It may be winter but I am too much of an outdoor person to stay inside by the fire for long. I just have to get out! Wandering along the Dutch canals in a tiny pocket of countryside hidden between the motorways and the noisy bustle of everyday life and accompanied only by the sounds of blue tits and warblers cheeping in the willow trees, I began to be able to hear myself think and this was the result!
Winter Parade
Reeds, standing tall beside the water’s edge,
Pale golden in the winter sunlight,
Standing guard, waiting,
For the changing of the seasons.
Pollarded willows, patterned and regimented,
In serried ranks along the bank,
Tall upright stems, pushing upward,
Against the pale winter sky.
Two dark figures on the distant towpath,
March on, muffled against the bitter cold,
A small black mongrel
Trotting happily behind them.
Cold and crisp, the winter’s icy stillness,
But already a faint hint of spring
Hesitating in the wings,
Awaiting its proper cue.
Rare glint of sunshine on oily water,
Casting its golden glow,
Forecasting the winter’s end
And another new beginning.
Friday, February 25, 2011
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Snow, snow, quick, quick, snow...
I awoke this morning to the dance of the snowflakes. Small, hard, white crystals of snow fluttered down into my sleepy, Sunday morning world, reminding me of the month of snow and ice we experienced in the final month of last year. December made us wonder what on earth the rest of the winter had in store for us, but in early January the weather turned and the longed-for thaw came. Early spring bulbs began to appear all over the garden, even the tubs of tulips looked promising, the yellow shoots of forsythia on the fence started to show their bright colour and the sun shone out of an almost balmy atmosphere.
Then this! Winter again, returning like it usually does to destroy our thoughts of an early spring! A salutory reminder that, in reality, it is only February. The weather has been leading us a dance.
It made me reflect that so much of our imagery and indeed our lives have to do with rhythm. We are attuned to the rhythm of the seasons. Our lives are punctuated by music and by rhythm. Our moments of joy have us humming merrily or breaking out into joyful song. Our moments of tragedy bring out more music in a minor key, to mesh with our mood.
I ponder on a phrase that has popped into my mind - the waltz of the flowers. Long ago, as a child living in London, my mother used to take us children to the ballet! I was addicted to my ballet classes as a child and dreamed of one day becoming a prima ballerina. Fanning the embers of this dream were the regular visits to Covent Garden where I watched, spellbound, as Margot Fonteyn and her contemporaries moved across the stage, captivating me with their grace and elegance. The Nutcracker Suite, with its series of dreamlike dances, included The Waltz of the Flowers - a romantic name for an enchanting dance I have never forgotten.
It takes two to Tango! Another of those phrases we use unthinkingly, proving again how far the idea of dance is woven into our thoughts. We can't survive alone - we need a partner, a friend, others to share life with. A while ago, living in a new home in an unfamiliar area of the country, we started ballroom dancing lessons as a way of getting to know some new people. It turned out to be magic. Tango, quickstep, waltz, cha-cha- cha - we tried them all and quickly became jack-of-all-dance and master of none! We still struggle to find our way round the dance floor doing any of these dances, but we had such fun trying! Richard Gere's performance in the film 'Shall we Dance?' fired our imaginations but we never reached the dizzy heights of his achievements.
Still, life has its rhythms and so do the seasons. Winter has had a little dance and then spring. Now it is the turn of the snowflakes again. On a more serious note, in Queensland in Australia, on the other side of the world, the rivers have overflowed in a horrifying, nightmare dance, causing misery and heartache. In the south of that same continent friends write that they are waiting to see which way the winds will blow and whether they will fan into life the terrifying dance of bush fire that is progressing across their locality. What next? The dance goes on and we humans must do the best we can.
Slow, slow, quick, quick, slow... life falls into a pattern of reflection and activity, like the diligently memorised pattern for the Quickstep. One without the other would leave us the poorer. Too much of one or the other will spoil the dance. This Sunday is a time for reflection, before the activity of the week is once more upon us. The snow is just another way of slowing us down. Spring will soon be here and the sleep of winter will be over for another year.
Then this! Winter again, returning like it usually does to destroy our thoughts of an early spring! A salutory reminder that, in reality, it is only February. The weather has been leading us a dance.
It made me reflect that so much of our imagery and indeed our lives have to do with rhythm. We are attuned to the rhythm of the seasons. Our lives are punctuated by music and by rhythm. Our moments of joy have us humming merrily or breaking out into joyful song. Our moments of tragedy bring out more music in a minor key, to mesh with our mood.
