Blue days
Alice wears a blue dress
My shoes are blue too
She has no friends in Wonderland
My shoes are new
It is a discombobulating story
More so for adults than children
Who know how dangerous it can get alone
The show is outside and there is dust everywhere
My new blue shoes are dirty
This should not be something
That bothers a grown woman
But all through Wonderland all I can think about
Is the dirt on my new blue shoes
And how they will never look new again
They want to shrink her and grow her
Tease her and chop off her head
Much like the tasks of any life
When all you want is a nice cup of tea
Some days I am so scared of dying
I have to hold my breath
The story goes on weird and wonderful
We’ll never get to see how it ends
I saw the ASC outdoor production of Alice in Wonderland which was very entertaining and affected me more than I would have thought ...
Star gazing (or what I learned from one hour with Stephen Hawking)
We are made from the stuff of stars,
in the beginning there was
no outside, everything was inside
gravity is the hero of the universe
it pulls together what has been exploded
iron does not create energy when it fuses
so the fire at the heart of the star
starts to die
the death of a star is called a super nova
it is the birth of something new
black holes form when a star
comes to the end of its life
when a star explodes it makes a cloud
called a nebula
nebuli are beautiful
our sun was created when a whole lot
of hydrogen fused together
the earth is made from minerals and rock
the universe is expanding, ever expanding
those stars that look red in the night sky,
they are galaxies moving away from us
things are born, they create energy
they explode and all the bits
are blown away, then eventually
the bits are pulled back together
and something new is formed, that
is how stuff is made
there is more than optimism to this
it is expansion, it is wonder
it lifts us out of ourselves, physics
is a religion, but there is
no punishment and no reward
it is just exploding and dispersing
and fusing, each body is an atom
that is made in the same way the
universe was formed
my body in the night sky
is dancing, I run on the earth
which lifts to hold me
my serious face, like gravity,
slowly pulls objects together
and turns in on itself
when it goes unchallenged,
bring hydrogen! bring helium!
touch the gold and silver and platinum
that are forged in the heart
of an exploding star, the cosmos
is born from imperfection
mistakes make life
a perfect state is a dead state
nothing comes from stasis
see where the blobs of gas are thicker
see where they are thin
in between is where
the good stuff happens
the stuff of stars
the stuff of us.
On Holiday
Days of warm, wet nothing. The air
is a bath you stand up in. My hair never
dries. There is nowhere to go except
into a book or television show. I am unwinding.
What will be left?
Impressing Jung
Serial killers visit regularly in my dreams.
Last night, for the first time, I didn't run and hide in helpless fear.
I grabbed the smashed bottle he was holding and stabbed him with it. Once, then again, and again, and again.
A violent, yet satisfying way to spend the night.
I wonder if Jung would be proud.
airport philosophy
the problem lies
in thinking things should be
other than they are
fact is, airport carpet is grey
the flight is delayed
and we are here for 5 hours
wishing it weren't so
just makes each minute
tick by a little slower
the flight, when it comes
is its usual miracle
we don't fall out of the sky
we are humans
and we are flying
Gardening
Gardening. I like the idea of it. I get into it sporadically, once every couple of years. I like to be able to say: Today I am gardening! It means I am not writing or worrying. It means I won’t have to go for a run because I will have done exercise. It means I am outside and communing with nature and making things grow. And let’s face it, as a novelty activity, pulling out weeds is fun.
But then it gets serious and you realise you are going to have to mulch and buy sand and soil and weed killer and manure and dig beds and raise things and plant and wait and buy more things and read gardening blogs and it all becomes a bit like sewing or fixing a car, it is all in a language I don’t understand and it makes me feel small and inadequate and somewhat retarded in my learning.
But nonetheless, for a few hours, every couple of years, it is a noble and satisfying thing to say: Today I am gardening!
This is how it is today.
Sight bites
Today we cull our travel photos into bite-sized chunks, easily digestable over a glass of wine or cup of tea.
We flirt with the idea of an old-fashioned slide night, complete with safari suit and toothpicks stabbed into tiny slabs of cabana, pineapple and cheese.
We don't make photo albums any more. We make folders with neat names that we back up onto external hard drives and syphon onto memory sticks.
At best we upload the best of the lot onto Facebook.
Will grand children discover them in a shoe box one day and wonder how to convert them into something they can see with their teeny tiny futuristic technology?
Our sight bites.
The shiny tiny mementos of our dream like memories.
lights at night
why is so much comfort given when you are in a foreign city, walking outside at night and you look up to see the glow of lights in apartment buildings, the shape of furniture - a high backed chair, a TV on a stand, a pot plant - and shadows moving around, going about their business ... cups of tea, a move from one room to another, stillness sitting at a table.
is it voyeurism?
feels more like connection, but maybe I am romanticising things.
these shoes
walking in foreign cities
I am obsessed with people's shoes
what do they choose?
comfort over style or both?
we seem to be living in times of unparalleled cool
skinny jeans and runners abound
tan ankle boots and slouchy soft things that only skinny Italian women can make look elegant
what do people think when they look at my shoes?
or am I the only one looking down?
this is a dangerous and defeating way to travel
luckily I bump into things quite often
which reminds me to
LOOK UP!
What cows think
cows know we are not cows
you can tell by their regard
what - do you suppose - do they think we are?
Diagnosis
Due to trouble with a sore hip while starting a new running program, I trotted off to see a physiotherapist. After earnest discussion and some targetted prodding he informed me that the problem was not my hip. The problem was more to do with the muscles around my hip.
To be specific, I have a lazy gluteus maximus.
I think this means I technically have the diagnosis of a lazy bum.
This got me thinking about other possible afflictions and associated diagnoses. Would flabby arms make me a flibbertygibbet? A blocked nose be due cause for the label of nincompoop?
And what bodily dysfunction might lead me to be diagnosed as a poo-head?
Something to think about ...