Passing Strangers

“We seem like passing strangers now
Funny how things can change
We were so inseparable
Now you’re acting very strange….”

Are you old enough to remember Billy Eckstein and Sarah Vaughn singing this song?  Click here to listen to it again.

And passing strangers is how I describe all those great thoughts and ideas I have in the shower or driving the car that completely disappear by the time I am near a computer or notebook to jot them down.  It seems that I am brimming with great ideas for a post or a poem that I absolutely must write but poof, it wafts off into the great blue yonder never to be seen or heard from again.

And I guess this is one of the things I do dislike about getting older.  The mind is not nearly as clear as it was; things are not stored the way they were and the memory fails me at times.  I do remember wondering why my Mother would forget something that I had told her just a few days ago.  Now I find that my daughter is saying the same thing to me – But Mother I already told you we were going to be away this weekend or I already told you the boys were playing water polo at the Hutt Pool.

Do you ever find yourself seeking a word – a very normal, everyday word.  This happens sometimes when I am writing.  Luckily, I can go ahead with what I am trying to say and the elusive word just pops back into my head.  But all those great ideas are lost never to return.  So yes, they are like passing strangers

“I think age is a very high price
to pay for maturity”
Sir Tom Stoppard, OM, CBE, FRSL
British playwright, knighted in 1997.  1937 –
and
“Getting old ain’t for the fainthearted”
My friend Phyllis Mills 1914-2006 (?)

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Head Weak

You probably remember that old rhyme from school days –

Head weak, brain dumb
Inspiration wont come
Can’t write, bad pen
Best wishes…amen.

Well I have been sitting looking at a blank screen for some time – probably close to an hour – and nothing has come to mind to write about today,  So I thought I would look at what I was babbling on about this time last year.  Well it was this post The First Time I Saw Paris.  If you are interested, please click on the link here.

“The last time I saw Paris
Her heart was warm and gay
I heard the laughter of her heart in every street cafe
The last time I saw Paris
Her trees were dressed for spring
And lovers walked beneath those trees
And birds found songs to sing..”

Pont Alexandre III – Via Wikipedia

How come I never had a problem last year in coming up with something to write about.  But that’s just the way it is.  So please excuse this ‘cop out’ of a post.  I shall do better tomorrow.

“In Paris you learn wit,
in London you learn to crush your social rivals
and in Florence you learn poise”
Virgil Thompson, American composer,
1896 – 1989

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Fiction for the Fearful

“If we had to say what writing is, we would define it
essentially as an act of courage.”
Cynthia Ozick, American-Jewish short story writer,
novelist, and essayist. 1928 –

Many years ago when I was completing a creative writing course one of the exercises set for us was to write a letter to ourselves, either our older selves or our younger selves.  The letter would be mostly fiction but of course, interspersed with necessary facts.  I haven’t thought about that course or the task for some years.

But today, when I had time to ‘noodle’ ( my sister’s word) around the internet I found some interesting courses being run in France and thought how lovely it would be to attend a creative writing course in a château in France.  Patrick Gale is not a writer whose work I know but I think I would be very pleased to get to know him and his writing by attending a course held in the Chateau Ventenac on the banks of the Canal du Midi in the Languedoc Region.

Note the title of this blog is copied from the title of Patrick Gale’s course in October.

Victoria University, Wellington

But now back to the creative writing course held in Wellington, New Zealand.

Imagine a dark Tuesday evening in the middle of winter.  The course was run at the local University in one of its older buildings.  I seem to remember that it was always cold in the study room; perhaps they turned the heating off once the main body of students had left for the day.  Most of the building was deserted and the cafeteria was closed for the day so no cups of hot coffee for us.

Fifteen of us started the course that was run by well-known NZ writer Bill Manhire, but in memory only about 11 of us completed it.  This was no holiday course.  It was hard work.  The fact that such a large percentage of people dropped out was disheartening.  Bill was rather a hard taskmaster but he was inspirational.  Praise wasn’t lightly given and so was all the more welcome when it came one’s way.

Anyway, back to the task.  I chose to write as a 70-year-old to my younger self.  Little did I know then how quickly the years would pass until I became a 70-year-old.  I wrote as a fond (maiden) aunt might; praising my young self and encouraging her/me on my life journey.  I don’t remember quite what I said – we didn’t all have laptops then – but I do know that having completed the task I thought how nice it would be to receive such a letter from an aunt or a caring relative.

