“Be willing to write badly…”
and I learned to be willing.
Not easy when I had learned
right or wrong, good or bad
But when motivation says
‘you’ve a corner to turn’ ~
it’s wise to take that corner.
“Still round the corner there may wait, a new road or a secret gate.”
~ J.R.R.Tolkien
“Thirty days hath September,
April, June and November
All the rest have thirty-one……..”
A childhood rhyme for learning the days in the months of the year. Now, decades later, I still recite that phrase as I did tonight. It’s really a pretty little phrase with it’s old English ‘hath’; a word now obsolete, unless one wants to sound rather old fashioned, or unless one has difficulty remembering how many days are in March!
“I left the fairy tales lying on the floor of the nursery,
and I have not found any books so sensible since.”
~ G.K.Chesterton
Streets were dusty brown
Ice melted and gone
A breath of calm fell
for winter’s farewell
“Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending.”
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“Things you want to get right before it’s too late”……..a line from the book Tuesday’s with Morrie by Mitch Albom. I was perusing this little book to jog my mind tonight. Settled into the quiet of the evening, I wondered what things I want to get right. Nothing that is long past, because, as we all know, the past can't be changed, but as my life as it is today can be. I have found myself wandering into the realm of distant future seeing a slow decline of health ~ mental and physical. When I notice these worrying signs, the air is my sounding board. Aloud I say: ‘Today is the day I am in, I am healthy today, I can maintain my health today, I have only today.’ So when I read that line ‘things you want to get right’ it is my thoughts, my self-talk that I need to get right. I don’t discount the slip and slide of life’s currents and my reaction to them, but moving in balance, I can enjoy my family and friends and my life each day.
“You live and then you die, I thought. It’s good to have some good times.”
~ Natalie Goldberg, The Great Failure:
A Bartender, A Monk and My Unlikely Path to Truth
“Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die,
we can’t remember who we are or why we’re here.”
~ Sue Monk Kidd, author
p.s. - the first Storyteller was my sister Betty!
Epilepsy ~ a chronic brain condition, not the purple bruise on a face, but a purple flower in bloom
taking life by the hand between seizures
unwelcome sounds
~ rude or annoying,
un-choreographed movements:
~ convulsions that steal consciousness
~ momentary lapses that no one notices as odd
or behaviours that defy logic.
any or all and maybe more ~
when convulsions of any magnitude
defy medication, surgery and care,
the grip on living can become tenuous,
quality of life wilts
sometimes lost ~
lives given to others to manage
In the space between seizures
Family participation is challenged and will adapt
Education is challenged but goes on
Employment is challenged but continues
Community activity is challenged but develops
Health and happiness can be a daily challenge.
Epilepsy ~ a chronic brain condition
not the purple bruise on a face
but a purple flower in bloom.
“It appears to me to be no more divine nor more sacred than
other diseases, but has a natural cause….like other affections.”
~ Hippocrates,
On the Sacred Disease (written 2400 years ago)
Author’s note:
Epilepsy is no longer considered a brain disease, but is a brain condition. There are multiple causes, including stroke, brain trauma, any neurological brain damage and one form termed Idiopathic, meaning no known cause. Presently treatments are wide ranging - many different medications used depending on the individual, brain surgery if it is deemed appropriate, life style changes: any or all of them.
I reached with my mind
to cup the words
before they vanished
but that was eight hours ago ~
after a Monday life at home,
morning thoughts had been
left to hang out alone,
swept under the rug,
drifted out an open door,
swirled down a drain,
untethered words flying away
until and when time to return.
“Where does a thought go when it’s forgotten?”
~ Sigmund Freud
laughter and stories bounced and flew
~ I had come to a true story space.
“Listen, and you will realize that we are made not from
cells or from atoms. We are made from stories.”
~ Mia Couto, journalist and biologist
Hearts desires
all tucked in
until we know
“….let’s only say what our hearts desire.”
~ Rumi
My home is a comfortable one. Until the human that feeds me decides to upset everything, Cleaning she calls it, muttering about my cat hair. The little carpets that really are mine, get tossed outdoors, but I’m not allowed to follow. All my toys were hidden. And that wasn’t all. Just when I thought she was done with all her carrying on, she made delicious smelling food. I was drooling, sure I’d get some good scraps. But no. She took my blanket off of my bed where we sat together! Someone banged on our door and horror of horror’s two tiny humans came in! And two more big ones! That set my ears and tail twitching and sent me diving under a chair where I could watch them. On any ordinary day, I’d sleep all evening until she stopped the noisy flashing pictures to feed me. So I did not get any sleep at all. Well, I was awake at night to prowl and play. But today, I have been exhausted. A blanket back in place for me. No little humans to try to pet me, be nice to me, talk to me in a language that makes no sense at all. The littlest one just would not leave me alone unless I hid under the bed but I had come out to watch them. I just never know where they will be or what they will do.
