The new year’s here, ancient prophesies coming due, breaking down all we’ve held true. Our world’s a-rumble, all in a-jumble, and we stumble to discern what is fake, what is real, groping in the dark for a clue. Confused, distraught, afraid, in these topsy-turvy times we are lost. Up is Down; East, North, South, West, no telling which way’s best. The world’s a-swirl and, like Dorothy and Toto, where we’ll land a mystery. Cultural cues called into question, trusted guidelines gone into history, we ask what to do? Where to go?

The real question, though, is, what shall we be in the new world emerging? The answer lies not in outward directions but Inward, drawing, perhaps, upon ancient meanings of the moons and of the fundamental elements of nature:

• Earth – balance, embodiment, and physical connection.

• Water – fluidity, cohesion, emotion, and understanding.

• Fire – heat, energy, and transformation – both internal and external.

• Air – movement, mind, and intellect; birth and new beginnings; spiritual awakening and inspiration.

• Space – emptiness and openness; the blank canvas upon which we paint our reality.

• Consciousness – awareness and the field from which thoughts, feelings, intuition, and creativity arise.

You can see and, if you wish, share the full calendar in the attached PDF.

Note: I neglected to include South in the calendar! Perhaps you can discern where it best fits, and, while you are at it, reassign elements and directions as well. All’s a puzzle, anyway!

Mike'scalendar2026

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I’ve been sitting here 90 years – y je m’ennui! Boring!!

In all that time, absolutely contrary to my life purpose, no one has sat on me. But what am I to do, stuck here as I am in this pedestrian museum? What’s it called again? Ah, oui. Le Petit Palais de Paris. Some palace this is! I haven’t supported any royal rears since Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette were dragged from Versailles and I was sentenced to life sitting servitude to one bulbous bourgeois bottom after another. Finally, Monsieur Charles gave me away to this place. Though the surroundings are somewhat sort of regal, there are no soirées, no chamber trios, no diplomatic dinners.

So I repeat: boring!

Oh, wait! I almost forgot. There was that one time, maybe half a century ago, when un petit gamin jumped the rope and climbed onto my lap! He must have been five or six years old. Mmmm. It felt so good after so long to have a soft, young rear wriggling into me. But, alas, it was only a few moments before…

“ Jean-Pierre, don’t go there!” his mother hushed sternly, trying with only moderate success to keep her voice down. “We’re not supposed to touch the pieces. Come back here!”

“But, Maman, it’s so comfy!” Jean-Pierre whined. “Can’t I just stay a few minutes? I’m tired. Can’t we go home yet? This place is so boring.”

See, what did I tell you? Boring!

“I don’t care. Get off that chair this instant!” she insisted, and added enticingly, “We’re almost through; then we’ll go for a crêpe, with jam in it, if you like.”

“Really, Maman? A crêpe? Yummm!”, the boy squealed excitedly as he hopped off me and back over the rope. Clearly, Jean-Pierre liked crêpes.

And so he left, leaving me empty once again. And no one else has dared jump the rope since.

Ah, but before! All those bodies, from Marie Antoinette’s derriere all the way to M. Charles’, taking their ease on me. From royal and noble silk and satin to bourgeois wool and cotton, each skirt, each pant, each gown, each petticoat, each smock, though subtracting a bit of clarity, a soupçon of color, from my fading tapestry, all warm and all helping me fulfill my raison d’être.

But all that was before this palais of today. And since? Boring!

It doesn’t seem fair. I was made to be of service helping people rest their weary bones. It was Claude who dreamt me up. Louis XVI had asked Claude to craft a chair for his new, beloved Austrian wife. Actually, though I’m Claude’s design, it was his son Jean-Marc who did the most to put me together.

The chaise longue being assembled next to me in the atelier told me the story as I, a few months her junior, was taking form.

“Claude is getting older,” she observed. “Over 60, I’ve heard.”

“Yes, I can see it,” I answered. “I can feel his hands shake when he tries to sculpt the fine filigrees of my arms. I’m often afraid he’ll gouge me so much I’d be discarded so they could start over on someone else!”

“Also, look there,” my neighbor pointed out to me. “How tightly he squints his eyes in order to see what he is doing.”

“You’re right!” I said. “I guess that’s why Jean-Marc is in training, to take over the family’s royal furniture-making business.”

“Exactly!” my fine friend affirmed.

And Jean-Marc did indeed prove to be a fine craftsman. Under his father’s tutelage, he commissioned, for the queen’s sensory pleasure, the finest woven tapestries from the most talented tapissiers in Beauvais to cover my seat and back, and hardy beechwood from nearby forests to fill my frame, which he then ever so gracefully gilded.

I was so proud! And Marie Antoinette loved me so. But it was only a few years later that the monarchs were forced from Versailles, the furnishings (including me!) sold off, and the palace opened to the public. Then, over a hundred years passing from one bourgeois behind to another, mostly left to sit on the side for show and only occasionally sat in by someone sitting, again, just for show.

Until M. Charles bought me at auction. Though a wealthy businessman, he was of noble stock and actually used me in his sitting room. Oh, the soirées he hosted and the fesses I enfolded! But then…the Great Depression. Thank God, though, that, as much as M. Charles could have used the money, he couldn’t bear to sell me at auction. He instead donated me to this presumptuous palace of a museum.

So, now, I spend my days on display, stared at instead of sat in, and longing for the day another little scamp tires of the museum tour and jumps the rope to squirm in my lap.

In the meantime, boring!

                   Through gateway stooped and grizzled
                   winds a long and dusty road.

                  The sentry, standing ramrod straight,
                  beckons me to pass.

                  Do I dare?

But why wouldn’t I dare? What’s holding me back? Answering that question has been a life quest for me. Stay tuned.

Ocean waters rise and fall, rise and fall.
Millions and millions of years roll by.
Sandy beaches warm my toes.

Ocean waters rise and rise, rise and rise.
Fives and tens of years roll by.
Sandy beaches – stuff of lore.

I am now in my early 80s. Two of my “hobbies” at this life stage (other than crosswords and, more recently, sudoku) are fiddling with photography and pondering in poetry. In neither, however, have I submerged sufficiently to consider myself an expert or artist. For example, I don’t use PhotoShop or otherwise enhance photos beyond the occasional crop. I suppose you could say that, in both areas, I’m more dabbler than devotee. In any case, they are enough for me to reap some aesthetic satisfaction. Especially when I combine the two, that is, when a photo evokes a verse – or, upon rare occasion, the reverse.

Now, I’d like to bring such fiddlings and ponderings from the shadows of cloud files into the light as a series in The Green Pen. Let’s call it “The PhotoVerse.”