I ponder on a phrase that has popped into my mind - the waltz of the flowers. Long ago, as a child living in London, my mother used to take us children to the ballet! I was addicted to my ballet classes as a child and dreamed of one day becoming a prima ballerina. Fanning the embers of this dream were the regular visits to Covent Garden where I watched, spellbound, as Margot Fonteyn and her contemporaries moved across the stage, captivating me with their grace and elegance. The Nutcracker Suite, with its series of dreamlike dances, included The Waltz of the Flowers - a romantic name for an enchanting dance I have never forgotten.
It takes two to Tango! Another of those phrases we use unthinkingly, proving again how far the idea of dance is woven into our thoughts. We can't survive alone - we need a partner, a friend, others to share life with. A while ago, living in a new home in an unfamiliar area of the country, we started ballroom dancing lessons as a way of getting to know some new people. It turned out to be magic. Tango, quickstep, waltz, cha-cha- cha - we tried them all and quickly became jack-of-all-dance and master of none! We still struggle to find our way round the dance floor doing any of these dances, but we had such fun trying! Richard Gere's performance in the film 'Shall we Dance?' fired our imaginations but we never reached the dizzy heights of his achievements.
Still, life has its rhythms and so do the seasons. Winter has had a little dance and then spring. Now it is the turn of the snowflakes again. On a more serious note, in Queensland in Australia, on the other side of the world, the rivers have overflowed in a horrifying, nightmare dance, causing misery and heartache. In the south of that same continent friends write that they are waiting to see which way the winds will blow and whether they will fan into life the terrifying dance of bush fire that is progressing across their locality. What next? The dance goes on and we humans must do the best we can.
Slow, slow, quick, quick, slow... life falls into a pattern of reflection and activity, like the diligently memorised pattern for the Quickstep. One without the other would leave us the poorer. Too much of one or the other will spoil the dance. This Sunday is a time for reflection, before the activity of the week is once more upon us. The snow is just another way of slowing us down. Spring will soon be here and the sleep of winter will be over for another year.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Box of Delights
I feast my eyes on the polished wood, with the rounded edges. I run my fingers over its smoothness. I contemplate it and try to imagine the shape and the size of what might be hidden inside. The phrases in my head: ‘box of treasures’, ‘box of delights’, conjure up romantic dreams, stories of Arabian Nights, or something unknown and delightful.
At a meeting of our writers circle we were asked to write about one of several objects on the table in front of us. The small wooden box caught my eye immediately and I started to think of John Masefield’s wonderful story of the Box of Delights. The wonderful thing about a closed box is the idea of something tempting and tantalising, holding a mystery that you cannot see from the outside. Like opening presents, it’s best to keep the suspense for as long as possible – to keep the secret hidden inside: to admire the wrappings, the bows, the accompanying message, to shake, to smell, to turn upside down (gently) and examine before opening it.
When I finally slide open the box, twisting the two polished halves from each other, and peer inside, I am not wrong. It was worth savouring the moment. I am captivated first by the colour and then by its iridescence, by the blend of softly shining blues, turquoises, greens and colours for which I do not have a name. The intricate patterns of the shell embedded in the wood and their soft sheen and pearly quality fascinate me. A real treasure.
I love surprises. I often dream of creating a garden with winding pathways and hidden surprises. A garden where you can take a walk down the path and find a hidden glade of bluebells, or some glorious white lilies of the valley, giving away their hiding place by their scent wafting on the breeze. In my garden you would stumble over a lily pond or a rambling rose, a honeysuckle entwined in the branches of an old tree …
Recently I celebrated a birthday and I spent the day tantalised by the sight of a large purple box, light as a feather but enormous, that had arrived a day or two earlier from a family member living abroad and been spirited away by my husband to be produced on the big day. I gasped as I saw it sitting there on the breakfast table, wondering what on earth it contained. No time to open it before my husband rushed out of the door to his place of work. No fun opening presents on your own so there it sat, purple on my red tablecloth, awaiting the end of the day when I could sit down, together with husband and pot of tea, ready to uncover the surprise.
I pondered on the purple box. A fragment of a poem flitted into my head – ‘purple with a red hat’- yes, that’s what I am supposed to wear when I am old! ‘When I am an old woman I shall wear purple, With a red hat which doesn’t go.’*! Perhaps this huge purple box, light as a feather, but concealing surprises, contains my red hat! Perhaps it’s time to get ready for that day when I add the red-hatted eccentricity of age to my life’s experiences. I already wear plenty of purple…
However, the best birthdays are full of surprises and this was no exception. Another present lay on the table, which I had earlier opened, as I sipped my early morning cup of tea. Carefully, I slid the cover off the long, narrow box. There inside lay 24 sticks of pure colour! As you will know by now, I love colour and there it was – pure, unadulterated colour in 24 glorious shades: oil pastels, just waiting for me to experiment. This box promised hours of absorbing, creative fun – another box of delights!