That then made me think of other letters I might write.  In fact, it encouraged me to write to my parents thanking them for the childhood my sisters and I had experienced and for the love and caring they showered upon us.  I knew, from talking to others, that not everybody had been so lucky and I thought it important to let them know that I appreciated them.  And now that they are no longer here I am so very glad that I did write that letter.

And now I ask you “Is there somebody to whom you would like to write a letter before it is too late?”  I think there is nothing more cheering than receiving a handwritten letter from a friend or relative.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Time for Laughter

My day started in laughter when I read this post from Joss at Crowing Crone Joss.  Of course, most of us have heard this in one form or another over the years, but it always reduces me to tears of laughter.  I imagine the absolute panic as she goes through the various stages of self-help/mutilation.  Occasionally I have tried to self administer wax strips but in the end I always resort to a visit to the spa to have the waxing carried out.

But this post reminded me of a particularly harrowing time for me.  I have always loved to linger in the bath with a book and either a glass of wine (provided by my late husband) or a coffee in later years.

On this particular evening I got the bathroom ready, lit candles, brought up the coffee and book, made sure the bath pillow was inflated and in place and then poured in a liberal dose of bath oil that had been given to me by a friend.  For the first time ever I think, I took the cordless phone into the bathroom with me.  I don’t think I was expecting a call but who knows why.

The book was good, the water was topped up whenever it got a little cold and the coffee was perfect.  I wallowed for over an hour.

Came the time to get out of the bath, disaster struck.  I couldn’t get out.  My feet kept slipping from under me because of the oil and I couldn’t get a grip.  I tried kneeling and getting out from there – no good.  I tried slipping up the sloping end of the bath – that ended in my falling down hard back into the rapidly cooling bath water.  I looked at the phone and considered calling my daughter to come and help but knew that my delightful son-in-law would never let me live that down.  I looked around for any bright ideas.  The bath was not equipped with handles as many are today so no help there.

I was getting myself into quite a state (and panicking) when I looked down and beside the bath was the bathmat.  The light went on in my head.  I put the towelling bathmat into the bottom of the bath and immediately was able to get out.  What a relief.  And while it is funny in retrospect, and while posts like the one from Joss bring it back into my mind, at the time it was quite scary.  And it was several weeks before I decided to take a bath again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Art and Inspiration

One of the bloggers I follow is Val Erde at Arty Old Bird.  Val is a very talented artist and generously allows us to use her art in our posts.

In a recent post Val asked Are You a Fan of Anything? and this was the piece of artwork that accompanied the question:

Val saw this image as a fan obviously, but I saw it as a woman running  towards her future.  But on looking at it again and in further detail I see a woman swimming towards her destiny.  There are red, wild and dangerous waters behind her but mostly clear blue seas ahead.  What do you see in this painting?  I would love to hear from you and do go over and read the post from Val and all the comments.  Very illuminating.

Almost a year ago Val set us a challenge in one of her posts – “It can be drawing, painting, photography, sculpture, knitting, crochet, animation, digital artwork, poetry, dialogue, short story, anything creative that you like, really!”  To accompany the challenge and to act as inspiration she gave us this painting :

Picture challenge by Val Erde

Val has now changed her blog and the original post is no longer available for me to give you the link.

I immediately saw a woman evolving and becoming and as I said at the time, I don’t paint, sculpt, knit, crochet or do any of the other things suggested by Val so  I wrote a poem having been reminded of one of my all time favourite poems Becoming the Woman I Wanted by Jayne Relaford Brown. 

While my poem in no way compares in the writing style of this poet, I was quite pleased with this my first attempt at writing poetry.  And in an unabashed show of self promotion, I am republishing it here.

This Woman I am Becoming

Memories flowing through me
Making me who I am
Warm thoughts to banish cold nights
And sunshine to dry the tears.

This woman I am becoming
Is learning patience
Learning grace
And learning that love is enough.

I am enjoying this woman I am becoming
She knows where she is going
And where she belongs
She has her place in the world.

