Not sewing, but dreaming

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feed:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

                                                             ~ WB Yeats 

No progress on the creative front this weekend.  Don't know where the time went.  That thief called 'housekeeping' probably was responsible, and not the old-fashioned felon who gently stole hours dedicated to finer domestic arts like embroidery and silver-polishing, but that modern rapper-type who plays a beat on shiny electronic devices.  Curse him.

B-Well Report: Up National Circuit

What a week.  Again.  Yesterday was one of those days when I may as well have stayed in bed.  Technology failed me.  Or I failed it.  A document I was working on wasn't saved to the right folder, in fact wasn't saved at all.  Whoosh.  Disappeared into the greater vaporous space of the Electronic Data Record Management System.   A case of too many tabs open and too big of a rush to pay attention to detail.  I also had to bail out of a course next week which did not make the Training People happy.  Gulp.  Fortunately everyone else seemed to have a great day.  The whole school wore pajamas and crazy hair for the last day of term 1 and to raise money for Japan. Can't imagine my teachers ever wearing their pajamas to school, least of all out in public on traffic duty.  But there was Mrs X in her flannalettes directing cars like a circus clown.  Made me smile. 

I also had a leisurely walk to work one day last week (or maybe it was the week before, so lost am I in the vortex of work, home, school, supermarket I never know where I am), and took some hasty pics of familiar places along National  Circuit.  There are lots more leaves to kick these days, and with the turn in the weather it's time to bring out the coats and jackets.   On my not so leisurely pelt back at the end of the day, I have discovered that a mass of fallen acorns on the ground can be hazardous in high heels.  One of these days I'm going to twist my ankle on them.  So not very dignified.  Fortunately there never any people around.  Just as well it is Canberra.  Peak hour, major thoroughfare, opposite the national parliament and nary a soul about.  Is that good or bad?

{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. Inspired by Soule Mama.

Well. It is still Friday in the northern hemisphere.

Boy

A Boy's Song

~ James Hogg

Where the pools are bright and deep,
Where the grey trout lies asleep,
Up the river and o'er the lea,
That's the way for Billy and me.

Where the blackbird sings the latest,
Where the hawthorn blooms the sweetest,
Where the nestlings chirp and flee,
That's the way for Billy and me.

Where the mowers mow the cleanest,
Where the hay lies thick and greenest;
There to trace the homeward bee,
That's teh way for Billy and me.

Where the hazel bank is steepest,
Where the shadow falls the deepest,
Where the clustering nuts fall free,
That's the way for Billy and me.

Why the boys should drive away
Little sweet maidens from the play,
Or love to banter and fight so well,
That's the thing I never could tell.

But this I know, I love to play,
Through the meadow, among the hay;
Up the water and o'er the lea,
That's the way for Billy and me.

Autumn

AUTUMN

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Thou comest, Autumn, heralded by the rain,

With banners, by great gales incessant fanned,

Brighter than brightest silks of Samarcand,

And stately oxen harnessed to thy wain!

Thou standest, like imperial Charlemagne,

Upon thy bridge of gold; thy royal hand

Outstretched with benedictions o'er the land,

Blessing the farms through all thy vast domain!

Thy shield is the red harvest moon, suspended

So long beneath the heaven's o'er-hanging eaves;

Thy steps are by the farmer's prayers attended;

Like flames upon an altar shine the sheaves;

And, following thee, in thy ovation splendid,

Thine almoner, the wind, scatters the golden leaves!

Confessions of a Juggler

Myself 

~ Edgar Albert Guest (1919)

I have to live with myself and so

I want to be fit for myself to know.

I want to be able as days go by,

always to look myself straight in the eye;

I don't want to stand with the setting sun

and hate myself for the things I have done.

I don't want to keep on a closet shelf

a lot of secrets about myself

and fool myself as I come and go

into thinking no one else will ever know

the kind of person I really am,

I don't want to dress up myself in sham.

I want to go out with my head erect

I want to deserve all men's respect;

but here in the struggle for fame and wealth

I want to be able to like myself.

I don't want to look at myself and know that

I am bluster and bluff and empty show.

I never can hide myself from me;

I see what others may never see;

I know what others may never know,

I never can fool myself and so,

whatever happens I want to be

self respecting and conscience free.

***

I love Tina Fey. Who doesn't?  A passage in her piece “Confessions of a Juggler" What’s the rudest question you can ask a mother? in The New Yorker magazine (14 February edition) strikes a chord, minus the dream job (comic talent, Teutonic will and army of stylists). 

“How do you juggle it all?” people constantly ask me, with an accusatory look in their eyes. “You’re screwing it all up, aren’t you?” their eyes say. My standard answer is that I have the same struggles as any working parent but with the good fortune to be working at my dream job. Or sometimes I just hand them a juicy red apple I’ve poisoned in my working-mother witch cauldron and fly away.

Her memoir, Bossy Pants, was released this month.  I wonder how long it will take to hit the shelves of the Kingston Library?   And she's having her second baby.   She was nervous a second pregnancy would make her unemployable. 

"Science shows that fertility and movie offers drop off steeply for women after 40," writes Fey, 40. But, she rationalized, "What's so great about work anyway? Work won't visit you when you're old. Work won't drive you to get a mammogram and take you out after for soup.”

"Hollywood be damned," she writes. "I'll just be unemployable and labeled crazy in five years anyway."

Somehow I doubt it.

Image: American Express advertisement, 2008.

Morning Glory

Morning Glories

~ Mary Oliver

Blue and dark-blue

rose and deepest rose

white and pink they

are everywhere in the diligent

cornfield rising and swaying

in their reliable

finery in the little

fling of their bodies their

gear and tackle

all caught up in the cornstalks.

The reaper's story is the story

of endless work of

work careful and heavy but the

reaper cannot

separate them out there they

are in the story of his life

bright random useless

year after year

taken with the serious tons

weeds without value

humorous beautiful weeds.

Last week of Term 1.  Crawling towards the school holidays.  Lots of unfinished projects, rather like weeds in a garden at the moment, which need completing, including a modest re-vamp of a hall table involving Dulux Magnolia.  Heavens, we might even get into some Easter craft and bake from the latest Junior MasterChef cook book, which I recommend for its useful recipes and intriguing layout.

Image: Peta Reilly