So, leaving my purple box where it lay, and thoughts of old age behind, I decided to rediscover my childhood instead and played with my new box of delights, crayoning to my heart’s content with my glowing colours to see what youthful creativity could concoct. The other box would have to wait and so would growing old!
* poem entitled ‘Warning’, by Jenny Joseph
At a meeting of our writers circle we were asked to write about one of several objects on the table in front of us. The small wooden box caught my eye immediately and I started to think of John Masefield’s wonderful story of the Box of Delights. The wonderful thing about a closed box is the idea of something tempting and tantalising, holding a mystery that you cannot see from the outside. Like opening presents, it’s best to keep the suspense for as long as possible – to keep the secret hidden inside: to admire the wrappings, the bows, the accompanying message, to shake, to smell, to turn upside down (gently) and examine before opening it.
When I finally slide open the box, twisting the two polished halves from each other, and peer inside, I am not wrong. It was worth savouring the moment. I am captivated first by the colour and then by its iridescence, by the blend of softly shining blues, turquoises, greens and colours for which I do not have a name. The intricate patterns of the shell embedded in the wood and their soft sheen and pearly quality fascinate me. A real treasure.
I love surprises. I often dream of creating a garden with winding pathways and hidden surprises. A garden where you can take a walk down the path and find a hidden glade of bluebells, or some glorious white lilies of the valley, giving away their hiding place by their scent wafting on the breeze. In my garden you would stumble over a lily pond or a rambling rose, a honeysuckle entwined in the branches of an old tree …
Recently I celebrated a birthday and I spent the day tantalised by the sight of a large purple box, light as a feather but enormous, that had arrived a day or two earlier from a family member living abroad and been spirited away by my husband to be produced on the big day. I gasped as I saw it sitting there on the breakfast table, wondering what on earth it contained. No time to open it before my husband rushed out of the door to his place of work. No fun opening presents on your own so there it sat, purple on my red tablecloth, awaiting the end of the day when I could sit down, together with husband and pot of tea, ready to uncover the surprise.
I pondered on the purple box. A fragment of a poem flitted into my head – ‘purple with a red hat’- yes, that’s what I am supposed to wear when I am old! ‘When I am an old woman I shall wear purple, With a red hat which doesn’t go.’*! Perhaps this huge purple box, light as a feather, but concealing surprises, contains my red hat! Perhaps it’s time to get ready for that day when I add the red-hatted eccentricity of age to my life’s experiences. I already wear plenty of purple…
However, the best birthdays are full of surprises and this was no exception. Another present lay on the table, which I had earlier opened, as I sipped my early morning cup of tea. Carefully, I slid the cover off the long, narrow box. There inside lay 24 sticks of pure colour! As you will know by now, I love colour and there it was – pure, unadulterated colour in 24 glorious shades: oil pastels, just waiting for me to experiment. This box promised hours of absorbing, creative fun – another box of delights!
So, leaving my purple box where it lay, and thoughts of old age behind, I decided to rediscover my childhood instead and played with my new box of delights, crayoning to my heart’s content with my glowing colours to see what youthful creativity could concoct. The other box would have to wait and so would growing old!
* poem entitled ‘Warning’, by Jenny Joseph
Friday, February 4, 2011
Power thoughts!
Browsing in a bookshop the other day I came across a bold little book by a well-known female American author, gruesomely entitled Power Thoughts. The title stood out in bold type on the cover, announcing that here was a serious work, written in earnest – not to be trifled with. I shuddered and left it where it was on the shelf.
Power thoughts… power dressing… power shower… power struggles… power politics… “power corrupts – and absolute power corrupts absolutely!”. A familiar phrase and one often quoted, it’s true, by those who enjoy little of it.
Women, men, politicians, religious hierarchies, bankers, unions, students, NGO’s – we’re all part of life’s power struggle – the survival of the fittest. We’re all at it, just like the animal kingdom, jostling for power, negotiating for limited resources, pitting our wits and sometimes our physical prowess against each other: our partners, our siblings, our children and our workmates. Darwin only described the tip of the iceberg! It’s a cruel world out there. He should have waited to see the 21st century boardroom and the cut and thrust of Parliamentary Question Time. He should have witnessed road rage on the M5 at rush hour.