So thank you Val for the inspiration and the use of your fabulous artwork.  I hope that I have followed the rules for using these pieces.  If you want to reproduce any of Val’s images please go to http://artyoldbird.com/using-my-images  to see the conditions for doing so.

Related Posts aka More Blatant Self Promotion

• Finding Her Here
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Pesky Weed

Gmail has been having fun with my inbox recently.  There have been days when very few emails have come through and then others when they just keep arriving.  So I have been catching up on my blog/post reading today.  By the way, if I don’t seem to have commented on your posts for a while, please check your SPAM folder.  One of the blogs I follow is Crowing Crone Joss and when I read this post from her today about the Borg Vine, I immediately thought of my pesky weed, the ivy.

Somebody, in their wisdom planted ivy around this house many years ago and it has now reached epic proportions.  It climbs up the side of the house and threatens to enter the bathroom and study widows.

Ivy encroaching over bathroom window

Ivy at study window

At the rear of the property is a high bank.  A flight of brick steps gives access to a sitting area and here the ivy is rampant!

Ivy at sitting area

Some months ago I  had a contractor come to kill the ivy but to no avail.  I think he liked the ivy and wasn’t sufficiently ruthless.  So now we are taking really drastic measures.

More ivy

As you will see the “branches” of the weed are really quite thick, so we will cut as much of it back and then douse the cut ends of the branches with undiluted woody weed killer.  As soon as we have a forecast for a couple of dry days this will be done.  And then once again we will be in control.

But while writing this blog I have thought about how tenacious this ivy is.  In the face of several  many onslaughts (and those that I have mounted cannot possibly be the only ones over all the years since it was first planted) it has survived.  I then thought about the tenacious people I have met over many years.  They are like this ivy.  They are determined to hang on and thrive and they do.  I have met many people like this in real life, and many more in the blogosphere.  A few days ago I wrote about being in awe of the things that many people have suffered and overcome.  Some people have had ghastly childhoods; some were unwanted by their mother’s second husband and treated very badly; others have lived with alcoholic and violent fathers or mothers, and some have become involved with the wrong people,  but what they have in common is they are survivors.  In my years practising as a Life Coach I met many people whose problem boiled down to lack of self-esteem and often they had often been brought to this state by the way they had been treated.  With time and tenacity on their part, most were able to rediscover their self-esteem, and some keep in touch so that I know how well they are surviving and succeeding.

“Even in its darkest passages, the heart is unconquerable.
It is important that the body survives,
but it is more meaningful that the human spirit prevails.”
Dave Pelzer,  1960 – author of A Child Called “It”

So again to all those who have survived and moved on in their lives I say congratulations and well done and whatever happiness and success you now enjoy you most certainly have deserved it.

But unfortunately for my ivy, it will not succeed. I shall be keeping a close watch on the weather forecast and as soon as two dry days are forecast there shall be War on the Weed!!

Associated Posts

• How Lucky Am I
• My September Years

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The Way

A good friend walked part of the Camino de Santiago a couple of years ago and when we saw that this movie was being shown at one of our local cinemas we knew we had to go.

Do you know of the Camino?  It is a Catholic pilgrimage route to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, Spain.  For more than 1,000 years pilgrims have traveled along the many Caminos/walking trails to Santiago. The trails  originate in various parts of Europe, some start and finish in Spain, and they all converge on Santiago de Compostela .

The most popular Camino walking trail is the Camino Frances. This part of the Camino de Santiago traditionally starts in St Jean Pied de Port in France and finishes some 780 kms later in Santiago de Compostela.  However you can start anywhere and even continue past Santiago to the sea at Finisterre.  Cape Finisterre was thought to be the end of the world in medieval times.

Now to the film.  Thomas Avery (Martin Sheen) is an American ophthalmologist who goes to France to retrieve the body of his son who was killed during a storm while walking the Camino.  After some soul-searching and to honour his son’s wishes to complete the journey, Tom decides to walk the ancient spiritual trail where his son died.  He decides to scatter his son’s ashes at various points along the way.  But he is an inexperienced distance walker (trekker) and he finds the going hard.

On his journey he falls in with three other pilgrims and together they make the journey across France and Spain to their destination.  Each is walking the camino for his/her own reasons and to solve a particular dilemma and during the walk Tom comes to realise that there is so much more to live for than his ‘ordinary’ life back in the States.

