The challenge we’ll take on in December- and read in early January 2026 – is “Snow and Ice” /Le défi qu’on relèvera en décembre – et qu’on lira début janvier 2026 – s’intitule « Neige et glace ».

By Milo Smith This image is from the Quirky Carrot several years ago. Time for a coffee mid-afternoon.

By Susan Irving TIME is a Fresh Paint effort to draw with an old wonky mouse. Time for a new laptop?

Time Was, About Time.  Time was that these all worked.  About time I either got rid of some, or found the right batteries for them.

By Laura Nussbaumer Peck

They once said (and repeated)
“Don’t rush. Don’t waste.
Every hour has its time.” A farmer
“When you manage your time,
You manage your life.” A coach.
“Smile. Time is always staring at you.” A writer.
“Let’s play!.” Children
 
Le temps
Ils ont dit – et répété
« Pas de presse. Pas de gâchis.
Chaque heure arrive à point. » Un fermier
« Gérer son temps, c’est gérer sa vie. » Une coach.
« Sourit. Le temps te fixe tout le temps. » Une auteure.
« Jouons! » Les enfants

By Jessica MacLeod The attached image is titled Time and Competing Concerns. It is a piece I made with the oil pastels I picked up from the Collectif’s recent AGM.  Below is a poem of the same title and in the same spirit. 😊

Time and Competing Concerns
 
They crawl and climb, a writhing mass,
upon each other, over and under,
globby and sticky, glistening, they bulge
then burrow to the dark heat below.
 
Determined, each will rise again and 
worm about with deceptive ease, but
never do they seem to pause, to still,
to take a break, when all we want
is a bit of rest and more space to make.

By Larissa Douglass

THE LAST DAYS OF THE FARMER’S ALMANAC

She was aware of the implacable silence behind everything, unyielding, inviolate. There was no arguing with it, larger than memento mori, larger than time; perhaps it came from the mind of God. She saw now why people became drug or sex addicts, if only to get lost for a few hours in a haze of pleasure, to forget completely the enduring silence that presided over all. But when the high wore off, the awareness of the silence became worse, and was even more relentless.

Nor was there any pity – one could shout or scream in the face of the silence. It just stayed silent. She knew now why people filled up their lives with work and stuff and other people, so that the clamor and overlapping energies and inevitable unions and conflicts would cover up the silence. But wait a few years and all full houses emptied, the holidays became barren, with the men dead, the children gone, and one woman left alone with a pile of bills on the table and the ticking of the clock.

Every companionship had its fixed time and place. And when that nexus passed, people were parted from one another, implacably, invincibly, torn apart and sent off on other pathways through time and space, as though on invisible moving belts or escalators designed by Escher. Once they were entrapped in these new halls and wheels, it became impossible for one person to reach another again, no matter how hard they might try. 

When social media arrived in the 2010s, there were odd ways of broadcasting to people from the past, who were trapped in one part of the machine from one’s own place in the machine. The narcissism of one acquaintance never healed but reemerged as a bulletin of her travels with her new husband, apparently a fellow narcissist, followed by a string of hired professional photographers who documented their life together, like a cross between Harper’s Bazaar and National Geographic. “No promises, but this is my last set of photos from Easter Island!” she called. Everyone greeted this with magnanimity, even though it wasn’t technically an accomplishment, because what else could you do in the face of the silence but try to look like you lived inside a magazine?

She found it hard to believe that magazines still existed. And this year, the Farmer’s Almanac had ended. She tried to find it at the store, although she had ignored it for decades and purchased it only occasionally because of its quaint covers, its winter forecasts, and out of nostalgia for times in the past that had been nicer. Long a staple in the racks by the grocery line, this time, when it was wanted, the last issue of the Farmer’s Almanac was not there. Perhaps it had sold out because people finally saw the value of it, just as they were about to lose it forever.

We took things for granted until they were gone. This was the definition of health: to be healthy was to feel nothing but the normal functions of the body in the background. To be sick was to be aware of those functions, to know them intimately, and to feel them disappearing. One day, things stopped – and they did not come back. A friend called and said that his elderly mother had choked on her first bite of Thanksgiving dinner and could not eat the meal. It brought to mind a physical therapist, who had told her two decades ago, “I remember the day when I realized I couldn’t run anymore.” Then she realized her gaffe as her friend paused and stated, “Yeah, I realized I can’t run anymore. And I thought, oh well. And I just kept going.”

Only the harmony of the flow of life – and that was not unending either, for one day the earth would die too – provided any solace. The silence waited for the turn, the awareness of greater things beyond it, for there were (were there not?) greater things beyond it. There was no answer to her question, only a line of light on the horizon and the curtain of pre-solstice darkness.

About the author: Larissa Douglass is a Glengarry-based and Oxford-educated author whose works are listed on her website: LCDOUGASS.COM (https://www.lcdouglass.com/).

By Carla Dancey I saw the notice that you were looking for paintings or art related to time so I painted a clock painting today.  It’s a watercolor on paper. It’s called, A Good Time. It turned out okay so I thought I would share it. [Ed. The intention is to have folks motivated to create, so thank you!]