More and more of us today are searching for answers to our internal and external power struggles. Stress relief is big business. Eastern meditation techniques and new age alternatives of every kind have never been so popular. They are almost ‘mainstream’. It’s no surprise. Life winds us up daily and we rely on meditation, aromatherapy, relaxation colour and furnishing schemes at home, corporate reiki-rich business training courses at work and pre- and post-natal yoga. It’s all about power: power over ourselves and power over each other, but somehow we have to find a way to divert these primeval urges, aggravated out of control by our stressful lives, down appropriate channels. Maybe the law of the jungle can be suppressed if not superseded. Sooner or later our obsession with power will kill us if we cannot find a way to control it and we shall be locked into an ugly fight-to-the-death that will wipe out humanity, or at the very least, every shred of our personal peace of mind together with the harmonious well-being of our communities.
Power thoughts focus us on rights – a worthy topic at first sight: women’s rights, gay rights, children’s rights, the rights of the unborn child, human rights. However, our self-appointed rights frequently conflict and we are back in a power struggle. Something has to give. You first or me? Power – food for thought…
Power thoughts… power dressing… power shower… power struggles… power politics… “power corrupts – and absolute power corrupts absolutely!”. A familiar phrase and one often quoted, it’s true, by those who enjoy little of it.
Women, men, politicians, religious hierarchies, bankers, unions, students, NGO’s – we’re all part of life’s power struggle – the survival of the fittest. We’re all at it, just like the animal kingdom, jostling for power, negotiating for limited resources, pitting our wits and sometimes our physical prowess against each other: our partners, our siblings, our children and our workmates. Darwin only described the tip of the iceberg! It’s a cruel world out there. He should have waited to see the 21st century boardroom and the cut and thrust of Parliamentary Question Time. He should have witnessed road rage on the M5 at rush hour.
More and more of us today are searching for answers to our internal and external power struggles. Stress relief is big business. Eastern meditation techniques and new age alternatives of every kind have never been so popular. They are almost ‘mainstream’. It’s no surprise. Life winds us up daily and we rely on meditation, aromatherapy, relaxation colour and furnishing schemes at home, corporate reiki-rich business training courses at work and pre- and post-natal yoga. It’s all about power: power over ourselves and power over each other, but somehow we have to find a way to divert these primeval urges, aggravated out of control by our stressful lives, down appropriate channels. Maybe the law of the jungle can be suppressed if not superseded. Sooner or later our obsession with power will kill us if we cannot find a way to control it and we shall be locked into an ugly fight-to-the-death that will wipe out humanity, or at the very least, every shred of our personal peace of mind together with the harmonious well-being of our communities.
Power thoughts focus us on rights – a worthy topic at first sight: women’s rights, gay rights, children’s rights, the rights of the unborn child, human rights. However, our self-appointed rights frequently conflict and we are back in a power struggle. Something has to give. You first or me? Power – food for thought…
Monday, January 31, 2011
Winter Sun
Bright the sun,
Streaming through glass,
Wind piercing and cold.
Warm, her song,
Vibrant and rasping.
Breaks through my daydreams,
Beckons me into her world.
Warm and bright –
My world takes an upturn!
Mood lifts, then
Suddenly,
Life is more inviting…
Mood is fragile,
A precarious butterfly,
Flitting on the breeze
Like a snowflake in the sun.
Bright the sun,
Streaming through glass,
Wind piercing and cold.
Streaming through glass,
Wind piercing and cold.
Warm, her song,
Vibrant and rasping.
Breaks through my daydreams,
Beckons me into her world.
Warm and bright –
My world takes an upturn!
Mood lifts, then
Suddenly,
Life is more inviting…
Mood is fragile,
A precarious butterfly,
Flitting on the breeze
Like a snowflake in the sun.
Bright the sun,
Streaming through glass,
Wind piercing and cold.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
A Listening Ear
Is anybody out there? Of course, the internet is a special case. When I am blogging, or writing my journal for the online information service, I am contacting cyberspace – I am writing for Mr. (or Ms.) Invisible. I shall never know who’s out there reading, listening and taking it all in.
Not so in everyday life! I talk – to my husband, to my children, on the phone, or to the doctor… I know who is supposed to be listening – I can see them or I dialled their number and they were in. But are they listening?
Do you ever get that feeling – like you are the one who is invisible? Do you sometimes feel like you are talking into thin air? What does it take these days to get someone to really listen? It’s a rare treat and one that should be cherished these days. We are all so busy nowadays and even when we are apparently engaged in conversation with another human being our minds can be on another planet, planning our schedules, worrying about tomorrow’s meeting or simply daydreaming.
We had friends for dinner the other night. They were work colleagues, busy, busy people, younger than us and full of life. We sat around the table after work, eating, drinking, chatting and listening to a selection of music, trying to identify our similarities and our shared tastes. It was a good evening and we went to bed with a warm glow, from good food, good wine and congenial conversation. They were good talkers. More than that, they were also good listeners. A couple of days later we received a thank you note (how wonderful!) on a well-chosen card, bearing a picture of a beauty spot on one of our favourite stretches of coastline – another shared interest we had uncovered.
