Tomorrow

They will come and they will be hungry and I will delight them with food and they will feel loved and I will feel happy.

A Lesion of the Soul

Oh, and oh, and oh, the more I read, the less I know.  Then Rappaport, talking about Derrida talking about Benjamin and Freud: 'the opening toward a future which ... is the condition of all performativity [is that] ... the end is never anything other than a repetition of the end in which each moment is and is not identical to the others. [but that it is] ...a prior wounding or harming that is also and always part of the openness of future to come - a future at the crossroads of a truth and madness - a return to something traumatic that has happened in the past and that will come back at some time in the future.' Oh, and oh, and oh, where's it going?  I don't know.  Here's a poem about someone in my reading group who troubles me...

A Lesion of the Soul

Her teeth I notice first,

No, that’s not true of course.

Her visage, hurt to see,

All over irritated, cross.

Furrows grow between her eyes,

The mouth so tight, severe.

Reproof is writ on all she views,

Her words unhappy sneer.

Impatience covering all,

She callously pronounces.

Opinion raw and rough,

Dogmatic in her trounces.

So far I wish to flee that gaze,

But mesmerised I stay.

For down within her lonely eyes,

A sadness deeply lays.

Snow Angels

'Nuff said.

Yellow

A colour that apparently cries out for attention.  Originally made from arsenic and cow urine, it was used in the 19th century to create emotions.  Wikipedia tells us this about yellow:

'Yellow is commonly associated with gold, sunshine, reason, optimism and pleasure, but also with envy, jealousy and betrayal'

 Largely considered cheerful, yellow has a troublesome history: Judas Iscariot's robes depicted as yellow apparently, traversing through its iteration as The Yellow Wallpaper (Perkins-Gilman 1892 reference to 'a slight hysterical tendency') yellow also became synonymous with fin-de-siecle misdemeanor  in The Yellow Book before its particularly vile association with exclusion inherent in the wearing of a yellow star.

Gold, sunshine, reason, optimism and pleasure are infinitely more appealing sensations than envy jealousy and betrayal so it is with great effort that I choose to promulgate the necessary show of positivity to shove a load of daffodils onto my post instead of what I'm actually feeling right now!

Be cheered,  it'll be a temporary outbreak of wild emotionalism.  I think...

Where do you see yourself?

 

'In five years' time?, the managing director says over dinner, having just outlined her role in the future of the company, its fifty million pound turnover and how the major utility companies are tracking her work.  Her work.  Her creative work.  'Keep the ideas coming, give me ideas.  They're watching you, they're imitating tomorrow what you're doing today.'

Creativity springs from her like a constant stream of rightness.  It is so much a part of what she is; her sense of zeitgeist, the way she spots the moment and is ready with a creative response.  When Jonathan Jones replied to, 'Who invented art?' his response could have been describing S.  Lyrical, as he speculated that art may be millions of years old:

'If art is as old as that, it probably did not need to be invented.  It is as natural to our species as smiling and running.  And who invented those?'

Well my girl can smile and run and show herself through creativity.  This is to the art teacher who tried to talk her out of training for the fashion industry because she thought she was too shy; paraphrased from Frances Burney, it appeared in S's sixteenth birthday card and it so turned out to be true:

  'You are not, indeed, like some modern young women, to be known in half-an-hour; your modest worth, and fearful excellence, require both time and encouragement to show themselves.  You do not, beautiful as you are, seize the soul by surprise, but with more dangerous fascination, you steal it almost imperceptibly.'

You stole mine the day you were born my darling.  Today you gave me music, the Lumineers.

 

Rabbit

As children we thought as one.  We shared values without the language to articulate them and certainly without the insight to question from where they came.

Playing chase was as instinctive to us as breathing.  Everyone wanted to be the chased, not the chaser.  The chaser could fail, he or she had all to risk but the chased could practise skill and cunning stimulated by fear.

Running then, through tracks in long grass, we understood and were in tune with the nature of our childish gait, with the nature of our chaser's need for speed, the mistakes that might be made as plimsolled foot followed plimsolled foot. 

If sufficient time could be gained it was short work to duck or pretend to fall, grab a handful of long grass from either side of the narrow track, and tie a rabbit trap; high enough to catch a rabbit - high enough to catch a foot - if the knot was tight enough. 

Sweating in the summer sun that gave sweetness to the meadow, down would come the chaser, howling outrage, ' 'snot fair!'  It was seldom fair if you were on the receiving end of it but it always seemed entirely reasonable to experience the burst of jubilant triumph that haled  you a hero among your peers when your trap succeeded. 

It seldom did succeed though and there was no-one more surprised than the hero when it did; who, in my case, was always left wondering if it was really possible to catch a rabbit that way, and what on earth was I to do with it if it happened.   

Mary Hopkin singing 'Those Were the Days'

Ain't got no...

New Year resolutions.  None, not at all.  Nothing, absolutely none. Per niente. Not even a Google+ profile to 'call out' or a page from my blog to help people notice my post.  Nulla.

I've got a glass teapot and a bag of chamomile, nettle, lemon balm and peppermint tea, labelled 'evening calm'.  I've got honey and a pretty picture and that's enough.  For now.