This is a movie well worth seeing if it comes to your area.  It is a collaboration between Sheen and his son Emilio Estevez who wrote and directed the movie. Estevez plays the role of the son in the movie. I imagine that it will have an effect on many who see this film even to the extent that some might decide to walk part or perhaps even the whole trail.

The Way is not bound up with religion although it ends in the Catholic Cathedral of St James.  For me it spoke of   finding out who we are and about living our lives in the company of others, fully aware of our surroundings, ourselves and others.

And one of the things that we do see in the movie, and which my friend also witnessed was the swinging of the Thurible – the huge incense burner that takes eight men to swing it.  Apparently this was a necessary piece of equipment in the olden days when pilgrims walked the track with no access to water for bathing and arrived at the journey’s end smiling and smelling.  The smell of the incense was to cover the other smells.

For more on the Thurible (or The Botafumeiro) at the Cathedral see
Santiago-online.com

“One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting their bad advice..”
From The Journey by Mary Oliver.

for the rest of this Mary Oliver poem click here.

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Eleven Hints for Life

Having just returned from my son’s house after my Wednesday visit, I was sitting here wondering what I could post about today.  I turned to the notebooks that I have been keeping for so many years and a page almost jumped out at me.

I don’t know when I wrote this down, or where it came from, but it seems to make a lot of sense.  So here are somebody’s Eleven Hints:

1. It hurts to love someone and not be loved in return.  But what is more painful is to love someone and never find the courage to let that person know how you feel.

2. A sad thing in life is when you meet someone who means a lot to you, only to find out in the end that it was never meant to be and you just have to let go.

3. The best kind of friend is the kind you can sit on a porch swing with, never say a word, and then walk away feeling like it was the best conversation you’ve ever had.

4. It’s true that we don’t know what we’ve got until we lose it, but it’s also true that we don’t know what we’ve been missing until it arrives.

5. It takes only a minute to get a crush on someone, an hour to like someone, and a day to love someone – but it takes a lifetime to forget someone.

6. Don’t go for looks, they can deceive. Don’t go for wealth, even that fades away. Go for someone who makes you smile because it takes only a smile to make a dark day seem bright.

7. Dream what you want to dream, go where you want to go, be what you want to be. Because you have only one life and one chance to do all the things you want to do.

8. Always put yourself in the other person’s shoes.  If you feel that it hurts you, it probably hurts that person too.

9. A careless word may kindle strife. A cruel word may wreck a life. A timely word may level stress. But a loving word may heal and bless.

10. The happiest of people don’t necessarily have the best of everything they just make the best of everything that comes along their way.

11. Love begins with a smile, grows with a kiss, ends with a tear. When you were born, you were crying and everyone around you was smiling. Live your life so that when you die, you’re the one smiling and everyone around you is crying.

“In the end, it’s not going to matter how
many breaths you took, but how many
moments took your breath away.”
shing xiong.

 

 

The Bonnets – Lost

The taxi duly arrived and the two girls climbed into the back….

By now Daisie was exhausted with the music, the noise, the chatter and the dubious drinks she had consumed both at the party and at the nightclub.  She almost fell into the back of the taxi and immediately went to sleep.  This left Charlotte, who was rather the worse for drink (she had lost count of what and how many) to instruct the taxi driver to their destination.  Unfortunately, in her befuddled way she gave the driver the address of her house instead of Daisie’s.  Daisie slept through the ride only waking when Charlotte shook her as they arrived at their destination.

Charlotte paid the driver and walked rather unsteadily towards her front door with Daisie following sleepily.  The two girls entered the house and went to Charlotte’s room where they immediately fell asleep.

They were awakened the next morning by Charlotte’s mother who in turn had been awakened by Daisie’s mother who was worried when the girls hadn’t arrived home.  It had been too late to call when they arrived the night before and neither girl awoke early enough to put Juliet’s mind at ease.

After hurried breakfast Daisie departed to face her mother.  And it was then that she realised that the two bonnets they had borrowed from Maisie and her friends were missing.  Presumably still in the back of the taxi.  She was in a blue funk.**

Having unsuccessfully tried to locate the taxi and the missing bonnets, Daisie felt very low in spirits.  How was she going to tell her beloved grandmother Maisie that the two bonnets were missing?  She was not sure how she would take the news.  But, being a child of the 21st Century she decided there was nothing to do but to go and face her Grandmother and see whether together they could perhaps come up with a way of tracing the missing bonnets.

