Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. Those are the five stages of, well, everything seriously bad that happens to us– grief, lost relationships, addiction, job dislocation and death– to name a few (as if one can bargain with grief and death).
Nothing in life seems quite so orderly, however. Some people never get past their own feelings of anger and bitterness. Others seem to live in a perpetual state of grace and total acceptance (though in the interest of disclosure, I haven’t yet met anyone that fits that description). Life is an ongoing process, and I feel blessed– even in spite of it all.

Romeo: Lady, by yonder blessed moon I swear…
Juliet: O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon,
That monthly changes in her circled orb,
Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.
Quotation from William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Blessed are the forgetful: for they get the better even of their blunders.
Quotation from Friedrich Nietzsche

Today is Remembrance Day, also called Veterans Day or Poppy Day. It’s a day to honor all of those who sacrifice during times of war.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Poem by Lt.-Col. John McCrae, In Flanders Fields

Maybe its the change in weather. Winter. Icy fingers inches away, ready to grab you.

An aged man now entered, and without
One word, stept slowly on, and took the wrist
Of the pale maiden. She looked up, and saw
The fillet of the priest and calm cold eyes.
Then turned she where her parent stood, and cried
“O father! grieve no more: the ships can sail.”
Poem by Walter Savage Landor, Iphigeneia

Things are bad. I’ve had to take a pay cut, but for now I still have a job. Almost 1 out of 10 Californians seeking work are currently unemployed. It’s projected to get worse. Someone on TV argued that America’s priority should be to “fix the mortgage mess,” but I think it’s jobs, jobs, jobs. Without jobs, people can’t pay their rents, mortgages or pay their bills.

Yellen said consumer spending had been stopped in its tracks as American households have hunkered down and acted to boost their savings in response to spiraling unemployment and a “staggering” $10 trillion loss of household wealth.
Janet Yellen, President of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank, as reported by Reuters

I Wish to God I never saw you, Mag.
I wish you never quit your job and came along with me.
I wish we never bought a license and a white dress
For you to get married in the day we ran off to a minister
And told him we would love each other and take care of each other
Always and always long as the sun and the rain lasts anywhere.
Yes, I’m wishing now you lived somewhere away from here
And I was a bum on the bumpers a thousand miles away dead broke.
I wish the kids had never come
And rent and coal and clothes to pay for
And a grocery man calling for cash,
Every day cash for beans and prunes.
I wish to God I never saw you, Mag.
I wish to God the kids had never come.
Poem by Carl Sandburg, Mag

Losing my mother was very painful. I developed pneumonia a week afterwards.
I’m in Costa Rica for holiday. I’ll be back soon. Each day while I’m gone, I’ll present a vintage Encore Seraphine comic “rerun” from 2007. I’ve done some light editing on them, but they retain the atmosphere and content of the original. I hope you enjoy them, and I’ll have lots of new adventures to share with you when I return.
Happy New Year!

Yin asked me to tell you, Jenny, that she loves you
and she’s sorry. She didn’t sleep last night, and she
waited for you, and she waited and she waited…

I was led into love with an eager palm,
full of life and vigour and youth.
I was shunted from love with the back of the hand,
careless, selfish and uncouth.
The winds do moan as the trees howl from their roots
and the days grow cold, as the nights grow fierce
with the remembrance of the lover’s previous hold
and the bittersweet tear for the wisdom untold.
Poem by Claudia Fitzgerald,
“Who so loves, believes the impossible.” Elizabeth Barrett Browning

A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous.
Quotation from Ingrid Bergman

D.H. Lawrence was candidly against physical repression. He believed that one should acknowledge one’s desires, even if that meant exploring darker, non-conformist forms of passion, like infidelity.

In the long run, she says ‘Am I satisfied, or is there some beastly dissatisfaction gnawing and gnawing inside me?’ And if there is some dissatisfaction, it is physical at least as much as psychic, sex as much as soul.
Quotation from D.H. Lawrence, on Women

My advice is this: Settle! That’s right. Don’t worry about passion or intense connection… Because if you want to have the infrastructure in place to have a family, settling is the way to go… Settling will probably make you happier in the long run, since many of those who marry with great expectations become more disillusioned with each passing year.
Quotation from Lori Gottleib, Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough (The Atlantic)

The ‘Whom have you ever loved?’ quotation in today’s comic is taken from D.H. Lawrence’s The Captain’s Doll. (Literature.org)