For A Musing Monday

"I beg you to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language.
Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now because you would not be able to live them.
And the point is to live everything.
Live the questions now.
Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."

-- Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Source: alimapure.tumblr.com via Mariana on Pinterest

Calaveras & Diablitos

¡Feliz Dia de los Muertos!

Ah, November. One of my favourite months.
Winter is fast approaching as the days are now shorter and the cool breezes (even in Mexico City) nip at your nose and fingers.

My mother made some delicious candied pumpkin: chopped up pieces boiled in water with cinnamon sticks and piloncillo.
It's one of my favourite treats!

She also put up an ofrenda* with food, sweets and candles.
I placed my (last minute) jack-o-lantern beneath it.

Not pictured, but present beneath the ofrenda, are the typical ofrenda flowers: the marigold (or cempasuchil).
 Their bright orange petals really seem to radiate life.

I found the stencil online and I nearly backed out a couple of times, but pressed on and am pleased with the result.
It's the cat bus from Totoro!

Afterwards, I experimented a little with the shutter speed.
Had I been in a white lace dress and not in my PJs, this picture might've been more effective...

And if you're still in the Halloween/ All Soul's Day mood:

Can't get enough of skeleton dances?
Check out the Mickey Mouse Haunted House 1929 short. They don't make cartoons like they used to... I'm off to watch The Corpse Bride (for some more skeleton dances), eat  pan de muerto** and drink hot chocolate. Happy Weekend!

* An offering for those we've lost. ** A delicious sugary bread made especially in November for Day of the Dead.