Reminder to Pat

Beware of becoming rigid!

Returning from my first gentle yoga class (Carrying my brand new pink mat) I met a young man in the park walking dogs...beautifully behaved dogs of various sorts. He was shaking his head. A woman had come up to him and said: You know in Westmount you are only allowed two dogs!

The crunch was that he added: I think she came from the same yoga class as you.

And that is why I resist writing letters to the Westmount Examiner about the behaviour of cyclists!

Later I found these flowers and a passer by said: Feel them! They're wonderful! She was right! I had never thought of feeling flowers!

Drunken bees and floppy flowers!
It's Fall!

T.S Eliot was right:

The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your holiday games...

Let me introduce Balthasar. There is nothing quite like a black and white cat.  Balthasar wears a bell, a bell that he uses to make a point. His owner claims that when she calls, he may or may not come, but he always rings his bell. Balthasar walked with me in the garden and his bell rang constantly.

When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
                                                                           Deep and inscrutable singular Name.

 

I'm going through the trauma of changing computers...traumatic because change is change and because I have to  actually review my files to see what is worth keeping...

I found the following - naturally I wrote an official recommendation as well

Dear Mr. Sears:


This is to inform you that my former student, Harry Smith ain’t no criminal. I taught him for two years already and he never stole nothing from me – nor (far as I can figure out) from anyone associated with me…well maybe a pencil here and there for math…but that could be considered as aiding the cause of his education.

Anyway,s as far as I know, none of his family stole anything either. In fact, I taught his brother, Billy. Billy was always returning things that other people stole. His parents are also good people – they’re Americans – but that shouldn’t count ‘cause really only the president, Mr. Reagan can be considered a thief down there. He robs from the poor to give to the rich…or something like that. Anyways, Harry wrote good and never got in any fights or anything so I think he’s quite qualified to throw things around in your warehouse.

In face, I’d bet my bottom dollar on Harry…unless he’s changed a lot since he went to Russia…but that was only for six weeks, this summer and he brought back all the jeans he took over so I don’t think he was doing any dealing on the Black Market…or anything like that.

Anyways, you’d better hire the kid ‘cause now I’m getting quite fervent and if you don’t hire him, I’ll take it as a personal insult to me and I’ll tell everyone not to buy things at Sears…do you hear me?

Someone asked me to write about photography. I wrote 1000 words. I liked what I wrote. But someone said that they were thinking more along the line of 130 words! And so I chopped to 500 words...but someone can count, so I chopped to 150 words and said: That's it. One more tone and someone might as well just say: She takes pictures. She's not a photographer but she takes pictures!

Here's my 150 words:
My first camera was a Nikormat with a macro lens. For years I took pictures of flowers. The macro did the work.


And then I retired and although my beloved Nikormat still worked, my eyes didn’t. So I borrowed a camera and took pictures of Mont St. Michel.

Africa is not really the place for a macro lens. There was a sign at our compound: Caution: Wild Animals are dangerous. Please do not wander from the Pathways. So I used a Fuji digital from the safety of an SUV.

In Manning Park I swapped the Fuji for an Olympus. How can one go wrong with snow-capped mountains, fir trees, ravens and Alpine meadows? I carried a bear bell.

In France I learned about skies. In Newfoundland I learned about horizons…although the lupines were irresistible.

Recently I bought a CannonS100, a camera I could tuck in my pocket. I miss my Nikormat!

We shall not cease from exploration
   And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive at where we started
And know the place for the first time.
T.S. Eliot

You say I am mysterious.
Let me explain myself:
In a land of oranges
I am faithful to apples.

And I thought the following was about bags...but it wasn't!

The Term


A rumpled sheet
Of brown paper
About the length

And apparent bulk
Of a man was
Rolling with the

Wind slowly over
And over in
The street as

A car drove down
Upon it and
Crushed it to

The ground. Unlike
A man it rose
Again rolling

With the wind over
And over to be as
It was before.

William Carlos Williams

Dear copywrite...copyright...people...don't get angry with me! I only have a few followers. It's mostly me...and I just can't resist. I never got over my Richard Brautigan phase and when I saw my poem of the day email, my memories flooded back.

Big Game


by Brenda Shaughnessy
—after Richard Brautigan's "A Candlelion Poem"



What began as wildfire ends up
on a candle wick. In reverse,
it is contained,

a lion head in a hunter's den.
Big Game.

Bigger than one I played
with matches and twigs and glass
in the shade.

When I was young, there was no sun
and I was afraid.

Now, in grownhood, I call the ghost
to my fragile table, my fleshy supper,
my tiny flame.

Not just any old, but THE ghost,
the last one I will be,

the future me,
finally the sharpest knife
in the drawer.

The pride is proud.
The crowd is loud, like garbage dumping

or how a brown bag ripping
sounds like a shout
that tells the town the house

is burning down.
Drowns out some small folded breath

of otherlife: O that of a lioness licking her cubs to sleep in a dream of
savage gold.

O that roaring, not yet and yet
and not yet dead.

So many fires start in my head.


And this is the Brautigan poem:

A CandleLion Poem


and our graves will
turn a Candle inside out be like two lovers washing
and you’ve got the smallest their clothes together
portion of a lion standing in a laundromat.
there at the edge of the shadows.

I went to a country fair this weekend. All the poultry turned their...tails!

Remember: This is my repository of pictures such as this one which best captures the feeling of this summer - it has been a yellow golden summer.

This is my repository of fragments such as the following:

Question: What are some of the responses one can be asked for when dealing with a text?

Answer: Let us work with a simple TEXT: I NEED A HAIRCUT

Types of Response:

-Analysis of the Idea: The author admits openly to her insecurity and sees as symbolic of this insecurity the need for a haircut.

-Review: The potential for plot on the topic of haircuts is rather limited however…

-Extension/Application: I too need a haircut.

-Interpretive: The motif of shorn tresses recurs throughout the “novel” and thus suggests the insecurity of the author.

-Report: She says she needs a haircut

My point? Students need to know to distinguish between various responses for exam purposes. If one uses this type of exercise, there is no right answer and therefore the skill rather than the correctness of the answer is what is being emphasized.