Simple Gifts

'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,
'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gain'd,
To bow and to bend we shan't be asham'd,
To turn, turn will be our delight,
Till by turning, turning we come round right.

Happy Thanksgiving!

changing my life

"The future will depend on what we do in the present." Mahatma Gandhi

Sorry I haven't been around lately. Working on changing my future. I'll be back shortly...

BOO!

Round about the cauldron go,

In the perfumed potion throw!

Full moon shine its light on you,

And make thy future troubles few

This is the charm I make for thee,

As I will so mote it be!

found treasure

You know when you're scanning the channels and land on something that you haven't seen in a hundred years & in the 1st ten minutes you realize why it's considered a "classic" and wonder yet again why it's not on your keeper shelf...

The Great Escape
Steve McQueen... a baseball... a motorcycle...
And a passell... passle... well crap a whole lot of STARS and character actors & everyone of them is an "oh him!" A wonderfully complicated tour de force & oh yeah can we talk about the soundtrack...

I think watching this with my mother so long ago (yes it was that long ago!) was the first time I fell in love with motorcycles. :-)

And OHMYGOD I just looked up & there's Illya Kuriakin... okay it's David McCallum!!! Yeah what can I say I was a Man from U.N.C.L.E fan too! *sigh*

This may not be a "literary" post, but it's JOY for me tonight!

spin cycle

colors, mixed with darks, mixed with whites...
the water's too hot, the colors bleed,
blacks fade to gray

and wouldn't you know that tissue I couldn't find was in the pocket

the load is off center & the washer goes
thud
thud
thud
against the wall & tries to walk away
while shaking the load free
of all that
dirt

keys to the future

It's just a few days till the Autumnal Equinox, traditionally for me a time much anticipated. The heat of summer wanes, blessed fall rains come more and more frequently, change is in the air.

There are multiple anniversaries for me of great losses, but there's also Halloween, Thanksgiving, and a multitude of Winter Holidays (Solstice, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa), New Year's Day.

And this autumn, there's also School. Cleaning up, strengthening, building on the foundation I started at the beginning of my career, so that maybe - just maybe - it will carry me to the end of my career.

around the block & back

I prefer the lovely gnarled limbs and knots of old trees that serve as reminders of high winds, storms, floods and droughts survived over many years.

I find vintage furniture and clothes, with their battered marks of love & use so much more comfortable than new things that have to be “broken in”.

I remember the first time I read that lovely poem of Whitman's praising the lined and wise faces of old women in favor of the fresh faces of the young. I was in my twenties, and it was such a shock to read it and know that men - any men - could want to be with someone... ahem, seasoned. And I remember thinking that I couldn't wait to become a woman 'of a certain age'.

I have to remind myself of all that when I look in the mirror and see the evidence of my life laid out like a roadmap.


And when the plans and dreams I’ve made are dashed to the ground and trampled, then run over by a herd of stampeding cattle and then burned to ash by a raging brush fire, I have to remind myself that it’s all “experience”, and will – eventually – be simply another sticker on the steamer trunk of my life: a tangible reminder of difficulties endured and survived.