Things I Didn't Know I Loved*

* If you are a dreamer, come in.
If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,
A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer...
If you're a pretender, come sit by my fire
For we have some flax-golden tales to spin.
Come in! Come in!
(Shel Silverstein)

April 25, 2006

Shedding

I've been thinking a lot about shedding lately. Spring is here and with it all that rebirth malarkey.
So many things I want to let go of, want to ease off my shoulders. I've been wriggling for ages - but half-heartedly, and so it clings back on. Yesterday I took proper hold, and began to slough all that dead weight off. I feel lighter already.

This post is also inspired by rockslinga's wriggling. Happy shedding to you all!

Shedding Skin

' Pulling out of the old scarred skin
(old rough thing I don't need now
I strip off
slip out of
leave behind)

I slough off deadscales
flick skinflakes to the ground

Shedding toughness
peeling layers down
to vulnerable stuff

And I'm blinking off old eyelids
for a new way of seeing
By the rock I rub against
I'm going to be tender again '

Haryette Mullen

posted by Reformed Cynic # 4:02 AM 2 comments

April 23, 2006

Doing

Hate this poem but I envy the man. I don't even know people like this: doers rather than thinkers.
It makes for crappy poetry, but good living. I think.

A Busy Man

'This crowded life of God's good giving
No man has relished more than I;
I've been so goldarned busy living
I've never had the time to die.
So busy fishing, hunting, roving,
Up on my toes and fighting fit;
So busy singing, laughing, loving,
I've never had the time to quit.

I've never been one for thinking
I've always been the action guy;
I've done my share of feasting, drinking,
And lots of wenching on the sly.
What all the blasted cosmic show meant,
I've never tried to understand;
I've always lived just for the moment,
And done the thing that came to hand.

And now I'll toddle to the garden
And light a good old Henry Clay.
I'm ninety odd, so Lord, please pardon
My frequent lapses by the way.
I'm getting tired; the sunset lingers;
The evening star serenes the sky;
The damn cigar burns to my fingers . . .
I guess . . . I'll take . . . time off . . . to die.'

Robert W. Service

posted by Reformed Cynic # 10:50 PM 0 comments

April 14, 2006

Things I Didn't Know I Feared

My worst nightmare came true on Thursday. But she didn't die, I was given a second chance, and I pray I'll remember, daily,
all the lessons learnt.

How To Deal With Terrible News

'Imagine yourself in a space suit, floating through dust,
and that you are the only life on a spinning planet,

because whatever the news, you are still alive,
and you can still tell jokes. Tell the doctor a joke.

Or turn back time, and live in a pressure pot of memory.
You can do that. You can ignore calendars and clocks.

Denial is useful. So is a kind of grinning madness.
You are very lucky to live in a warm house, and think

of your vast bath, and the way that you lie in it, gazing
at the clouds shifting, the pigeons flying home. No one

can take that away from you. And your mother.
Not many women have a mother like yours, brave,

original, who tends your universe, and the future.
Sometimes I think there is no such thing as terrible,

only blocked things, lost words, souls that missed the train.'

Julia Darling

Her blog and her obituary.

posted by Reformed Cynic # 10:30 PM 1 comments

April 10, 2006

Spring is here!

Yes! Yes! Y e. e. s!

'yes is a pleasant country
if's wintry
(my lovely)
let's open the year

both is the very weather
(not either)
my treasure,
when violets appear'

e. e. cummings

posted by Reformed Cynic # 3:42 PM 3 comments

April 04, 2006

Boredom

This post is inspired by (i.e. nicked from) my dear magical friend Chi, who herself is a whole other story for a whole other post.
That's not to say she bores me - far from it. (Can't say that. I have fear, you know. I fear the flipping faces of the Gemini.)
She and monassar just got me thinking about boredom. (Dig self out of self-dug grave, quick!)

Here's what she - Chi - well, technically, John Berryman - has to say about it:

Dream Song 14: Life, Friends is Boring

'Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatedly) "Ever to confess you're bored
means you have no

Inner Resources." I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
Peoples bore me,
literature bores me, especially great literature,
Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes
as bad as achilles,

Who loves people and valiant art, which bores me.
And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag
and somehow a dog
has taken itself & its tail considerably away
into mountains or sea or sky, leaving
behind me, wag.'

Wendy Cope has a slightly different take on the matter. I can't decide whether it's a more positive or a more negative one.

Being Boring

"May you live in interesting times." - Chinese curse

'If you ask me 'What's new?', I have nothing to say
Except that the garden is growing.
I had a slight cold but it's better today.
I'm content with the way things are going.
Yes, he is the same as he usually is,
Still eating and sleeping and snoring.
I get on with my work. He gets on with his.
I know this is all very boring.

There was drama enough in my turbulent past:
Tears and passion-I've used up a tankful.
No news is good news, and long may it last,
If nothing much happens, I'm thankful.
A happier cabbage you never did see,
My vegetable spirits are soaring.
If you're after excitement, steer well clear of me.
I want to go on being boring.

I don't go to parties. Well, what are they for,
If you don't need to find a new lover?
You drink and you listen and drink a bit more
And you take the next day to recover.
Someone to stay home with was all my desire
And, now that I've found a safe mooring,
I've just one ambition in life: I aspire
To go on and on being boring.'

Whose vision terrifies you more? Vote!

posted by Reformed Cynic # 12:56 AM 4 comments