A Lullaby

The din of work is subdued,
another day has westered
and mantling darkness arrived.
Peace! Peace! Devoid your portrait
of its vexations and rest.
Your daily round is done with,
you've gotten the garbage out,
answered some tiresome letters
and paid a bill by return,
all frettolosamente.
Now you have licence to lie,
naked, curled like a shrimplet,
jacent in bed, and enjoy
its cosy micro-climate:
Sing, Big Baby, sing lullay.

The old Greeks got it all wrong:
Narcissus is an oldie,
tamed by time, released at last
from lust for other bodies,
rational and reconciled.
For many years you envied
the hirsute, the he-man type.
No longer: now you fondle
your almost feminine flesh
with mettled satisfaction,
imagining that you are
sinless and all-sufficient,
snug in the den of yourself,
Madonna and Bambino:
Sing, Big Baby, sing lullay.

Let your last think all be thanks:
praise your parents who gave you
a Super-Ego of strength
that saves you so much bother,
digit friends and dear them all,
then pay fair attribution
to your age, to having been
born when you were. In boyhood
you were permitted to meet
beautiful old contraptions,
soon to be banished from earth,
saddle-tank loks, beam-engines
and over-shot waterwheels.
Yes, love, you have been lucky:
Sing, Big Baby, sing lullay.

Now for oblivion: let
the belly-mind take over
down below the diaphragm,
the domain of the Mothers,
They who guard the Sacred Gates,
without whose wordless warnings
soon the verbalising I
becomes a vicious despot,
lewd, incapable of love,
disdainful, status-hungry.
Should dreams haunt you, heed them not,
for all, both sweet and horrid,
are jokes in dubious taste,
too jejune to have truck with.
Sleep, Big Baby, sleep your fill.

- W. H. Auden

A Love Letter for You: Brick Valentines on the Phily Skyline

[both via A Love Letter for You]

The other day I received the loveliest Valentines Day gift in the post - a book titled A Love Letter for You: Brick Valentines on the Philly Skyline. Since then it's been sitting on my desk so that I can flip it open randomly and be delighted by these incredibly sweet yet totally unpretentious acts of love...

take that, Bill Bryson

Another day, perhaps?

I've just changed my schedule this week for the 5th time or something silly like that. I'm much more of a creature of routine, so I don't much like this - but everything is such a juggling act, eh?

I made soup just now. Wish you could come by with a big loaf of bread and some butter, and the two of us could sit down and eat without thinking about anything else except filling our bellies and being together.

On transience...

I know that all beneath the moon decays
And what by mortals in this world is brought,
In Time's great periods shall return to nought;
That fairest states have fatal nights and days;
I know how all the Muse's heavenly lays,
With toil of spright which are so dearly bought,
As idle sounds, of few or none are sought,
And that nought lighter is than airy praise;
I know frail beauty like the purple flower,
To which one morn oft birth and death affords;
That love a jarring is of minds' accords,
Where sense and will invassal reason's power:
Know what I list, this all can not me move,
But that, O me! I both must write and love.

- William Drummond

Taking stock

Post visit: extra books (Christopher Brookmyre, Leed Child), extra pile of comics (too many to enumerate), Google yoyo, bunch of mp3s, empty Jameson's bottle.

Visit again soon!!! Next time I want a Google beanbag :)

Adele, Melt My Heart to Stone (live)

TSA & The Osborne Collection of Early Children's Books

I wrote up our trip to the Osborne Collection - the article and photos are available at: The TSA Art Blog.

Tea, Potatoes, Love in Unexpected Places

Friend of mine has been invited to a tea. Is it a likely place to find romance?

I suspect he will run into his true love at the fishmonger's. Not while buying fish, because he's vegetarian - but just going past when another bloke (on his way to the greengrocer's, which is right next to the fishmonger's in the covered-market) bumps into him and sends his groceries flying.

