Tagged: wonderfulworld

15
Aug
2007

CLIMBING TOWERS, SHOOTING STARS

A tiny sleek copper-colored snake gliding through the leaf clutter on the forest floor. Giant wooden towers built on a beach of boulders. A maze of grey beech tree roots patterning the cliffside. Karin far ahead of us, bounding down the side of the hill, first to reach the tunnel towers of wood that lead to the towering structures. Martin leaping from boulder to rock, climbing to the top of Wotan’s Tower, a veritable billygoat. My heart, pounding like a jackhammer, as I lean against the trunk of an old oak tree, resting on the way back up the hill....

23
Jul
2007

MERRY GO ROUND

When I opened the side door and stepped out, I was surprised to see a rather large hedgehog snuffling around right there, practically under my feet. He seemed taken aback as well and waffled first one way and then the other. I didn’t want to scare him so I just chuckled a quiet hello and went for a walk in the lovely evening sunshine, made even lovelier by its contrast with the 24-hour pouring buckets of rain we had yesterday. A grasshopper string section played a buzzing, frenzied sarabande as I strode past a meadow overflowing with golden feathered tall...

16
Jul
2007

JOY IS NOT IN THINGS, IT IS IN US*

What a difference a good night of sleep makes! Wish I’d had one. Heh! I went to bed at 11 last night and read for an hour, finally dropping off just before midnight. I don’t know what time it was exactly when I became aware that the darkness was being strobed by regular flashes of bright white light and a low rumble kept making itself heard in the distance. I lay and dozed, gradually awakening enough to realize it was thunder and lightning. The lightning seemed much nearer than the thunder which was a sort of growling underpoint to the...

09
Jul
2007

GIVING BACK TO THE ENVIRONMENT

Everything’s got to be interesting, thought-provoking, intellectually stimulating. It’s got to move you, make you think, or laugh, or cry. It’s not enough to simply rub the shimmery powdered scales of daily doings from the butterfly’s wings of your life and smear it sparkling across your screen, it has to MEAN SOMETHING. So, when you’re in a nightmoth mode, drab and brown and camouflaged, where do you find that glimmer of beauty and how do you light up your words? What do you care if no one is reading as long your own look back over your shoulder causes the...

08
Jul
2007

ADJUSTING MY SAILS

Maybe all I needed to blow some of this mood away was a really stiff breeze. The sky finally began to clear this evening from the smothering low cloud cover we’ve been suffocating and washing away under all week. We drove into town and had sushi for dinner and windowshopped a bit (found a chandelier for the dining room, which I’ll go back and buy this week!) and then decided to drive down to the western harbor and see if we could find any ice cream. The wind was whipping the waves to a frenzy; they crashed and sprayed against...

18
Jun
2007

WHAT DO YOU CALL FOUR TERNS? A CIRCLE

How many species of common birds can you recognize on sight? Besides the flashy obviousities of bluejay, cardinal, hummingbird, oriole and robin, I mean? I’m not really thinking of the songbirds so much or the “little brown jobs” of field and hedge. And I’m not really thinking of the one-hit wonders of flamingo, pelican, parrot or ostrich, either, since I assume those are the ones EVERYONE knows, whether or not they’ve ever actually seen one in real life. There are an awful lot of big birds here in Sweden that I am now on familiar terms with that I had...

11
Jun
2007

WE CLOSE OUR EYES AND DREAM, AND THE WORLD HAS TURNED AROUND AGAIN

No clouds above, the sky is pure pale blue, its hem touched with lavender, with rose, with gold. The sun slants shadows long across the grass. Shadow trees with flickering leaves. Every country road is lined with tall, feather-tassel-topped grasses, bowing in the wind of the car’s passing. They dance a subtle sine-wave both fore and aft. Insects buzz and skip and copulate, it’s their season and they know it, though everything is green and lush, they’ve not eaten their fill yet. Bright red poppies, like drops of blood, like sun-kissed rubies, stitch up the edges of all the fields;...

27
May
2007

THE YEAR’S AT THE SPRING

Last night after myskväll, Anders and I watched Grabben i Graven Bredvid*, a much hyped Swedish film that came out in 2002 and which we somehow missed seeing then, though it was very highly recommended by everyone we knew. It lived up to its reputation and we both really enjoyed it. I’ve seen the leading man in 3 movies now (Så Som i Himmelen and Vägen Ut) and listened to him lecture live onstage during an “Inspiration Day” I attended for work a couple of years ago, and have been increasingly impressed with his acting. Later, long after we had...

22
May
2007

SO FAR, SO GOOD

Sometimes you might think that you are alone in the world. Especially when things aren’t going your way. No one cares about your problems or your feelings. You didn’t get that job you interviewed for. You can’t find anyone to go to Weightwatchers with you. Your kids ditch walking with you to play with their friends. Nobody likes you, everybody hates you, might as well eat worms. Inside, not even deep down, but really right under the surface of your suddenly tingling skin, you know that this is not true. In fact, there are so many people who care about...

20
May
2007

I WANT MORE

This 4-day weekend did not leave me rested up and ready to go back to work. No, actually, while it left me fairly rested up, all it did was make me long for vacation. Long for long days of doing nothing much, of sitting on the porch in the sunshine, grumbling about the flies. Today was beautiful, 72 and sunny just like southern California. I went for a walk, my 3rd in 3 days by myself, because the kids are playing with friends from morning to night, zooming in to raid the cookie jar and eat homemade grape/apple popsicles and...

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