The card thanked us for the evening we had spent together and the ‘quality time’ we had all enjoyed. We had had a conversation that night: we spoke and they listened; they spoke and we listened – a simple formula that never fails. It’s a rare gift – the listening ear. We need to cultivate it… then all our time rapidly becomes ‘quality time’.
Monday, January 17, 2011
January blues
I strolled out to the shops last week to try and beat off the post-holiday blues - yes, already!! Christmas is over. New Year fireworks and hangovers are done. It's January and it's grey and rainy. Time to think about booking the summer holidays, but too long to wait till summer. Time for a spot of retail therapy: the January sales...
Has anybody else tried it lately? If you want a dishwasher, a toothbrush, a new bathrobe or a pair of kitchen scales now is probably a great time - although not so great now as a week ago if you live in Britain, following the VAT increase. Here in the Netherlands things are in transit. Before Christmas it was time to buy winter boots, leather bags, luxury products of all kinds that never appear on the shelves at any other time of year. Party attire was good too but not too practical now January has bitten and the parties are over. Out with the old and on with the new - but where is the new stuff? It's sales time and time for shops to clear the decks.
I guess I was too optimistic - I just wanted some good old-fashioned elegance, plus a bit of colour to brighten up the new year, preferably at bargain prices. Why not? I toured the fashion outlets. What did I find? Baggy old trousers, saggy old tunics, grey ones, mud-coloured ones, dry-clean ones that look like a bargain till you read the small print on the label and find that you will have to spend a fortune getting them cleaned, mis-shapen sweaters, drab T-shirts, jeans that look like someone else already wore them for a year and then got fed up with them...
But I guess I will have to wait. Here, in late February, the shops will come to life again. Whilst we shiver in the snow and long for a sunbed on the beach in Tenerife, the local shopkeepers will taunt us with their new fashions, leaving me gasping with amazement - did I really wear that sort of thing last summer? Did I really have all that bare flesh exposed? Could it possibly ever have been that warm? But will there be the warm, woolly sweaters that I need right now? Will there be longjohns (if you're under 30 don't even ask...)? Will there be sheepskin mittens on the shelves? No. For a couple of months yet there will be nothing I could possibly even consider wearing till May.
And now, when I am out there, wandering the shops in the high street, a potential customer in these hard times of economic crisis, they have nothing to offer me except the dregs of last year's failures, extra small, extra extra large, too stretched, the wrong colour, the wrong cut, a broken zip... Oh well, maybe I'd better go back to the daily grind and wait till spring!
Has anybody else tried it lately? If you want a dishwasher, a toothbrush, a new bathrobe or a pair of kitchen scales now is probably a great time - although not so great now as a week ago if you live in Britain, following the VAT increase. Here in the Netherlands things are in transit. Before Christmas it was time to buy winter boots, leather bags, luxury products of all kinds that never appear on the shelves at any other time of year. Party attire was good too but not too practical now January has bitten and the parties are over. Out with the old and on with the new - but where is the new stuff? It's sales time and time for shops to clear the decks.
I guess I was too optimistic - I just wanted some good old-fashioned elegance, plus a bit of colour to brighten up the new year, preferably at bargain prices. Why not? I toured the fashion outlets. What did I find? Baggy old trousers, saggy old tunics, grey ones, mud-coloured ones, dry-clean ones that look like a bargain till you read the small print on the label and find that you will have to spend a fortune getting them cleaned, mis-shapen sweaters, drab T-shirts, jeans that look like someone else already wore them for a year and then got fed up with them...
But I guess I will have to wait. Here, in late February, the shops will come to life again. Whilst we shiver in the snow and long for a sunbed on the beach in Tenerife, the local shopkeepers will taunt us with their new fashions, leaving me gasping with amazement - did I really wear that sort of thing last summer? Did I really have all that bare flesh exposed? Could it possibly ever have been that warm? But will there be the warm, woolly sweaters that I need right now? Will there be longjohns (if you're under 30 don't even ask...)? Will there be sheepskin mittens on the shelves? No. For a couple of months yet there will be nothing I could possibly even consider wearing till May.
And now, when I am out there, wandering the shops in the high street, a potential customer in these hard times of economic crisis, they have nothing to offer me except the dregs of last year's failures, extra small, extra extra large, too stretched, the wrong colour, the wrong cut, a broken zip... Oh well, maybe I'd better go back to the daily grind and wait till spring!
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