the older I get, the more I love poetry...

Watching the Hour on BBC America, with all the family, seeing 1956 come to life again, and one of the characters quotes e e cummings. What a genius that man was... there is something about his love poetry especially, which is just so tender and beautiful


somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain, has such small hands



do so love the 'net - where else would I find such a perfect image! and thanks to Pilar Pedrosa Pilar for putting it on her body!
and to Will Cook for the beautiful flower photo

September 11th...

I've been reading about September 11th and seen some new and thoughtful photos I hadn't seen before, so I'm putting here, in commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the event that happened a few blocks away from where I live... We were not here on the day, we arrived about 5 months afterwards, but the day is very alive here (as indeed, it was in Sydney, which is where I was at the time)



I found the photo by Thomas Hoepker in an article in the Guardian about it

Then I saw this image taken by Matt Weber


which lead me to the poem by Auden...



Musee des Beaux Arts
W. H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.


In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.



Love how poetry can put everything in perspective, and show the terror and the beauty, the mundane and the exceptional, and what you see all depends where look...

Independence Day

I was writing about Independence day in my tarot blog and quoted from John Donne, so I went to look it up to make sure that I got it right..



Meditation XVII

No man is an island, entire of itself
every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main
if a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were,
as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were
any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind
and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls
it tolls for thee.


I know I often worry about the cost of a liberal arts education, and though it didn't give me the clear career path I thought I wanted in my 20's, it's serving me well these nearly 30 years later, as I recall poems and writers I read then, and who speak even louder to me now...

Perfect love song...

For You...



For you I want to sing a happier song
for you I'm gonna try to right all my wrongs
for you I'm gonna break my bad habits
there's a golden ring and I want you to have it
there's a golden ring and I want you

For you I'm gonna sit and patiently wait
it's great if you're early but if its fine if you're late
for you I feel love and I just want to show it
you're a beautiful girl and want you to know it
you're a beautiful girl and want you to know it
you're a beautiful girl and want you to know it
it's an infinite world and I want you

Once again I am opened
Once again I am opened
Once again I am opened
Once again I am opened

For you I'm waiting on the ticket line
I gotta get back I don't wanna waste time
but the people are tired and the line is so long
so all I can do is sing this song

X factor

If I list the films I've seen this year, you will immediately know I have a teenage son. Thankfully I don't have to see the real kiddie stuff anymore, but I do have to see the blockbusters. We saw Thor recently, and I guess if I had heard nothing about it, I might have enjoyed it more, but because people were raving, I was disappointed. Kenneth Brannagh is a Shakespearian director but there was no Shakespearian grandeur there, it was just too slight and silly for me.


Last night we went and saw the X men prequel, X Men, First Class. I realized that I have never seen another x men film, because I could see that there were nuances that I wasn't getting. But even with no knowledge, this was a multi leveled, well acted interesting film. I liked how they tied in all the fears of the post WWII era - eugenics, superior races and nuclear war. Then I read this article in Fox -, all concerned about its 'gay agenda' but in particular wanting to have a discussion about Evolution.


From the tone and content, it was clear that the author and perhaps much of the readership, think evolution has made humans and stopped. We are a pinnacle piece. But that is completely wrong. Evolution never ends. We are continuously evolving, and in a million years, humans we will be physically and intellectually different to how they are today. We are evolving socially far more quickly than we are evolving physically, but every day, natural selection - through nature and through cultural elements, allows some humans to thrive and others not, and the ones who thrive have children with a far better chance of survival. As long as we exist, our species is evolving. And so the dance continues...

Kindle update

I realize that every 3 months or so I write another piece about Kindle, but it is so much part of my life right now, and it's evolving...



So my first concern about Kindles was that it was great for first reads (want it, it's here, in your home, at the beach, where ever, in your hand, really in an instant!) but I am a frequent re-reader and was concerned about that. But then I really started to make good use of the write your own notes or make your own highlights option. Now as I pass sentences that make me smile or think or just are beautifully written, I highlight them. So if I think of the of book and try to recall the sentence I want, all I have to do is look at my notes, and there it is. No more flipping back and forth through pages getting myself lost. Everything I want, at my fingertips.

I would still encourage Amazon to have pictures besides their title listings - I don't judge books by their covers, but I still remember books more from their covers than their titles. I take most books off my kindle, and down load them as I want. I guess I could hold them in folders on my kindle, but moving them to and fro is effortless and leaves my kindle with all it's memory intact.

I know that I love my kindle, (above is the pretty apple green cover I chose for it) because when I was recently given the choice between reading a book in paperback or on kindle, I chose the kindle. I have evolved :)

New Quote

Somewhere I had read this and had erroneously attributed it to Nelson Mandela, but apparently Marianne Williamson said it. Either way, it's a beautiful piece -

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Beautiful picture is by Ruth Palmer and called Lifeline and you can buy your own copy here