Count Down - Aaa..chooo!!

Friday afternoon:
‘Can you be home after 2 pm Saturday?’
‘Definitely!’

Saturday - all day:
Time
Counted in sneezes and sniffles
while I puttered and cleared space

Time 
Counted in tissues and wrapped in warm fuzzes ~
while I went through papers and files

Time
Counted in cups of tea with honey and lemon
while I ate soup and a sandwich

Time
Counted in naps in the rocking chair
while Cuban jazz played on the radio

Time
Interrupted by the doorbell!
My new chair (it swivels) delivered!  Yay!!

(Not sure about Henry David and his opinion!)

“‘Tis healthy to be sick sometimes.”

~ Henry David Thoreau

Wandering the Hallways

Wandering the Hallways

I don’t remember the story clearly. I do have a faint memory of the storybook's cover. A picture of a long hallway on the second floor of an old mansion. How do I know it was the second floor? An intuition? A vague remembrance of the story inside those probably now mouldy covers of a book that may only exist in my memory? I just know that it was a second floor hallway over looking a vast lawn, bush and trees texturing the landscape on a sunny day. Sun streaming in tall windows. Gauzy curtains made yellow by the brilliant sun hung limply waiting for a breeze to bring them to life. At the end of the hallway was a cupboard ~ an old wooden cupboard with frescoes and curlicues carved deeply in old polished wood all atop and down the sides. Two children advanced toward the cupboard, their antique dress placing them in a time long past. The girl wore a long dress, as blue as the top of the sky, with a fine lace collar and puffed lace edge sleeves. Her blond hair hung fine, straight and glossy, held back with a blue satin ribbon. She reminded me of Alice in Wonderland. The boy wore a loose white shirt with pants that banded at the knee; long white stockings encased his young legs. He too had blond hair, but it capped his head in a mass of unruly curls. 

Just what was in that old wooden cupboard at the end of the hallway? The door to the cupboard sat ajar - just enough to show that it was probably empty….rather like the black hole of my memory for the story that was…….If I could just reach into that image and open the cupboard door. I could even hear it creak. The story book must have been a gift. I would have been a young child when I held it in my hands, turning printed pages smelling of paper and ink when the book was new. The old rocking chair creaked back and forth on the broad porch, birds twittered and visited in the brambles and blackberries, a train whistle echoed in the distance. Closing my eyes, I smiled at all the enchanting words and phrases penned and printed so long ago. The whole story had not really been forgotten. Time had tucked it safely away in the long, and often mysterious, hallway of my memory

“Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind.”

~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Time for Coffee

All I wanted was coffee - actually a vente latte.

My break was short - the nearest coffee shop was across the street.

Line up!! No time!

It was too busy to wait.

Quick stop into my workplace…….

Said hello - just a quick trip down to a different coffee shop - then be right back.

Surely not as busy in Cook Street Village.

Another line up!! Time was short but enough.

Laid back chat and chatter, doors opening closing, barista’s calling……..

The moral of the story?

Time management is necessary when visiting a coffee shop on New Years Day ~

New Years Day is much busier than Christmas Day.

“You gotta make it a priority to make your priorities a priorty.”

~ Richie Norton

'Demon Rum' vs Happy New Year!!

In the world of consuming of alcohol or drugs, the word spirit is often heard, very often in jest when one’s spirits have been elevated, sullied or dampened by ‘demon rum.’ There is no time, and definitely not in these holidays, for alcohol or other drugs to be consumed in quantities that allow for one’s personal spirit to be seconded to these chemicals. 

There are many that would disagree, and disagree heartily, with me. Possibly even accompanied by guffaws and raucous laughter. However, I have seen, know and very likely been related to many who have ultimately succumbed to some form of chemical spirits, forever leaving only memories of the lives they lived ~ the fragments of their true spirits shining through a watery, wavering chemical aura.

This time of year, and especially this evening, has too great a potential for tragedy to arrive suddenly and without warning while spirits are altered. 

Please be careful out there, don’t drink, drug and drive - and have fun!!

“All that spirits desire, spirits attain.”

~  Khalil Gibran

End of the Year Book Review 2014 ~ Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts

This massive work is challenging, not just because of its size but because of the wildly colourful life led by the protagonist. Linbaba has come to Bombay on a false passport and visa to escape authorities from Australia. Escaping over the wall from prison in Australia, he disappears into a slum of Bombay. Becoming part of the community, learning to speak the languages and participating in the life of the slum, he develops lasting friendships built on survival and trust. He allows himself to be loved and taught by his new community. His life moves into criminally lucrative involvement with the Bombay mafia where he learns forgery, money laundering and the skill of creating false passports and identification. A strange discontinuity of morals, philosophy and crime are taught by his mentor and boss, Khaderbai. Unrequited love mingles with Linbaba’s longing to belong, to be loved, while he desperately misses his home and family in Australia. 

Within the first twenty pages I could smell and hear the sounds of Bombay and was drawn into the colourful chaotic spirit of the story that is many times joyous and tender. Later, there were times when I was tempted to put down the book, but the writing and story telling kept me intrigued about the next charming or the next dangerous adventure. Was Linbaba adventuring, searching or just surviving in a foreign land? 

“I don’t know what frightens me more, the power 

that crushes us, or our endless ability to endure it.”

~ Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram

Tree Spirits

Trees

Springing forth with life ~

pregnant with green buds and pink tipped blossoms

Sun warmed coloured froth overhead

Trees

Redolent residents of summer

Throwing shade in light blankets of softened green while song birds nest in netted branches

Trees

Painted ladies and gentleman of autumn

Flamboyantly playful fragments of leafy colours

Gentle breezy drifts or busy swirls in random eddies

Trees

White ice cold diamond studded beauty

Deep brown and black open coats braving the cold

Wild winds brushing lacy branches against the sky

“I think that I shall never see

A poem lovely as a tree…..”

~ Joyce Kilmer

From the Same Root ~ 1

Parent and Child

Both affected by active addiction,

return to their separate and together roles.

Verbal battles raged and calmed.

Addiction arrested and behaving as if not present.

Spirits dampened and cleansed.

Minds and bodies broken and healing.

Parent and Child

Both awakening to recovered sobriety,

welcome each other to share in growth.

Conversation gently unfurling about life and living.

Addiction arrested and known for what it is.

Spirits brightened and opening up.

Minds and bodies strengthened in readiness for what is to come.

“Words are a pretext. It is the inner bond that 

draws one person to another, not words.”

~ Rumi