Yes, flowers would have been prettier and cake more appetising, but it's after midnight and I'm shifting house tomorrow and this is all my addled brain was able to come up with. I shot it in Noumea, which I don't suppose is really all that random after all.
This might be though:
There was an Old Man with a beard,
Who said, 'It is just as I feared!
Two Owls and a Hen,
Four Larks and a Wren,
Have all built their nests in my beard!'
~ Edward Lear
nothing she did
or said
was quite
what she meant
but still her life
could be called a monument
shaped in a slant
of available light
and set to the movement
of possible music
~ Judith Downing
ADVICE Robert Crawford When you are faced with two alternatives Choose both. And should they put you to the test, Tick every box. Nothing is ever single. A seed’s a tree’s a ship’s a constellation. Nail your true colours to this branching mast.
1. Wattle, 2. pink clothes, 3. blood orange, 4. Tea from E
It feels like a snuggling under a cosy feather eiderdown at the end of a long day. Reassuring. A comfort.
I bought the rose syrup on a whim as I passed it in the supermarket. I thought, yes. This looks like today feels.
I had it with sparking mineral water at first, and then later in the afternoon added wine. This probably broke half a dozen oeneology laws, but I can be as big an anarchist as anyone when the situation demands. A rose scented one.
I am still without a working sewing machine, but not without the urge to make things. I saw this trick in a magazine - undo a plain envelope, use it as a template on pretty paper to make more. I like to think of the sweet surprise hiding inside the plain cover. There's a metaphor in that no doubt.
LOOK HERE
It is morning because the sun has risen. It is morning because the darkness is packed off to Europe and because the clock says so and the radio and the wet clothes sinking down from the line begin to be responsible again, try to shake themselves and face up to drying and it is morning because the jug quivers and bubbles and switches itself off and my fingers force the skin off my orange, and the blue and white teapot holds fresh tea, and it is morning because things to be done line up in front of me and say, look here.
~ Rachel Bush, The Hungry Woman (VUP, 1997)
I'm so into flowers at the moment, it's embarassing. I'd do an Elton John and have fresh bouquets delivered for every room in the house every week if I had an Elton John sort of budget. Never mind, I think that my $5 bunch of tulips from the supermarket thrill me every bit as much as his quadrillion specialised arrangements thrill him. Look at how the soft petals fold shyly over one another, the way the subtle shades of pink gently bleed their way from top to bottom. It leaves me in awe. See? Embarassing.
I've learned a new word this week: quotidian. It means "everyday: found in the ordinary course of events." The more I give up on the grand and the global and look toward the quotidian instead, the more satisfied I become. I have a nagging feeling that this is where the best things, the important things, reside. I can't quite articulate what I mean by this just yet, and I suspect it is going to take me a lifetime to try, but I'm good with that.
Eilidh is home again from school today. I'm starting to resent this long running saga of minor illnesses and the restriction of freedom it brings. On any other day I would be glad of the chance to forgo pressing errands and be still for a few hours, but the moment the choice is removed I decide there is nothing more I'd rather do than visit the gym, or grocery shop, or return my (not overdue yet! miracle!) library books.
I wrote this poem down in my notebook a few weeks ago especially for you because I thought you would like it. You may have read it already. It's "August in Waterton, Alberta", by Bill Holm.
Above me, wind does its best
to blow leaves off
the aspen tree a month too soon.
No use wind. All you succeed
in doing is making music, the noise
of failure growing beautiful.
Love that.
M.
Life
Some people set themselves tasks
other people say do anything only live
still others say
oh oh I will never forget you event of my first life
- Grace Paley