“A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings for
one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not.”
~ Ernest Hemingway
Toys, stickers, puzzles
giggles and joy
a meal around the table
watching Elmo
hand shadows under the lampshade
toys strewn all ‘round
an evening well spent
“Grandchildren are the dots that connect
the lines from generation to generation.”
~ Lois Wyse, Funny, You Don’t Look Like a Grandmother (1988)
 |
| September 2014 Qu’Appelle Valley |
Fixed to the wall beside the coral painted cupboards, a wooden cabinet sported a black speaker above a dial with numbers and letters, to one side a receiver hung on a silver cradle.
This odd instrument’s only use: to await the ring of the phone on a party line ~ any of the farmers on the same line could pick up and interrupt important adolescent calls going on too long or the operator could call in an emergency call to one of the homes ~ voices travelled along wires strung across the country where birds could rest. Did they feel the vibration of our voices?
Party lines vanished
Single use phones held sway until
multiple use technology bundled everything into
colourful cell phones, tablets, laptops and computers
buttons and icons locate a myriad of uses
stubby digits or manicured nails send
emojis bouncing from here to there
voices and images fly about with the birds
to vibrate and wave to sun and wind, rain and snow.
“Well informed people know it is impossible to transmit
the voice over wires. Even if it were, it would be of no practical value.”
~ Boston Post, 1865
strowger-net.telefoniemusem.nl
 |
| April 2009 Victoria, B.C. |
Spring arrives in another land
in a froth of pink and white
while in other lands
patience is a virtue.
“Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.”
~ A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh
This is a third read of Andrew Sean Greer’s novel LESS. I only realized this when I re-read my review from 2018, (my second read). My recall of this story was quite good!
December 12, 2018
In a most unusual fashion, I read Pulitzer Prize winner LESS by Andrew Greer twice, and before our book club met yesterday. Initially, I played mind games with myself despite being intrigued by the concept of this novel. My second read, having ushered myself out of my mind, I enjoyed the humour and satire in the story following Arthur Less, a failed (according to Arthur) writer. While I was tempted to feel sorry for Arthur Less because his apparent inability to function in life, I found that was doing a disservice to himself. More than self-pity, he really seemed not to have accepted himself as a worthy human being. From the time he was a boy, when his father tried to ‘make a man’ of his son until, years later, his lover of nine years leaves him for another man, Arthur has seen himself in a rather shallow light. To avoid the pending marriage of his lover, he gathers any invitation he’s ever received to speak or teach, packs his bags and travels from New York across Europe in an effort to escape his life and ends back at home. The narrator of this humorous, but very real story, was obvious to many in my book group and in online reviews. Like Arthur, I just didn’t get it and it was revealed towards the end of the book. Another issue that occupied Arthur’s thoughts, besides the loss of his lover and his belief that he was failure as an author, was the fear of aging. Arthur's story is a love story and a coming of age story, pardon the pun. Laugh out loud scenes sparkle throughout this story. Humour so sly that I would almost miss it. Could it be because I don’t always get sly humour until I turn the page?
Always needing to see a philosophical point to a story, I was rewarded by Andrew Greer’s gentle, and humorous, description of the life of one gay man, living on the edge of the gay culture while at the same time being part of it.
“But what I am trying to tell you (and I only have a moment),
what I have been trying to tell you this whole time,
is that from where I sit, the story of Arthur Less
is not so bad. Because it is also mine.”
~ Andrew Sean Greer, LESS
Title: LESS
Author: Andrew Sean Greer
Copyright: 2017
Hardcover - 2017;
Paperback edition May 2018
Type: Novel
Publisher: Hatchett Book Group, Inc.
ISBN: 978-0-316-31612-5 (hc)
ISBN: 978-0-316-31613-2 (pb)
Book design: Sean Ford
Printed in the United States of America
My theme for the month is quality. What do I mean by quality? Is it goodness, image, presentation? When I think of quality I think of something long lasting, almost perfect - no flaws. But when related to a human being how can that be? We, as a species, seem the most flawed and yet there is a shared belief that, not only are we at the top of the food chain, we deserve to be there. Then we have the audacity to believe we can do anything to the very world that supplies us with everything for our very lives. Where is the quality in that? All our characteristics and qualities are not fully formed at the time of our birth. They are fed to us, honed and developed over the years. From parents, role models, mentors, colleagues, friends and experiences; not to mention this era of social media, truth and disinformation. Children are to develop into quality human beings. They are to make decisions that fit in with their family and community at home and abroad - no black sheep allowed. No wonder our world is so confused. What I do know for sure is that quality feels good, works well and is satisfying. As all who have travelled our path with us through life crumble away, we are alone but never lonely depending on the qualities we have taken into our lives.
“The quality, not the longevity, of one’s life is what is important.”
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
