Silver and Gold

Silver pebbles tossed against the windows by winter’s wind

Diamonds twinkle on silvered branches beneath a street light

Golden puddles on the patio gather frigid rain drops 

Black night hides the clouds, the moon and the stars

A wet reminder that the time for winter’s wet is not yet passed.

“Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head 

with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby.”

~ Langston Hughes

At the Tip of a Paring Knife

A high pitched crunch twisted time and place
The tiny sound slid time back to the kitchen of my childhood
Mom peeled brown skinned potatoes, twisted out the little eye
A memory at the tip of a paring knife

“Memory was supposed to fill time, but it made time a hole to be filled.”

~ Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated

In the Stacks

Pages once white, clean and blank 

Words strung carefully across each page

Review - again.

Edit - again

Thoughts so clear when first put down

Still organized but

…..not quite right

Where they should be

Too much

Too little

One page at a time

One sentence at a time

Stack up the pages

Divide them in doable time spaces

Coloured paper clips for each ‘reading’

Don’t think about good or bad

How much or how many

Just do the work.

Done…….for today.

“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.”

~ Jack Kerouac,  The Dharma Bums

Time for Repetition

It happened.

And may have been happening for a long time.

(I actually think it has, but don’t tell.)

Stories, gathered from long term memory, told….

and re-told……..and re-told…….

But in my defense ~ 

In the defense of seniors everywhere….

the wisdom of these stories has been foundational and I have just wanted to share ~

and share……and share ~ of course with different people and in a variety of situations.

Well, maybe those foundations are a bit crumbly

...in a bit of disrepair.

Repetition, in this case, is not practicing to perfection.

It is practicing til words fall apart like Scrabble tiles dumped out on the table.

Until short-term memory becomes long-term memory

there will not be much new to talk about.

 ~ but then it won’t be new, will it?

Sigh……..

“This is the lesson that history teaches: repetition.”

~Gertrude Stein

Book Review - The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

For this month's book club, I chose The Shadow of the Wind strictly because Stephen King wrote an enthusiastic cover review. In his comments, he called The Shadow of the Wind ‘one gorgeous read.’ He was right. Many layered stories within stories in post war Barcelona, Spain are all connected mysteriously and in the hands of a young boy. The novel opens with Daniel, a ten year old boy selecting a book from the fantastically named ‘Cemetery of Forgotten Books’ with the promise to his father that he would never tell anyone about that most sacred place. The book that he chose, The Shadow of the Wind, is the beginning of the search for the lost author ~ who not only wished to remain lost, but wanted to destroy all copies of his books. The search takes us into the stories within the story with humour, darkness, great love and great hate. Time often stood still, and then raced forward to the next harrowing event while memories of the past loomed forever present.

This was a second read for me, and I enjoyed it as much as I did on the first read. My favourite character, because of his constant verbal ballet in any sort of a situation, was Fermin. This character provided much of the comic relief throughout these dark, and realistic stories. Daniel, the protagonist, was really a fairly quiet, and quite naive man, who grew from age ten to a young father by the end of the book with his own ten year old son. This book is full of the shadows of the lives of the city and the many men and women that people this rich and tantalizing story.

“I leafed through the pages, inhaling the enchanted scent

 of promise that comes with all new books, and stopped 

to read the start of a sentence that caught my eye.”

~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon, The Shadow of the Wind

Title: The Shadow of the wind

Author: Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Originally Published in Spanish as la Sombre del Viento (2001)

Translation Copyright: Lucia Graves, 2004

Publisher: Penguin Group

First Published in the United States:  2004

ISBN: 1-59420-010-6 (hc.)

ISBN:  978-0-14-303490-2 (pbk.)

Type:  Fiction

Marking Time

Time ~
still yet always moving
fast forwards from past times
shades and hints of future in limbo

Calendars ~
lining up time in squares
numbers march forward on each page
future events marked in scheduled blocks

Time ~
swirls and flows around and through us
silent as the very air we breathe

Calendars ~
hang silently, sit quietly, or sleep in drawer or purse
waiting for time to be marked.

“Time is the measurer of all things, but is itself immeasurable, 

and the grand discloser of all things, but is itself undisclosed.”

~ Charles Caleb Colton

When is it Time?

When is it time?

On the clock or the dot

In a moment or second

For you or for me

When is it time?

If the moon is full

If planets align

For cities and towns and dear Mother Earth

When is it time?

In a day or a week

At month’s end or turn of the year

for making changes that matter.

When is it time?

Now would be good

For you and for me and for all of us ~

Mother Earth, the moon and the stars won’t wait.

“They always say time changes things, 

but you actually have to change them yourself.”

~ Andy Warhol, 

The Philosophy of Andy Warhol