Ruins of Advent?

Last night, after dinner, my spouse played mandolin on the porch with the porch light on, so I decided to sketch.  I was bleary-eyed with tiredness, but I kept sketching with short strokes of a fine tip pen.  Then I went back and added some color:

I have been drawing doors in various settings since my online journaling class last year.  This year, the doors have often been in settings of crumbling walls and buildings, often with a tree and/or vines.  I'm not sure what that says about my subconscious.  I don't usually think much about these sketches before I start when these doors arrive.

I added a haiku-esque creation:

Ruins of Advent,
Fierce memories, deep regrets
The year speeds ahead.

Here, too, I wonder about my subconscious--what is my deeper self saying to me?  I haven't particularly felt like this Advent is a ruin, in the way that I have other Advent seasons.  And I'm not aware of fierce memories or deep regrets this year.  Hmm. 

I was prompted by the ruin of a wall and a door, so maybe I shouldn't read too much into this.

Let me also record a contemplative morning.  Several weeks ago, a friend I know only from Facebook said she would be reading Rebecca Solnit's Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities for Advent.  I decided to buy a copy and read it too.  This morning I started it.  It's the kind of book that makes me want to underline every word.

Here's what leapt out at me this morning: "Ideas at first considered outrageous or ridiculous or extreme gradually become what people think they've always believed. How the transformation happened is rarely remembered, in part because it's compromising: it recalls the mainstream, when the mainstream was, say, rabidly homophobic or racist in a way it no longer is, and it recalls that the power comes from the shadows and the margins, that our hope is in the dark around the edges, not the limelight of center stage. Our hope, and often our power" (page xvi).

Now to take a walk and get ready for work.