Category: general

13
Aug
2009

STELLAR HYPNAGOGIA

Thwarted! Two out of three times the clouds have thwarted our shooting-star-watching plans. Clouds do that to you here in Sweden. They thwart you. Frequently. In fact, there’s no use moaning about it, it’s just the way things are and you’d better either get used to it or move on through. I don’t mind too much…most of the time. Because most of the time, it’s like it was today: if you don’t like the weather in Sweden, just wait 5 minutes. We had grey, then rain, then light, then bright, then grey, then rain,…wash, rinse and repeat: LITERALLY! hahaha! Last...

11
Aug
2009

THOSE WHO WISH TO SING ALWAYS FIND A SONG*

Eyelids like lead weights, anchored with grit and sand, pressing down, down. Hard to keep from closing. Scritchy itchy eyes. I am SO tired. I’ve been tired all evening. I was tired when I got home, but managed not to lie down and nap on the sofa. I got some things done and fixed dinner for the kids and read a few chapters and dragged the kids out for a walk (sunshine! not to be missed! Get it while the getting’s good!). THEN I collapsed on the sofa and my eyelids dragged their heavy way down to meet my cheeks,...

10
Aug
2009

AND ONE TO GROW ON!

I felt totally showered with love and affection all day today. An early morning birthday wake-up from my family with song and hugs and lots of lovely presents including the perfect watch chosen by Anders based on my fairly vague description. Pots of flowers both at home and at work and a colleague singing happy birthday in French to me. A lunch with good friends, cooked just for me with some of my favorite foods: salmon! snap peas! CAKE! that had me away from work for an unprecedented 2.5 hours (!) and a good day at work to boot. And...

09
Aug
2009

CREATIVITY IS THE POWER TO CONNECT THE SEEMINGLY UNCONNECTED*

How often should you post, when you blog? Should you post every day? Every couple of days, every week, once a month? I know that when some of my favorite writers are posting daily it feels like Christmas every day to me. But, sometimes it seems that if I post too often people don’t have time to read it all or that they miss things, and only see the latest. How much is too much? Does it even really matter? I suppose it is the writing urge that should steer and not the desire for validation or comments. I don’t...

07
Aug
2009

SPEEDING UP

Each time I think maybe there isn’t anything more to write about, the sky is the blue that it was today and I realize all over again that one can never have enough of it. If the sky is a wonder and a joy each time it’s that blue, that cloudless, endless blue, then why not everything? Even the things I’ve written about before suddenly strike me as relevant, as fresh, as interesting they did the first time. This time we twist them, we come at them from another angle. We open them up, unfold them like a flower, and...

05
Aug
2009

CREEP IN OUR EARS; SOFT STILLNESS, AND THE NIGHT*

Words jump like Mexican beans around the inside of my head all day; most of them dry up and lie twitching long before I have any chance to let them out, let them live, set them free. I would think that my brain must be full of the desiccated husks of thoughts that never became words, words that were never used, ideas that sprouted but alas, died on the vine. Each morning seems, however, to start fresh, a fertile ground for new, tiny germs of big ideas, polysyllabic words, sounds, fragments of song; a veritable plethora of images imprinted on...

02
Aug
2009

SOC’ IT TO ‘EM

Karin’s been torn between soccer and karate all this past year. She had karate class 2 nights a week and soccer practice 2 nights a week and inevitably one of the nights held both and she ended up having to choose each week which one to go to. For various reasons, soccer began to win out and it’s been more and more dominant since the spring. Her team was in a league which was too advanced for them; they ended up dead last, having not won a single game in the entire season, which was very hard on the kids...

29
Jul
2009

EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE

Are you all the time noticing things, seeing things that others maybe don’t see? There are things to notice all around you, all the time. If you keep your eyes open and just watch where you’re going, you won’t believe the things you see, sometimes. Mostly it’s little things, the little things that seem to be beneath people’s notice: the way the feathered grasses grow in wavey patterns when there’s a whole field full of them. The way the flowers burst out again when the weather has been cool for a week. The funny face that little kid you passed...

28
Jul
2009

JUST NOW

Magic summer evening where nothing is more immediate than the robin’s-egg sky, the white clouds, the warm breeze and the multi-hued horizon where the sun is diving down through whitened blue into rainbow layers of light. A beetle busily crosses the path and a caterpillar moseys along a leaf. Peacock butterflies flit nearby as you head into the over-arching greenness of the snail trail tunnel. The lawnmower is singing in the backyard, scything down the purple and white clover sprinkled over the lawn, and once in awhile a pheasant ratchets a high note harmony. Martin is on the phone with...

27
Jul
2009

WALKING, WATCHING, WINDING DOWN

Walking with a large dog tugging at the end of your arm is quite different from the easy-sway, arm-swinging stride you normally produce. We are dog-sitting Max, the border collie that lives next door, for 2.5 days while his family is on a mini-vacation. We know that having a dog around the house makes the dog-longing worse, but none of us can resist any chance that comes up, far and few between as they are. Max apparently walks much the same round that I usually do, as he was ahead of me the whole time and never missed a beat...

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