So then this bloke would have to spend ages chasing potatoes all over the covered-market, and the two of them would have a good laugh about it. 6 hours later they'll have had a delicious meal together, drunk a bottle of wine, and be busy tearing each other's clothes off.

But that wouldn't be ideal because my friend would prefer to only get serious with someone he's had a chance to get to know.

I reckon that this bloke will be someone he's known for a long time, but never had real chemistry with. Not because he's unattractive, but because the timing was just never right. In fact, this bloke might actually seem too smart, too tall, too handsome, too charming and always too attached to someone else already. They might always meet under the wrong circumstances, in the wrong contexts.

Until they bump into each other at the fishmonger's, that is.

But then since they are to have known each other for a long time by then, I advised my friend that he had better start now by going to tea to possibly make his acquaintance. Then in about a year or two he can start marching around the covered-market with anticipation - and a bag full of potatoes.

Perfect Snuggles

In an alternate world we've just had a perfect day together. You are now lying in bed asleep, and I am snuggling up next to you.

Tea, Inventory & Others

[perfect cup of tea]

The other day I found this paper box waiting for me in the entrance hall, next to a pile of post. Turns out it's my birthday present from DJ (head geek, dapper dan, and my favourite little brother). Here's what it looks like - I love the fact that it comes with a saucer. I use this teacup exclusively for my rooibos. It feels right somehow.

[are you hungry yet? I am, and I don't even like pancakes]

That same day I went and helped to take inventory at a local book store, and I saw these books and just loved the illustrations on the cover. So I photographed them to show you. The books are Pancake: A Global History, Hamburger: A Global History, and Pizza: A Global History. I'd be quite interested in reading these but I've been given three really cool books (Various Voices, by Harold Pinter, Newspeak In the 21st Century, by Edwards & Cromwell, and Copper, by Kazu Kibuishi), for my birthday (thanks Richard), and I'm reading those right now.

[blue wool beret]

Lastly, I finished knitting a very simple blue wool beret. I gave it to Robin from school, because it looks stupid on me, but really good on her. Also her previous woolly hat fell off her head onto the tram tracks, and the tram ran over it, cutting it in half.

Knitting-wise I've still got to finish a pair of socks for Richard. They are going to be slightly off though - one sock is going to be longer than the other and the number of rows of colour (they are striped) don't match exactly. Little things like that kill me. Normally I would rip out the 2nd sock and just re-knit it from scratch, but Rich reassured me that he doesn't care. I also really want to get the socks done so I can move on to knitting Ysolda's damson for my mom. After that I might make myself a raspberry beret. Being able to knit on the tram is one of the good things about my considerable commute into town.

Oh and today I also went to school, borrowed the photography lights, and took pictures of all the drawings & paintings (not a lot of those) which I've done on the Portfolio Development course. I wanted to make sure I had digital copies of everything, and I'm lad I finally got around to doing this. I'll need to think about getting my own website to display my portfolio. Before that though, they will be posted on here.

Now... finish my cup of tea, and to bed...

I've been told that, after all, tomorrow is another day.

Ex-Boyfriends & McDonalds

Helping out a friend with her dissertation abstract makes me miss academia... like I miss ex-boyfriends and fries from McDonalds, i.e. I know it's still good, but I ain't going back there.

Terry Pratchett: my case for a euthanasia tribunal

From G2 Magazine (of The Guardian).

Really?

[and for only $9.83 CAD + %15 sales tax]

Calligraphopeds

[Blake's Calligraphopeds]

Calligraphy + mopeds = calligraphopeds?

I love lines, and I love Chinese calligraphy, and I love mopeds. Hence it makes a whole lotta sense that I would LOVE these calligraphopeds. The long composition is too crazy to be believed - and check out the details... there's something about gestural lines, like 草書, that feel so liberating. They are by my very talented friend Blake Carter.

[a long composition - lots and lots of calligraphopeds]

[calligraphoped detail]

I've been meaning to show you this for ages. So I'm glad I finally got my act together and put them here.