Loss and losing

I thought it would be sharp and sudden,
the abrupt silence of a song broken by a
scratch.

Instead it was the gentle eddyingswirl of leaves on
the still pond.
We watched it that day - remember?
I watched that day.

You looked up and I looked down amber foliage,
sinking into grey, cool, water.

And the traffic droned behind us.

Teaser Tuesday (9 July)

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.

'Oh. So you would get yourself killed and perhaps your teammates as well because of a few little ants?'

p.61, Starship Troopers, by Robert Heinlein

Revenge wears Prada

For a book about revenge and skulduggery, there is surprisingly little revenge and skulduggery. I don't think it was vastly necessary to write this book. I'm sending out a message to the ether that it really doesn't need to be made into a poor sequel with a knockoff Meryl Streep either.

Teaser Tuesday (2 July)

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.

'In order to create productive alignment in your life, you could quite reasonably start with a clarification from the top down. Decide why you're on the planet.'

p.202, Getting Things Done by David Allen

Soundtrack for Monday

1) Jai Ho - From the Slumdog Millionaire Soundtrack
2) At Last - Etta James
3) Bittersweet Symphone - Vitamin String Quartet
4) Cat's in the Cradle - Harry Chapin
5) What difference does it make? - The Smiths
6) Mansard Roof - Vampire Weekend
7) The Circus is Leaving Town - Belle and Sebastian
8) City of the Dead - The Clash
9) Only Hope - Mandy Moore
10) Violet Hill - Coldplay

The dream in the next body

From the end of the bed, I pull
the sheets back into place.

An old man paints a large sun striped
by clouds of seven blues.
Across the yellow centre each
blue is precisely itself and yet,
at the point it meets another,
the eye cannot detect a change.
The air shifts, he says,
and the colours.

When you touched me in a dream,
your skin an hour ago did not end
where it joined mine. My body continued
the movement of yours. Something flowed
between us like birds in a flock.

In a solitude larger than our two bodies
the hardening light parted us again

But under the covering the impress
of our bodies is a single, warm hollow.

Gabeba Baderoon

Debt free by 35

I've found it quite hard to face up to what I owe. Mostly, it's because I'm annoyed that I owe anything at all. But that's done. I am where I am, and am just going to have to deal. I'm really chuffed, though, that I can look at my spreadsheets and money diary (God help me, I have a money diary) and know that I will be DEBT FREE BY 35.

And it's a long way from 35 to 65, or whatever the hell the government decides pensionable age will be in the future.

I really wish there was a magical bullet, that would get me to zero in a day. And I wish I didn't feel such shame at being where I am. But there we go. My Protestant work ethic comes with a side order of Protestant shame.

In the wee, small hours of the morning

Sleep has been in short supply this week, for no reason I can discern. I've always been kind of a poor sleeper, but this has largely been solved over the last few years by medication and general improvement in mood.

At my worst, I was getting about an hour or two of tortured sleep a night. Lying awake, worrying about the world ending, or lack of money, or if I was a failure as a human being, or if I had sent the newspaper to press without any advertising, or - a personal favourite - replaying all the conversations I had had that day and cataloguing the ways in which I had made a fool of myself.

The world is a crummy, crummy place on lack of sleep. Being in your 20s is bad enough without adding the distorted prism of drama that we all seem to embody at that age, together with just enough shut eye to be upright, but not enough to actually have conversations.

Insomnia means not having quite as thick a skin as you would normally. It means taking things a little more personally than you ought to. It means not grasping easy concepts, and feeling like an idiot.

And the worst, absolute worst, is that insomnia is the loneliest feeling in the world. I don't get lonely, as a rule. It's one of the core tenets of Liz, which is not always a good thing, but that's a post for a different day, perhaps. But being awake when the world is asleep, and not having a reason for being awake, is just brutally alone-making.

So I suppose I should be grateful that this bout of wakefulness is a blip, and probably has more to do with too much tv than anything dire. That my mind is more clear, and less fraught and anxious. That I'm more able to take the anxious thoughts I do have and place them into context, and not be swept away by them. And that I can put out a hand in the dark and touch a sleepy cat, or lie still and be soothed by someone else's breathing, and feel a little better.

