Matins.
The day begins. Early morning light at the window.
I sit, in silence, stilled, on the edge of the bed, book in hand.
The reading is Caring by F R Scott.
Caring
Frank Reginald Scott born Quebec,1899. Life cycle completed 31st January 1985.
Sound and song fill my space. A Villanelle for Our Time.
“Centre of calm beyond excess
Who cares for caring, has caress.”
© silkannthreades
It’s just one of those days of summer,
when blooms
Flowering leek
and beings
Bee with leek
and beasties
entwine with sun and sky,
to weave a cloth
Finely clothed
so light and fine
Light and fine
that you wish you could wear it forever,
close,
like the sweet touch of earth to skin.
Day of Summer
Close as Earth to Skin
© silkannthreades
Ladysighs teaches herself to write Minute Poems and Lanterne poetry. Mrs P of Destination Unknown challenges herself to create Villanelles. Their willingness to play with form and words inspired me to attempt a haiku; my very first haiku, ever, emerging, as I near the completion of my fifties!
The monarchs return
when the plums ripen and fall
and the winds blow home.
The monarchs return
when the plums ripen
and fall
There it is; short and sweet 😉
Will I write more haiku, or try my hand, and brain, at another form of poetry ? Maybe, but probably not yet. I would like to concentrate my spare creative energy on my chap books. They need a massive transformation before they are ready to fly.
© silkannthreades
It is the season for plums. It is the time for plum deliciousness.
Season for Plums
Plums make:
a perfectly delightful gift for a friend;
Plums, pretty and perfect and a delicious gift
and a beautiful, bounteous, table decoration;
Laden with Plums
;
A Vase of Plums
Plums make delectable eatables:
like gleaming, sugar-shimmering, baked compote;
Baked Plums for the Table
and rich coffee cake.
Plum Coffee Cake
[ take a slice, please do 🙂 ]
An invitation to a slice
And plums are fabulous for frivolous fool…ishness ;
and golden jam,
Jono’s Jam
and plums make a jolly good story, too, don’t they? 😉
© silkannthreades
Continuing on the theme of surprises , it is surprising what gems of loveliness can be found, tucked away, in the gloom
There be GLOOM!
of the back rooms of our lives.
Inspired by a friend’s gift of plums from her backyard tree,
Plums, pretty and perfect, rich gems of juicy fruit
I was fossicking in the attic,
in search of my books on JAM , plum jam, when my eyes lit upon the long-forgotten face of Sister Wendy Beckett,
contemplative nun, writer, broadcaster and art lover, who recently appeared on Desert Island Discs, talking of her life, her love of Schubert’s Serenade , and confessing to the sin of being nasty to her little sister 😦
I was thrilled to see her again and to reconnect with her meditations on peace, and to realise how greatly she influenced my understanding of art, in the days before online art galleries and Wiki and blogging. What a remarkable person, I heard myself saying, communicating, as she does, so clearly, from the silence and physical confines of her world. …
not unlike this poem, of which Sister Wendy, defender of Classics and Latin, would surely approve, which my daughter wrote for me, in the solitude of her nights in Far North Queensland
To a Peony
(in which my daughter remembers the day, when she was extremely sad, and her mother gave her a sweet-scented peony from the garden )
Welcome back Sweet Peony
Dark leaves, put forth thy anniversary.
Honey may burn; thy nectar rises up
like sugar syrup in a warmer cup,
ribbons the water. And say how can it be,
thou growest so magenta, when the hew
of thy first stock was white? Unless it was
among the hedgehogs and the heucheras
the lost god stopped and wept his ancient dew.
Colours stand faster in the dimming air;
so in the long grey drizzling afternoon
of dying hope, was thy expressive bloom
placed by a gentle hand into my care;
I see it still, in my mind, in the gloom
unfolding endless petals in my empty room.
*td* (first draft)
© silkannthreades
I wasn’t intending to write another post so soon but life is full of surprises, and what could be more surprising than stepping out your front door on a sleepy Sunday morning and finding that your letterbox has suffered a great indignity. Like so…..
Smithereens
Oh, what rage and/or drunkenness, or druggedness, was a-foot in our mild-mannered neighbourhood, last night? For it was not only MY letterbox that was abused. Several neighbours found a similar scene of destruction,
Toppled
but our letterbox seemed to be the most severely damaged. To smash our brick letterbox to smithereens would have required significant force……and I expect, by the time the persons had done their *work*, they were out of energy to do much else.
Now, our letterbox was not in the best of condition prior to this assault. It was damaged in the severe earthquakes of 2010 and 2011, but it was still standing, and it was still usable, until some time in the dark of last night. Imagine! …that letterbox stood up to more than 12,500 earthquakes, yet, came to an inglorious end by the hands of stupid mankind. Oh, the irony 😦
My good neighbour, who shares the mailbox with us, cleaned up the mess and, don’t tell this to the vandals, but I rather liked the way the litter letter free area temporarily opened up, to give our property more ‘street appeal’.