Photo thanks to Sallyann at Photographic Memories.
Click on the photo to go to Sallyann’s post.

** Note.  Thanks to Christine at Trudging Through Fog for pointing out that I had not used the word ‘blue’ in my post.  This sentence was added after that.

This is the fourth in the series about the bonnets.  If you haven’t read the earlier posts check the links – The Bonnets The Bonnets Part 2 The Bonnets Part 3.  It is also a continuation of the Hats Series.  Links to The Hats posts appear on each of the above three posts.

And this last post fitted in well with Trifecta’s challenge this week and so this is my entry.  The challenge is to write an entry between 33 and 333 words using the third definition of the word BLUE (adjective) :
1  : of the color blue
2  a : bluish
b : discolored by or as if by bruising
c : bluish gray
3  3  a : low in spirits : melancholy
    b : marked by low spirits : depressing <a blue funk> <things looked blue>

If you want to try your hand at the challenge, you can find the complete guidelines on the Trifecta site by clicking the tricycle picture.

The Bonnets

First off may I have a rant about WordPress?  And may I ask you to look in your spam folder to see if that is where my recent comments have landed.  I sat for a good part of yesterday reading and responding to your posts only to find that they didn’t appear in the comment section of many of them.

Added to this is that I have recently changed my email address so I went in and unsubscribed from all the blogs I follow – 60 plus- only to find the reader and I don’t have to resubscribe (I think).

So once again, bah humbug to WordPress.

————–

You may remember that recently I had fun with Maisie and the hats.  If you missed the posts please click here to find them.  There are four posts making up the series and they follow each other.

So why am I telling you this?  The other day, Sallyann at Photographic Memories posted some pictures among which was one of the back of a taxi with among other things, a bonnet on the back shelf.  Robin from Life in the Bogs commented “Interesting catches. I’m curious about that display too.” To which Sallyann replied “The hats are very old and very sunbleached but I’ve still not thought up a good story about why they are there, maybe Judith can think of one like her friends on the beach ?”

As you know by now, I never miss out on a challenge, so here’s my take on why the hats are there.

Photo thanks to Sallyann at Photographic Memories

Her grandmother was Maisie Benton-Smythe, Countess of Waverley; her mother was Juliet Fortescue (named after her mother’s best friend Juliet Drummond) and she was Caroline Fortescue (more usually called Daisie).  Three generations of women and what did they all have in common?  A love of hats!

Of course, in Maisie’s day hats were de rigueur.  From babyhood, through school days and into adulthood, no self-respecting child or woman would go out without her hat.  By Juliet’s time, hats were compulsory in the nursery days, at school and for some special occasions.  And in Daisie’s day very few women, young or old, wore hats.

So Daisie was the exception that probed the rule.  She had almost as many hats in her wardrobe as shoes.  And she couldn’t resist a sale of hats so she was an avid follower of sales on EBay.

She wore each of her hats regularly as and when the occasion called for a particular one, but her very favourite was her cap.  This she could wear when dashing out to the market in the morning, or when (heaven forbid) she hadn’t washed her hair and suddenly had to leave home to meet somebody.  It was a godsend to Daisie.

Her friends laughed at her “hat fetish” but were quick to ask to borrow one when the occasion arose.

One of Daisie’s favourite people was Maisie.  She loved to go around to her grandmother’s house for tea and a chat.  And invariably the chat turned to hats!  Daisie loved the collection of hats, grand and simple, that Maisie kept in a separate cupboard, each wrapped in tissue and in its own hat box.  As a small child Daisie loved the rustle of the tissue paper after a box was opened and then the surprise at which hat emerged.  Going to Grandmother’s was a special treat then and it still was even though she was a young woman now.

And as is often the case, the connection between grandmother and child grew and strengthened as the child grew older.  Daisie loved to hear tales of Maisie’s younger days and the antics and adventures that she and her chums got up to.  It made Daisie’s life seem very tame.

But then one day, Daisie and her friend Charlotte Farquhar had an equally exciting adventure…..

To be continued…

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