Irritable sigh

One day, I will grow out of taking things so personally. I need to do this fast, or the managing people part of the job will go south, and quickly.

A note from the archive

Monday, April 10, 2006

You know what they say about an untidy desk...

To give you some insight into my untidy mind, here are the full and engrossing contents of my desk at work (my desk at home is a whole other story, involving several dog toys, five cent pieces and some pens that met with a tragic accident):

A computer. Apple Mac. Called The Light. A misnomer as it mostly drives me crazy by requiring frequent restarting, which takes on average 10 minutes. Also has a tendency to randomly shut down Quark, mostly right before we go to print. The resultant swearing is loud and creative.

A keyboard. Attached to Apple Mac. Is covered in tea stains and ooh, is that a crumb? Huh, when last did I have Fritos?

A scanner. You'd think a national newspaper would have moved beyond a 5-year-old flatbed scanner. You'd think wrong.

Two in trays. Top one contains new community photographs, thoughtfully sent in by Catholics around the country to torture me with their graininess and penchant for snapping black people, wearing white vestments, against a black background. Also blank cds for when I get round to backing up last year's issues. Like that's going to happen. Bottom tray contains a mass of application forms, pictures for the now defunct children's page, copies of threatening letters to writer of now defunct children's page, competition entries I forgot about (oops) and a board game I was supposed to review but hope the editor has forgotten about. Also an outdate postcode book which I misplaced and replace with the outdated postcode book from admin (I should give that back to them sometime). Scraps of interviews I did last year sometime. Cartoons for still active youth page. Deadline sheet for youth page that writer had better pay attention to. Pieace of paper on which I keep track of how often the journalist uses the words "pointed out" in a story. Scrap of paper with possible music compilation scribbled on it.

Filing cabinet filled with old issues, old community pictures and new community pictures. On top of filing cabinet - two whiteboard erasers, some whiteboard markers and a zip drive that hasn't been used since the month I started working here.

Box of blank scrap paper for making a bazillion notes I then lose. Also useful for cutting out snowflakes to the amusement of deskmate.

Ruler. Was 1m, now a little over 45cm.

Paste up sheets for this week's ads.

Copy of "leadership" magazine that editor leaves on my desk as a cruel joke.

Copy of Catholic Directory. Now out of date because the pope died and priests move around with no forwarding address.

Book containing list of tortuous community pictures. Several books with kids games that are now no longer necessary. Dictionary. Book with shortcuts and style guide.

Time magazine.

Box of extra strength disprin.

Pot of fig flavoured lip balm (it's sparkly)

Piece of paper reminding myself that the last time I backed up the newspaper was Feb 23, 2005.

Cellphone.

Filofax stuffed with little pieces of paper.

Small scrap paper holder.

Broken mug containing an assortment of pens, highlighters and several pencils, one of which reads Jesus Loves Me, a gift from a coworker (oy).

Community pics for this week.

An entire story thoughtfully written in longhand and faxed.

Half empty tube of nivea soft.

Wow, I need to throw stuff out. I would but the box under my desk is full.

PATTOTE - Better living through packratting

The slightly less navel gazey post I was going to write

April 2013 - a quarterly review:

1) I can be a project manager. It's hard, but I can do it.

2) And even if I decide not to, the university is a great place with lots of options.

3) This year started with Leigh being here, after three years of not being here, and that contact high will last ages.

4) I have decent friends, an abundance.

5) There [is] a boy; a very strange enchant[ing] boy.

6) I have my little bit of earth, and I'm thrilled to be making it into something.

7) I will be debt free by the time I turn 35.

8) There are an astonishing number of books in the world, just waiting to be read.

9) Ditto movies.

10) I have cats. Ginger ones. Two.

I was going to write about one thing but now I'm writing about something else

I was going to write a fairly chipper quarter year review, because 2013 hasn't treated me too shabbily so far. But then as I dragged scrap wood around my allotment, I got to thinking about carelessness, and how I get careless with people. Particularly the people I care about most.

A lot of the time it's what I say; I get flippant when I feel overwhelmed, and it probably seems like I'm minimising the other person's worry, or concern, or confidence, or even affection.

