Pitstop trip to Berlin

 

Easter egg hunt

Is the point of an Easter egg hunt to find the eggs, or is it to learn how to steal them from under your sisters' eyes? 

* This post is part of my "Growing Up & Growing Old" project.

Remember me

She once told me a story

Of her one true love...

Such an odd tale to tell 

A daughter about someone

Who was not her father.

Nearly eighty years later

After it was taken, I come

Across a fading photo...

A dead soldier's throne.

I wonder between the slow

Heartbeats of sadness

If he was the only love

She ever knew, yet never

Really knew other than

As a love long lost.

* This post is part of my "Growing Up & Growing Old" project.

A Tea Party

Yesterday, I met with some people I have got to know over this last year. It is fun making new friends. We chatted about our work, but also about philosophical ideas... just a really enjoyable experience.

Trying to make Amends

During a recent visit with my younger brother and his family, it was pointed out that I had not included any photo or story of him in a family journal I created for my children years ago. This was a grave oversight.

An oversight I can only explain by the fact that those childhood memories, or the ones that I recorded, happened in my early childhood. Up until the time I was about 10-years-old. My brother, seven years younger, just didn’t figure into those times.

Later, when he was a young child, I was gone, having left home at 14. Now, I am perfectly aware that this is all just talk. So instead, I decided to try and make amends by creating this collage and writing him a poem.

The boy in the collage reminds me of my brother. I imagine the boy has been asked by an older brother to take his bicycle and put it into the garage. The boy is too small to ride the bicycle, but pride and excitement allow him to skim over the ground faster than any bicycle could.

(If you look closely, both his feet and one of the wheels are off the ground.)


Little Brother

We grew up in two different epochs.
Where those sitting at our family table
Varied in numbers and vulnerability.

You, with your joyous youthful naivety,
Were able to run light foot over ground,
Not once touching that precarious surface
Vibrating with its undercurrents of

Disgruntled teenager murmurings and
Old people’s loud whisperings,
“The times are changing. The end is near.”

Your world was filled instead with a
Giant imagination that transformed
All our adult pettiness into something noble
And worth worshipping, though we were
Not the heroes we could have been.
Should have been. The ones you deserved.

Darling

A few years ago, I discovered Jackie Kay a Scottish poet. She makes me cry and laugh*, in general, makes me believe that the world is a messy place, but sublimely so.



What a gift it must be to speak your mind and ponder your thoughts in such a way as with words well chosen.



I have a friend back in Montreal who does so by writing plays. Watching Jackie Kay read her poems today, made me miss my friend, for she can always shake me awake with her words.

* Be sure to listen to both of the poems in both of the videos.

Suitcase: mixed message

Friend here (from Slovenia). Friend on her way from down south. Daughter in bed with a fever. Son far away but close in heart. Days flying by. To-Do list only getting longer. Soooo much to tell and yet, I fear I will forget so much. Still, you are also in my thoughts. This roller coaster ride will probably not stop before its over, but it will eventually reach gentler slopes. Promise.

Windows of my Journeys II

Life is ridiculously busy since I returned from Toronto. Everyday I start with a list of items that need to be done. The end of the day comes with having crossed off quite a few, but there are always more left only half-done.

It is not yet noon today and the list looks something like this:

• write three blog posts for up-and-coming Football Tournament in Kimilili (not done)
• go for long walk with A. (done)
• work out job search priority list with A. (done)
• create mock-up text for website my son is creating for sponsor company in Nairobi (mostly done)
• write S. in Germany who is going over to Kimilili as a volunteer in August with the list of contents of the two boxes I sent to him yesterday that he will take with him (not done, left over from yesterday)
• ask A. whether she knows anyone with an old laptop for the women's co-op in Kimilili (forgot)
• rework "Women on a Journey" concept (started, needs lots of work)
• write C. about whether her family is willing to help if needed for young woman I know who is going to work in Capetown's townships (not done)
• wish C. happy wishes on starting new job tomorrow (not done)
• prepare for charity shop monthly meeting (not done)
• attend charity shop monthly meeting (not done)
• need groceries (not done)
• 5 other items that I forget what they are (typical, ssheesh)

Mid-day... time to get going...

Collage makes me feel calm when all around me chaos rules.

Windows of my Journeys

I've started another series of collages. For now, I will call them "Windows of my Journeys".



This is one of the collages I am making for a exhibit. The exhibit is part of a year long art exhibit and series of workshops called, Woman on a Journey, that is going to take place at the Womens-Only Hotel in 2011.

Not all things go wrong...

Was listening to Felix Dennis' poem, "Not all things go wrong..." this morning and thought it went well with the collage I made yesterday.

The last paragraph of the poem,

"Not all things go wrong - and after
Winter's famine comes the spring,
Kindness, beauty, children's laughter -
Joy is ever on the wing."

rung so true of these days, like today, when the sun shines and all members of this household are pleasantly preoccupied with various adventures.

Personality of Things

A while ago, I saw a photograph exhibition in a café in Berlin that was a series of images of the contents of women’s purses. The contents were either neatly positioned in a sort of collage, or just randomly dumped out onto the surface of a table or sidewalk. The images were rather provocative as well as informative. They did seem to speak of the personality of the owner.



