hold it

The days are sliding by, very quickly this week.  Thinking takes time.  I have a fresh, or another, or a recurring - all of the above - creative problem I am wrestling with. I'll have to declare the weekend offline so I can work it out. In the meantime, I keep having catnaps, never longer than 30 minutes but dismayingly frequent, some days.  ( I think it's old age. Or  maybe heavy thinking. Look up narcolepsy.)  

This afternoon I had a very welcome visitor who no longer lives in Toronto.  Not that far away - she is still in Ontario - but I hadn't seen her for two years. We had a piccolo of Codorniu (well, two piccolos) and fresh raspberries on my balcony, in spite of the heat. By the time she left, I had to prepare my dinner, eat, and clear up to be ready for the Blue Jays game (as I write they're winning but that could change). NOPE: THEY WON!!

Then I had to doze a little, and have dessert (strawberries and blueberries. I like any fruit as long as it's berries). Soon it will be time to go to bed - and to think some more. SOW - remember I reported a few days ago on  that survey about all the thoughts running around in your head, 98 per cent of them re-runs and 80 percent of the re-runs very pessimistic.  My afternoon visitor controls unbidden emotional swings with prayer and scripture. I have another friend who does an hour's meditation every morning before the day begins. I call my morning swim wet meditation. I clear my emotional slate, and I plan my meals and my blog. Once a week I wash my hair.

Does that help?

Maybe I'm too old for a blog.  You who are young need me as your front-runner but not, I fear,  as an effective role model, effective, that is,  if  you do as I say and ignore what I'm doing. What am I doing?

 I forget.

another time

 

For us like any other fugitive,
Like the numberless flowers that cannot number
And all the beasts that need not remember,
It is today in which we live.

So many try to say Not Now,
So many have forgotten how
To say I Am, and would be
Lost, if they could, in history.

Bowing, for instance, with such old-world grace
To a proper flag in a proper place,
Muttering like ancients as they stump upstairs
Of Mine and His or Ours and Theirs.

Just as if time were what they used to will
When it was gifted with possession still,
Just as if they were wrong
In no more wishing to belong.

No wonder then so many die of grief,
So many are so lonely as they die;
No one has yet believed or liked a lie,
Another time has other lives to live. 

WH Auden, 1940