New Street Appeal
And, also in their favour, the vandals, unwittingly, worked faster than the insurance company on my earthquake insurance rebuild for external property damage….and have, thereby, saved us a few hundred dollars on demolition costs. Oh, the irony! I am sure that would surprise them; vandals and the insurance company, I mean.
The postie is going to be surprised tomorrow, when he tries to deliver mail on our street. He will be most surprised of all when he finds the trendy, new letterbox that my helpful neighbour has cobbled together.
Will this start a new trend?
Isn’t life witty, and surprising, and ever so slightly crazy?
© silkannthreades
Confession! In common with many of us, these days, I am activity rich and resource poor~ which is simply a fun way to say that I have too much to do, and/or want to do, and not enough time to do it all. Sound familiar ? And this imbalance is beginning to make me feel a teeny, little bit crazeeeee!
So, I was very pleased, this week, to receive a notification from Amazon about a book I pre-ordered last August. The notice said:
“The items listed below will actually be dispatched sooner than we had originally expected based on the new release date:
Stuart, Sophia “How to Stay Sane in a Crazy World: A Modern Book of Hours to Soothe the Soul””
How to Stay Sane in a Crazy World ~Sophia Stuart
Aaahh, a message that is music to my ears. How soothing ;). I adore a Book of Hours.
I have made three of them, myself…….
and, thanks to a helpful tip from dadirridreaming , and production help from Blurb , a fourth book is on its way to me right now
Silkannthreades~ A Book of Days and Hours
But these are just little books, like chapbooks , not real books, with a real International Standard Book Number ISBN, like the one Sophia/teamgloria has…sigh!
Some of you may have noticed that I have mentioned Sophia and teamgloria more than once on my blog, as in here and here , and that’s because I think she is glorious, and because I share her love of blue-blue sky and Rumer Godden and labyrinths and, most of all, John O’Donohue;
Which is why I have reserved a special place for Sophia’s book when it arrives next month. It will sit, book cover to book cover, with John O’ Donohue, on the small tower of quiet, gentle reading, which I keep close at hand, on my (blue 🙂 ) bedside chair. How lovely; how very lovely that will be.
Books by my Side
And now, here’s something for a giggle… can anyone see, in this photo, how, in my subconscious arrangement of these books for their photo shoot, I made a statement about the imbalance of my life, at the moment? And, for more smiles, check out the video clip in my sidebar, featuring the book promo for How to Stay Sane in a Crazy World.
© silkannthreades
Two weeks into the New Year and I have finished reading my first book for 2014, albeit one I started some time back, in 2013. The book, which I have been reading, at a very leisurely pace, is Spirited Ageing ~cultivating the art of renewal ~ by Juliet Batten .
Juliet, in her book, tackles, with a delightful combination of grace and common sense, the subject of preparing for one’s old age. She invites the us “into the adventure of conscious ageing” and provides basic, easy-to-follow, strategies to help us discover our source of energy, the “illumination” or “regenopause”, upon which we can draw to fuel a ‘ vibrant’ and ‘expansive’ old age. She also invites us to, amongst other things, care for the soul, do new things constantly, identify treasure and clutter, bring creativity into our lives, and to focus on increasing the renewable *spirit* of our being, as our physical capacity diminishes.
Clap your hands and sing
With Juliet’s suggestions in mind, I have been enriching my spirit, in recent days, by researching a post I meant to write more than a week ago; a post to acknowledge the closure of one Christmas season on January 6th and the beginning of another; that of the Coptic Churches, on January 7th. I would have gotten to this *work* sooner, if it weren’t for those mayhem-making Moments you may remember from my previous post 😉 . However, when the subject of the post is of a millennial vintage, a delay of a moment or two, or three ,or four, is neither here nor there.
So, with research completed, here is that delayed post, which has two parts:
Part One;
a visit to the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland to gaze upon the Museum’s collection of Ethiopian illuminated manuscripts and icons;
Diptych Icon with Saint George, and Mary and the Infant Christ : Early 15th Century, Tempera on Wood
The Walters Art Museum has “one of the largest collections of manuscripts, icons and processional crosses outside of Ethiopia. Historically, Ethiopia was a Christian kingdom with strong ties in both trade and religion to the cultures located around the Mediterranean. Ethiopia’s Christian tradition dates back to the 4th century, when the ruler of the Aksumite kingdom converted to Christianity; by the 15th century, this African nation had developed a tradition of icon painting that rivaled that of the Orthodox empires. ” http://art.thewalters.org/browse/category/ethiopia/
and Part Two;
an introduction to the three books I will be reading, now that I have finished “Spirited Ageing”. All three books are by Elizabeth E Wein ~ The Winter Prince, A Coalition of Lions and The Sunbird. They are visually beautiful books and lovely to hold, as well. I am eager to stretch my imagination and embark on the adventures they promise in ancient, mythical lands.
