebounding off those walls of white inside, and get that fire lit again now hes safely come , delivered and gone.

There was the painting he had left in the night, it was over the mantel of the fireplace , where he had hung it for us. A nights passage interrupted, this vision , a snowy landscape in polar wastes , but not yet above the arboreal tree line , a billowing sward of snow covered hills in the foreground, overlayed a counterpane of icy blue white tints and tones. A mantle of deep snow on the mantel of the fireplace.... great fir and blue spruce trees in tufted updrifts and crevasses bending enconed and enshrouded by the rounded weighty downward pull of globular snowcover. As it were, a strange council of frosted carnutes bearded and still, frozen in a timeless static dance that implied movement in its sombre stillness, half buried in places , but bending in acknowledgement and salutation on to the other. Then fading back to the Indigo firmament behind , studded shafts of etincelated aurora, the borealis of olden days whose shimmering diaphanous webs, billowed up from distant crests of hills and treetops capped in the sparkling snow sparklers of frosty blowing dust.

Glowing , now roseate at edge to golden, yellow and unearthly green of the aquatic variety; turquoise tinted and icy blue, and shot through the gauzy drapes; what stars and minelamps, (only those strong enough to compete, with the rare sky fire show that pierced their infinite domain of stellar heights of indanthrene blue unending).

Then, as if remembering the present, another interrupted this vision, and the scene shifts again to a mid December in Crinan Wood, the frost appeared in the night, at the gate and in the dull brief daylight in the form or that dancer from days of yore in Cotes des Neiges; the MacLean who danced" THE FROST''had appeared incarnate in the frosty flesh of his star studded youth.

There he was , covered in the grey white rime of congealed atomised mist. High cheekbones, a piercing gaze that turned all he looked upon to ice, by virtue of the freezing beams that shot at will from his eagles eye sockets. A face that conveyed the knowledge of all the ages, knowing and cheeky and hyper aware of all within and all without.

He had been busy in the night, and after leaping the gate in a single bound that was a Jetter and arabesque and a pas de chat of the best and most manly executed such potentially effete movements could muster, he was , in a trice! at the water stand pipe , my old jelly pan with milk bottles entombed in the solid ice , idled heavily beneath and no drip coming from the frozen tap, ( his doing of course ), he did a devilish and cheeky thing laughing as he did it.
With sparkle and glitter and lustrous tremor his attenuated form shook , shivered and peeled and shards of ice splintered and dropped tinkling on the frozen ground about him , his hardened manly muscles straining against this tension, every muscle flexing, he began to relieve himself from his own quite sizable sizzler of a frozen fountainhead!! All over my frozen standpipe! The Frosty Bastard! He laughed in a bellowing rising cadence of peels of sky rumbling thunder as he pissed out those sparkling Bluestars all over my water supply! Shaking frosty flakes of blue ice that tumbled and slid down to the edge of the canal and skated off at high speed over the frozen surface of the grey black canal in a torpedo like rush headlong madly to the northwest, to Crinan , and the waiting winter seas.