I’ve always wondered whether the same thing could be said for what you find on pin boards or how you arrange your office desktop. What do you think?

Elegy of the Flowing Touch

Elegy of the Flowing Touch, by Christopher Middleton

Walking along the canal early this morning, the dark snow clouds above lend a dramatic atmosphere to the city’s silhouette. I watched a flock of ducks float upon the dirty waters amongst the winter debris, and wondered about spring.

Lila Lily

This is one of the last of my flower series. I have one, perhaps two, more and then I will start on my Lost Luggage series. It is, at least in my mind, taking on form.

Flash Warning

I just had an inspiration for another series of collages and related stories. It is called "Missing Luggage". It will probably take a week or so to set up (lots of work on the table at the moment), but hopefully it will be worth the wait. The idea stems out of a dream I had this morning,

The dream takes place in some terminal (border crossing, bus terminal, airport) where a mixture of people are given the task of identifying and claiming their luggage from a large pile of missing luggage. No one is allowed to leave the room until all pieces of luggage have been identified. The mystery is, all people in the room believe they checked in one piece of luggage, but they also, unknowingly, brought one more piece of hidden luggage along as well. On each luggage there is a tag “now” or “then”. Depending upon their traveler's frame of mind, they are willing, even eager to claim one piece of luggage. Conflicting emotions arise when each passenger finally realises, or is forced to claim, the second piece of luggage.

Two Sides of a Mirror

While making a summer collage this morning, I came up with two versions of the same motif that I equally liked.





What about you?

Don't ask, won't tell

Don't know where this collage came from... a dream, a obscure association, a Freudian slip ... still, hope you enjoy.

Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker

My late childhood and teen Christmases were spent dancing various rolls for The Nutcracker at the large theatre in Montreal with Les Grand Ballets Canadiens. We started rehearsals in September. We had our normal daily course load, as well as extra rehearsals, which meant that we were at the studios All The Time. It also meant, I suppose, that I heard the music thousands of times.

The performances started about a week before Christmas and carried through with matinées and evening performances from Christmas to New Year’s Day.

As to the roles I danced, just about all except the solo roles. When young we got to play “the children” and we worked our ways up to “the angels”, “the lambs” (Les Grand Ballets Canadiens had a storyline twist to their version), “the snowflakes”, and “the waltzing plums” … actually, I seem to forget what those roles last corps de ballet were; I doubt we were the snowflakes or waltzing plums.



For many years, anytime I heard even the opening notes to any of the musical pieces of The Nutcracker, I’d run in the opposite direction. Yet, I love this video because it sort of treats Tchaikovsky’s music with sound portions of gusto and irreverence. Tchaikovsky would turn in his grave. And that thought makes me smile.

Postcard From Past Lives: Deutsch Post

Dear Deutsche Post,

Oh ye of little faith! Just because I lavish a bit of praise on the Deutsche Bahn (German train company), doesn’t mean that my affections and appreciation of your services have waned. In the 26 years since I moved to Germany, you still can deliver a letter anywhere in Germany in a-day’s-time or two at the latest. Not only do you do your normal duties thoroughly, but you also have little German elves working in the backrooms individually handling the following situations:

Wrong or Incomplete Addressed

Taking letters addressed to me with the wrong house number, or “near the electrician shop” written in place of the street name, or my name/ city/Germany written on the envelope, and asking your elves to write my proper address per hand for the postwoman to deliver with only one-day’s delay.

Broken Package Shelter

A package arrives per sea freight with the carton split at all seams and the package contents no longer contained. Your elves gather up the contents, send them to a broken package shelter in Frankfurt, where they are stored in the interim. They write to me with the news of this unfortunate manhandling (which obviously is not their own, but some bully Scotsman in the Orkney Islands post office who didn’t give a hoot) and then send me the remains in a new carton with apologies for any inconvenience. At. No. Extra. Cost.

Ramped Vandalism

A vacuum-packed plastic envelope arrives with the burnt remains of a letter I wrote to my mother and sent off to Grenada the week before. My return address, written at the top left-hand corner of the letter, is the only recognisable part of the charred remains. Someone had set off fireworks in the post box during New Year’s Eve celebration, and your elves wanted me to know that the letter wouldn’t arrive.

So, please stop sulking and feeling neglected. You are my stalwart friend and I love you to bits and always will.

Your faithful friend,

Ye who believes in elves

Chestnuts

Going Back

My children and I are going back to visit my family in Montreal. It's the first time, in far too long a time, I will be back there in autumn: my favourite season in that area of the woods.

In all the years of living in Germany, I've changed my preferences. Spring is the season that I truly love. For spring here takes place over months and months and it is always aspiring towards creating beauty.

Maybe, this is also why I like autumn back in Quebec. It starts somewhere in August, perhaps only with a whiff in the air, and progress somewhere into November. Even if a warm spell happens, a startling Indian summer, or a rash snow storm, autumn is still a drawn out endeavour.