And sometimes it's because I'm so wrapped up in my own selfish world, so busy thinking about how stuff affects me, that I don't listen, or see, until it's too late, or I've caused hurt, or made someone feel like I'm judging them.

And I know we all hurt people, it's inevitable. But I worry that it all stacks up. That all this carelessness could get too run-of-the-mill.

Must be better. Better daughter, better sister, better friend.

I don't know. I should have had my iPod with me while lugging wood around. Kept the thinking to a minimum.

Between books

I'm in that horrible between book stage where nothing I start is quite hitting the spot, so I temporarily shelve them rather than not give them the time they deserve. I realise I haven't reviewed anything in MONTHS, and let's face it. If I don't review books and movies, there's fuck all left to write about, so I might start that up again.

And I'm about 14 books behind if I want to hit the magical 100 books per year target.

Sod it, maybe I'll just reread all the Nora Roberts in my collection: at least that doesn't require concentration.

Crossword glee

Today's crossword had one of my favourite words as an answer: gazump.

Makes up for the fact that I can't for the life of me figure out 'From Douglas'.

The things that matter

Ice cream, Android crosswords, satnav holders, book exchanges.

More things about project management

I've been so scared and so hesitant in the last month or so. So nervous of actually committing to this whole project management deal, because if I start actually committing to it, then I'd actually have to start caring, and start doing, and start BEING a project manager. So I've been a little gun shy.

This week has been a good week. The pieces are starting to come together, and I'm starting to see the bigger picture. And I'm committing a bit more - I'm putting my name to things, and making decisions, and am willing to see them through. And I have staff, and I want them to do well. And I care about this department, and I want it to do well, and not run out of money.

And slowly but surely other bridges around me are burning, because it turns out there are reshuffles and rearrangements in the works that means that even if I do occasionally think wistfully about the job I left behind, that job mostly doesn't exist anymore. So I can ruefully look forward and give myself permission to immerse myself in this new deal.

But I reserve the right to whinge about my job, and worry come July about what will happen with my future.

How we get wrinkles

I want to ask about your day
before your day begins
not “How was it?”
... but rather
“How will it be?
What will you do?
What will you want or need?
How can I help?”
I want your day to unfold
like origami in reverse
un-creasing itself
loosing its shape
and flattening back
into beautiful possibilities
one day
you will be what you become
in the meantime
your life will bend and fold
as you see fit
each choice is a part of the becoming
we
all of us
bend
fold
and crease
we create ourselves over and over
until we become
what we are
and that ends up becoming
who we are
I want to ask about your day
because
I want to know who you will be
I want to ask before your day begins
so that you will know
I already revere who you are.

by Shane Koyczan

Another iPod 10-track experiment

After I spent far too much time on a recent roadtrip just skipping song after song on my iPod, I realised that it's time for a clearout and reshuffle of the playlist. But before I get that far, I'm doing another 10-track experiment.

1) My Apology - Great Big Sea (Favourite line: 'Probably best to forget and begin again, can't you see, that I'm sorry'.)

2) A and B Song - Tom McCrae (Favourite line: 'Here we are together, let's roll the dice just one more time, odd number says we walk away now, even says we die'.)

3) Legal Man - Belle and Sebastian (Favourite line: 'Not withstanding provisions of clauses 1, 2, 3 and 4, Extend contractual period, me and you for evermore'.)

4) Stars - Simply Red (Favourite line: 'A lover's promise never came with a maybe'.)

5) New Slang - The Shins (Favourite line: 'Never should have called, But my head's to the wall and I'm lonely'.)

6) What Difference Does it Make? - The Smiths (Favourite line: 'Heavy words are so lightly thrown,
But still I'd leap in front of a flying bullet for you'.)

7) Desperado - Johnny Cash (Favourite line: 'It may be rainin', but there's a rainbow above you'.) 

8) My Life Would Suck Without You - Kelly Clarkson (Favourite line: 'My life would suck without you'.)

9) God Bless the Broken Road - Rascal Flatts (Favourite line: 'I'd like to have the time I lost and give it back to you, But you just smile and take my hand, You've been there you understand'.)

