Perhaps my favourite sounds are the morning ones just outside my window. Crows cawing their greeting to each other, wee birds singing an ode to the coming day. Wind rustling about in the trees, telling them the secrets of its travels.

Amen and Amen.

The Guest-House This being human is a guest-house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you
out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

(Mary Oliver)

these days i wear big boots with steel toes
these days i have no energy for anything but work and getting home
today i ate dinner in a dingy pub down the road
with a friend whom i love a load
and sometimes i write terrible poetry.

i am neither here

nor there

these days.

i like this

and i hate it.

Self Promotion? I'm Shamless.

Dear people who read this (however few and whoever you are),

I like writing things and putting them here. It helps me process. However,  I don't come up with substantial things to say very often. So if you want to hear from me more often, though perhaps less profoundly (though really, I think profound is the wrong word for what I put on this blog) then please check out my other internet sharing venture. It's fun to post photos and short sentences. It's actually how I journal most of the time - less intimidating.
I will still post on here, but I wanted share this too:

http://thaliaes.tumblr.com/

thoughts on the morning of march twenty-third as i look out my kitchen window

i love the careful grace of the world. it wraps around me and pulls me together when i've gone to pieces.

how i feel in almost all public places.

Politeness

If people ask me,
I always tell them:

"Quite well, thank you, I'm very glad to say."
If people ask me,

I always answer,

"Quite well, thank you, how are you to-day?"

I always answer,

I always tell them,

If they ask me

Politely ....

BUT SOMETIMES

                             

                               I wish

                                                          

             

                                                                                  That they wouldn't.

(a.a. milne, e.h. shepard)

today i stayed in my room today and only came out to eat. sometimes it's nice to hide away from the world.

The Brothers Karamazov

fyodor dostoyevsky

'Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them ... '

Sage advise, Lemony Snicket.

I love books. I love reading them, holding them, collecting them, smelling them, stacking them in stacks about my bedroom. I even love tripping on books. Which I do regularly at my job, at a bookshop.

I love books for reasons so numerous that I would not suffer you to read through them.

I also love watching people read. I love seeing the places they read, what they read, their expressions and body language whilst reading. I experience feelings of fondness for some one if they giggle, snort or chortle as their eyes trip back and forth across the page. I love them immediately if they let out a genuine belly laugh when reading in public.

I love being stopped by strangers wherever I may be to be to asked about, enthused to or congratulated over my choice of book. It gives me tidbits of joy all day.

It is one of my favorite things as I get to know some one, to hear about their relationship with books. What they have read, what they enjoy reading, and what they wish to read. What they love about reading. What got them hooked, if they can remember.

All this is simply to introduce this sentence: Look at this cool blog I found!

Underground New York Public Library

'Music is just a language, a means of communicating. It's what it conveys that really matters. The music conveys the spirit and soul of the people and feelings that sometimes couldn't be expressed in any other manner. It's more accurate than any other written history because it's alive at this very moment.'

Martin Hayes

(the main fiddler below)

Words of Worth

There was a time when meadow, grove and stream,

The earth and every common sight,

To me did seem

Appareled in celestial light,

It is not now as it hath been of yore; 

Turn wheresoe'er I may,

By night or day,

The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

The Rainbow comes and goes,

And lovely is the Rose,

The Moon doth with delight

Look round her when the heavens are bare,

Waters on a starry night

Are beautiful and fair;

The sunshine is a glorious birth;

But yet I know, where'er I go,

That there hath past away a glory from the earth.

(two verses from Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood by William Wordsworth.)

i have need of trees these days

When I Am Among the Trees

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.

I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
   but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, "Stay awhile."
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, "It's simple," they say,
"and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine."

(mary oliver)

 this is a magnificent tree i came across while hiking in scotland.

all things to mend with bite-size lifeboats.

(Imogen Heap is one of those artists that I always come back to. Her music is so captivating.)

 TO SEE THE WORLD, THINGS DANGEROUS TO COME TO, TO SEE BEHIND WALLS, TO DRAW CLOSER, TO FIND EACH OTHER AND TO FEEL. THAT IS THE PURPOSE OF LIFE.  

 (that quote is from The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. go see it.)

In which the things that aren't real serve the things that are.

Often I feel silly for still being so fascinated and captured by fairy tales and myths and folk stories. I sometimes feel I should live more in the 'real world' and be more in touch with all that it entails.
However, I've been reading an essay of Tolkien's in which he expounds upon ... well, fairy tales. I'm not far in, but i found this quote whilst reading it. It made me feel justified in my love for the fantastical, and rung true in my heart.

' Fairy tale does not deny the existence of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance. It denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat ... giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy; Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.'


Also I'd like to wish the Old Hobbit a very merry 121st birthday. Though you are long gone, I have one wish for you:  May the hair on your toes never fall out!

(A drawing of Tolkien's for The Hobbit)

hello, year of newness

this year i would like to have more good thoughts.