Universalis, your very own breviary in pixels...

Wednesday 14 April 2010

A Sleepless Night

I pretty much had one, last night.

Yeah, between an email I was unable to open telling me that my e-filed federal income tax return had been rejected;
wondering how in the world I was ever going to be able to just get rid of, much less pack, sort, and move, the contents of our house, (does any individual, or rather two individuals really need one hundred eighty plus linear feet of shelving's-worth of books? that's not even counting the music, and ignoring the fact that many of the shelves are tow deep...);
and fretting over the show, (it saddens me deeply to learn how often this truly wonderful story has been dramatized in someway or other, and the explicitly Christian message*, not even subtext! has been obfuscated at best, but most often removed entirely...)

But in the clear light of day, the aging Packard Bell having thought it over and decided it would grant me access to my email, I learn that the only problem with the taxes was that my return did not agree with the Guv'mint's recollection as to our having received a stimulus package payment.

Did we?

If they say so, I suppose we did.

Perhaps direct deposited, and so lost, or at least unnoticed in the vastness of our personal wealth?

Yeah, right...

(Oh, and the other two vexations yielded, at least in part, to a single solution: why should the stage set for a magnificent garden not contain a lovely-but-too-old-and-too-large-to-be-worth-transporting-halfway-across-a-continent-artificial-evergreen-formerly-employed-as-residential-Christmas-tree? Hung about with every artificial flower and bit of greenery tucked into the dusty corners of my house...)
*Suddenly he rubbed his eyes in wonder, and looked and looked. It
certainly was a marvellous sight. In the farthest corner of the
garden was a tree quite covered with lovely white blossoms. Its
branches were all golden, and silver fruit hung down from them, and
underneath it stood the little boy he had loved.

Downstairs ran the Giant in great joy, and out into the garden. He
hastened across the grass, and came near to the child. And when he
came quite close his face grew red with anger, and he said, "Who
hath dared to wound thee?" For on the palms of the child's hands
were the prints of two nails, and the prints of two nails were on
the little feet.

"Who hath dared to wound thee?" cried the Giant; "tell me, that I
may take my big sword and slay him."

"Nay!" answered the child; "but these are the wounds of Love."

"Who art thou?" said the Giant, and a strange awe fell on him, and
he knelt before the little child.

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