10) St Robinson in His Cadillac Dream - Counting Crows (Favourite line: 'And I keep thinking tomorrow is coming today, So I am endlessly waiting'.)

I should challenge myself to narrow down my favourite lines more often. It's a pretty sound way to realise that most of these songs are absolute shite.

Having a Coke with You

Having a Coke with You

is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles

and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them

I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully
as the horse

it seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I am telling you about it”

by Frank O'Hara

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

by E. E. Cummings

Things about project management

- Spreadsheets are fun.
- Running off reports is fun.
- Meetings are not fun.
- The state of my inbox has become a constant preoccupation.
- I have ceased wearing jeans, ever, because I seem to get yanked into important meetings when I'm at my scruffiest.
- Managing people is fun, as long as it's the right people.
- Nothing is more fun than being in the know.
- I have to make these lists more often, because I'm apt to focus on the negatives too much, and the negatives are only temporary.
- I'll feel better once a clearer pattern emerges from my work, and I can see the bigger picture.

Crossword clue

One of today's crossword clues is pleasing to the eye and mind. I love a well crafted clue:

3 across Burn without a flame - burn for a flame (8)

The Cinnamon Peeler

If I were a cinnamon peeler
I would ride your bed
and leave the yellow bark dust
on your pillow.

Your breasts and shoulders would reek
you would never walk though markets
without the profession of my fingers
floating over you. The blind would
stumble certain of whom they approached
though you might bathe
under rain gutters, monsoon.

Here on the upper thigh
at this smooth pasture
neighbour to your hair
or the crease
that cuts your back. This ankle.
You will be known among strangers
as the cinnamon peeler's wife.

I could hardly glance at you
before marriage
never touch you
--your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers.
I buried my hands in saffron, disguised them
over smoking tar,
helped the honey gatherers...

When we swam once
I touched you in water
and our bodies remained free,
you could hold me and be blind of smell.
You climbed the bank and said

This is how you touch other women
the grass cutter's wife, the lime burner's daughter
and you searched your arms
for the missing perfume
and knew

what good is it
to be the lime burner's daughter
left with no trace
as if not spoken to in the act of love
as if wounded without the pleasure of a scar

You touched
your belly to my hands
in the dry air and said
I am the cinnamon
peeler's wife. Smell me.

- Michael Ondaatje

Quiddling with Words

I like words
like Perforate
that snap neatly
into brittle pieces
like a cracker,

like Ricochet
that spring madly
like a grasshopper
in a glass pickle jar,

like Quiddle
which I just discovered
in the dictionary
sandwiched between
Perforate and Ricochet.

By Kristine O’Connell George

Thursday movie reviews

I've added a few new reviews to the blog I contribute to, Just Finished Watching.

Fond memories? Well, the bran muffins were quite nice

Two years I spent in Michael the Therapist’s office.

The first three months of that was spent with him patiently trying to get me back on topic.

I deflect awkwardness and emotional intensity with humour and general, useless trivia, who knew?

The next six months was spent coaching me in the right to my own feelings.

Michael: Are you feeling angry?

Me: Nah, I don’t really get angry. Or annoyed. Or have any negative feelings whatsoever about anyone other than myself, and I deserve it.

Michael: You’re allowed to be angry.

Me: Oh no, that doesn’t sound right, angry is bad and destructive.

Michael: How about if I keep attacking you and making you angry?

Me: Did you know that the scientific word for a llama is llama llama?

Michael: *Slams head into desk repeatedly.*

Finally, a breakthrough. Except you’re supposed to act on anger and negative emotion with confrontation? Don’t think so!

Me: So, ok, I’m angry. Cautiously angry. Not at myself, but someone else. But no doubt that’s my fault.

Michael: Why would you say that?

Me: Oh…don’t do that.

Michael: Do what?

Me: Make me come up with my own answer.

Michael: You’re angry with someone else. Why is that your fault?

Me: Because…because…

Michael: You could explain why you’re angry.

Me: And actually express emotion to the person who has caused that emotion? That’s just crazy talk!

Michael: What are you so afraid of? What’s the worst that could happen?

Me: They could tell me it’s all my fault and I’m a terrible person.