But, in case, you should think, with this post, that I am already lost to those most ancient of days, I am pleased to report some relatively recent news, which is that the city of Vancouver has banned doorknobs in all apartment buildings and private homes to be built after March 2014. http://www.vancouversun.com/story.html?id=9173543 They will be required to have easier-to-use, universal design levers. That’s the spirit Vancouver City! May I come and spend my old age with you? 🙂
© silkannthreades
I try to make the Moments count; each and every one of them.
Tick Tock from the Gifted Clock
but, oftentimes, they are an unruly lot, skilled in mayhem and the art of teasing me most mercilessly.
If you will step in to my parlour … I promise not to be mean like the Spider to the Fly
Will you step in to my parlour?
…and I will instruct you in the shenanigans of my misbehaving Moments.
Let’s begin…pay close attention!
One, two….
three, four…
Five, six….
Seven, eight….
Nine, ten….
Ten, nine, what’s your line?
It’s Play-
Time to play!
Time
Play time, fun time?
Do you get the picture? Perhaps the lesson to be learned here is that I should LET the Moments count. Much more fun, all round, than trying to MAKE them count : ).
If you would like to read the true story of this rhyme ,”One, two, buckle my shoe “, that my Moments and I have toyed with, take some time and enjoy a look through one of my very first books, a Collins Rainbow Colour Book, dated about 1950, illustrated by E.W.B, author unknown.
[E.W.B appears to have done quite a lot of work for Collins but I don’t know who E.W.B is. If anyone has any information on the illustrator E.W.B. I would love to hear it :).]
© silkannthreades
In my previous post on Epiphanies I touched upon the theme of how we feel about the way we are dressed and how we imagine we are dressed, as opposed to the reality of how we are dressed. (So that’s what she was on about, you say 😉 ) Implicit in this theme, ( well, implicit as I see it ), is the idea of how we feel about our body image.
Over the years of my lengthening life, I have led myself to believe that I am comfortable and happy in my own skin, but it occurred to me, after reading House of Bethan’s recent post on Gorgeousness (aka this year my body will be gorgeous) that, perhaps, I was fooling myself about my relationship with my body image. After all, I don’t particularly like having my photo taken; I don’t particularly like looking in the mirror at myself; and I don’t like shopping for clothes, at all, and I don’t like wearing make-up or having my hair styled and fancified. I do LIKE buying jewellery though; no worries there.
So I decided to *test* and *challenge* my body image feelings/confidence…..just a little…..by daring to display, to the wide world, my style, or what passes for style in my wardrobe. And I discovered that even to do this was incredibly scary.
Glad Rags or Ordinaries
Incredibly scary because I come from a puritanical, Protestant tradition that considered too much interest in physical appearance as improper for a well brought up young lady. Feeling/being gorgeous , it was subtlely and quietly implied, was vainglorious, prideful and inappropriate for ordinary, every day persons… ( but perfectly okay for movie stars, princesses and Mother Mary, but not the plebs ). The ideal was to be modest, tidy, neat and plain, and to those standards I have been faithful most of my life….which probably explains why I have rarely, if ever, been complimented on gorgeousness. 😦 About the closest I have come to such compliments was during the years of a very sweet and dear friendship with an elderly Italian gentleman; a professor of ophthalmology whom I met at Queen Elizabeth House at Oxford in 1979. Every time we met, no matter if it were the first or the third time in a day, the Professor would open wide his arms, bring one hand to his heart and exclaim with delight ” Cara, cara, A……, Bella, bella A…..” and, then, take my hand and proclaim to anyone within hearing distance how wonderful I was….the only person in Oxford whose English he could actually understand 🙂 Then we would sit, side by side, in the Common Room, sometimes discussing English words from his dictionary and, sometimes, just sitting, in the silent contentment of friends who need no words. It was gorgeous.
The Prof and I
To honour that long-ago time of gorgeousness, and to acknowledge Bethan’s current day call to encourage us to live gorgeously in our bodies, ( and not merely comfortably and just so-so), here are some more of my *being brave * photos of what I will wear today:
the clothing, ( most of it gifted to me);
the accessories: the necklace;
the rings, the earrings and jewels for the wrists 🙂
Phew….so there you have it. Now I am off to flaunt (not) my neat, tidy, plain and simple gorgeousness at the supermarket; *ttfn* otherwise known as ta ta for now 🙂
© silkannthreades
silkannthreades 