My little red cup
I mourn your loss
I shall not see
The like again.

I’m feeling more than a little overwhelmed. Begin with Climate Change, nothing from COP26, add 2 years of COVID, then mad Putin’s war on the Ukraine, more refugees and top it all off with mind blowing amounts of water flooding Queensland and NSW. Throw in an election or two with all the relentless campaigning and I’ve reached the stage where I want to turn off all media and go hide under the doona.
But instead, I’ve got my “To Do List” – I think I can cope…
I have a lifetime’s love of poetry. “Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”
“Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”
William Butler Yeats
Painting by Tomn Dubbeldam
Love both the haiku and illustration – both “perfect cat”
“Arise from sleep, old cat,
And with great yawns and stretchings…
Amble out for love”
Issa, Japanese Haiku
Illustration by Philippe Imbert
When we were kids, my sister and I had ballet lessons once a week. There wasn’t enough money for music lessons as well, so I never learned to play the piano, or the guitar, or the drums… But the music got inside me anyway – music with movement attached.
Perhaps that’s why when I hear music I can’t stay still – my feet and fingers tap and snap, my body sways in time wherever I am. In the car, with something lively on the radio, I bounce and bop, tap the steering wheel with my fingers, and sing along if I know the words. At a symphony concert I close my eyes and sway, nod in time, beat a rhythm with hands in lap. Why, I wonder, is everyone else sitting immobile, apparently unmoved by the wonderful music? It flows through me and I can’t stay still.
I can’t even stay still in church, so I love it when we sing something with a beat and I can borrow Mary’s tambourine. You don’t need lessons to play the tambourine! I love to dance too – “ When the Spirit of the Lord is in my heart I will dance like David danced” ( but dressed more appropriately!)
And then, sometimes, the music carries me away, lifts me up, takes me to another level. Music is one of the thin places, where you can be halfway to heaven.
It takes all kinds, and none are dispensable.
“It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but that you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it.”
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Illustration by Jimmy Lawlor
My Christmas present this year is an Ultrasonic Possum Deterrent. But really its for the possum that gallops noisily over our roof at 4am or thereabouts and eats all the new growth on my treasured Pierre de Ronsard rose bush and strips all the leaves off my struggling small apricot tree. Lately I hope the possum has been really enjoying the garlic and chilli mixture I’ve been spraying on the leaves – it seems to be working but is labour intensive. Just when the new leaves seem to be big enough to survive, if I forget my nightly spray routine, the next morning branches are bare!
Hence my new possum disco, complete with motion sensor, strobe lights and ultrasonic sound track.
Merry Christmas Possum!
Child of my heart,
One with my spirit,
Born of the dust
And the breath that I gave you.
What will you bring me
When you come home?
I’ll bring you the touch
of the wind on my cheek,
and the kiss of the sun
and the fragrance of earth,
the song of a bird
and the warmth of a friend,
these are all things that
I found of great worth.
Exactly!
“Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.”
Robert A. Heinlein
Image by Angie Stevens
Bless all those who knit
who sit and click the needles,
bringing the threads together,
into a new creation.
Bless all those who unpick
the holey ideas of yesterday
that no longer serve us well,
unravelling prejudice.
Bless all those who then re-knit
the residue of the past with
the dreams of today into
a new garment of hope.
May we be knitters and un-pickers,
determined and dreamers,
fools, lovers and conspirators
in this glorious insurrection.
Glynn Cardy – A Book of Blessings