Amalgamated Sadness Rapture

Michael Luenig has just become my new hero...

Here is an excerpt from 'The Lot'...

'Christmas approaches and an unforseen sadness quite suddenly appears. How beautiful and astonishing it is. There you are, standing alone in the kitchen, paused between one ordinary thing and the next, when all at once this strange feeling enters the body like wine, gently flooding your veins with a mysterious sweet mixture of grief and yearning.

And there, intoxicated for a moment, we are able to stand clear of the world and stare like children into the life that was ours, the life that has slipped away so sadly and joyfully, beyond memory and into the blackness of space, without us having understood very much of it at all.
I hereby name this sweet pre-Christmas melancholy ‘amalgamated sadness rapture’, suspecting it is distilled form the dim memory of all life’s losses and all the deepest, dearest need s that were denied to us and others or never met or never known. ‘Beautiful but nevermore’ is the sense of it.

Yet in no way is it depressing, this elusive melancholy, particularly when held and savoured – for then it is recognised as the healing miracle of acceptance. Fortunate indeed are those who ever find even the briefest glimpses into this rare and gentle epiphany, and if I could wish all the world something for Christmas, I would certainly wish it some amalgamated sadness rapture – otherwise known as peace.