Michael: Are you?

Me: That’s all the time we have today.

But cognitive behavioural therapy gives you tips on how to confront! No matter how badly you want to run away. And it did work, to a point. All those hours spent practising how to respond and why and when, they all helped.

But now I wish we spent more time on shutting up irrational voices. Confrontation actually hasn’t come up so much in last 12 years, but The Irrational Voice, and her irritating companions, What Did You Expect, Paranoia, and You’re Not Good Enough has come up plenty.

And really, what is there to do? Nothing. I don’t believe the irrational side of me (except at 3am). I realise that actually, all people have the irrational side. I don’t let it prey on me as much as I might have done at one point. It’s just that having it there at all fills me with fear. Because sometimes, I do believe her, and I react stupidly, or brood, or am needlessly anxious. And every minute I give in to the voice, is a minute of reality wasted. It’s time I need to talk myself out of whatever harebrained reactionary thing I want to do or say or scribble or post.

It’s reassuring that the voice isn’t there as much as it once was. It means that I believe that my life is ok. That I’m happy and contented and making my way through that life well. But I want it gone, full stop. And that’s probably never going to happen.

Letting Go

I love the abandon
of abandoned things

the harmonium surrendering
in a churchyard in Aherlow,
the hearse resigned to nettles
behind a pub in Carna,
the tin dancehall possessed
by convolvulus in Kerry,
the living room that hosts
a tree in south Kilkenny.

I sense a rapture
in deserted things

washed-out circus posters
derelict on gables,
lush forgotten sidings
of country railway stations,
bat droppings profligate
on pew and font and lectern,
the wedding dress a dog
has nosed from a dustbin.

I love the openness
of things no longer viable,
I sense their shameless
slow unbuttoning:
the implicit nakedness
there for the taking,
the surrender to the dance
of breaking and creating.

By Michael Coady

Shocker

Today was a quiet day. The most exciting thing that happened was that while stroking Pippin as she sat on the green blanket made of some unidentifiably plush material, we both got shocked by static electricity.

The betrayal of Samwise the Fluff

This morning saw me call the vet to arrange to have Sam neutered. I made the call as he lounged on my lap, stretched out like a little fluffy sultan, purring up a storm. He's going to hate me in the morning.

Love Poem for Wednesday

You’re the day after Tuesday, before eternity.
You’re the day we ran out of tomatoes
and used tiny packets of ketchup instead.

You are salt, no salt, too much salt, a hangover.
You hold the breath of an abandoned cave.
Sometimes you surprise me with your

aurora borealis and I’ll pull over to watch you;
I’ll wait in the dark shivering fields of you.
But mostly, not. My students don’t care for you

or your lessons from the life of a minor god.
Can you hit the high C in our anthem?
Can you bench press a national disaster?

I fear for you, Wednesday. Your papers
are never in order. Your boots track in mud.
You’re the day I realized I didn’t even like him,

and the day I still said yes, yes, yes.
Sometimes I think you and I should elope,
and leave this house of cards to shuffle itself.

You are love, no love, too much love, a cuckold.
You are the loneliest of the three bears, hoping
to come home and find someone in your bed.

by Sandra Beasley

Teaser Tuesday - 15 January

"The girl looked at him as if to say don't fight it, mac. 'Only Fanta,' she flatly pronounced.

Bloody typical, Morgan thought as he took a reluctant sip at the cloying warm liquid, bloody typical. His headache was getting worse."

~ A Good Man in Africa, by William Boyd, pg 98

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.

From Neil Gaiman's blog

The Power of Dog

Variation on the word sleep

My friend Tash posted this on Facebook. I have had a love hate relationship with Margaret Atwood since university (in fact, that is probably what I said the last time I posted one of her poems). But I have admiration for the way she boils concepts down to essentials, and somehow always finds good by exploring what others might call ill.

I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head

and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun & three moons
towards the cave where you must descend,
towards your worst fear

I would like to give you the silver
branch, the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from the grief at the center
of your dream, from the grief
at the center I would like to follow
you up the long stairway
again & become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me, and as you enter
it as easily as breathing in

I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary. - Margaret Atwood, Variation on the word sleep