Seeking Signs - About Reading

An Excerpt from my M.Ed. Paper, Seeking Signs of How to Live: A Woman's Web of Reading
http://www.box.net/shared/8c4nbp22ck

Mood and Time

Midweek, I was fighting a feeling of uselessness and exhaustion. A day of "self-indulgence" and my energy and happiness rose. Doing was temporarily replaced by being, and it gave health!

Summer Idylls

There have been emotional bumps and fears, but every time I walk in this wonderful summer, I'm in a timeless moment; it is idyllic, and I feel joy.

Cucumbers for Nutrition

Who knew?

Waiting

Sometimes I pin my dreams to a possible response that I'm waiting for.

I hang between hope and the butterfly's move,
counting out my days
in apple cores and coffee grounds.

The Treatment of Women in Canada

I really enjoy reading Antonia Zerbisias's witty, pungent articles. Here, once again, she uses humour to remind us of how women are disadvantaged, even though many find it an old story that they'd rather not hear again.
http://www.thestar.com/living/article/227563
Just because we're used to it doesn't mean it's just!

Art With Art

500 Years of Female Portraits in Western Art

Rumi Said ...

Do you think I know what I'm doing?
That for one breath or one half-breath I belong to myself?
As much as a pen knows what it's writing,
or the ball can guess where it's going next.

Rumi - translated by Coleman Barks with John Moyne

"Time past and time future..."

Eliot again, The Four Quartets.

"To be conscious is not to be in time" but I want to remember "the moment in the rose-garden." To think and to feel - are these opposites? mutually exclusive?


I believe that the wisdom which can come with age is simply and wonderfully, only the integration of thinking and feeling.

Sometimes I am fully in the moment and yet realize I have a choice:
I can collapse into blind raging,

or

I can try loving clarity, the calm voice and the heart seeking peace.

Image - "Open Clip Art Library/Clip Art." Open Clip Art Library. 24 Feb. 2007.

What is Life?

"For what is life but reaching for an answer?
And what is death but a refusal to grow?"

Mary Oliver asks.

Oliver, Mary. New and Selected Poems. Boston: Beacon P, 1992.

Aging

"I grow old, I grow old.
I shall wear my trousers rolled" - T.S.Eliot
I read it when I was young and it haunted me. I didn't know what rolling trousers meant, but I knew it was a

descent,
a diminishment,
a loss,
a lessening.

Was it also a letting go?

Winter in Ontario

Beautiful, but my parents are thankful for snow-blowers and neighbours, and so am I.

Snow Day! Yea!

So today was a Snow Day, with schools closed and people snowed in so they had to work-at-home. My friend, who has a share of a neighbourhood-owned snow blower, got her driveway cleared, but the school where she teaches was closed. She meant to work, but claims that her experiences of Snow Days when she was young conditioned her to stay in bed and read. Sounds like she had a delightful day!

I spent the morning catching up on a report I wrote, then lost when my computer crashed. I think today's version was actually better. I just structured it with the info in a most-important to least-important pattern, and added the recommendations immediately after the reported problem, instead of in a bunch at the end, the conventional method. A point - suggestion, point - approach that I think will be easier to read and take in.

In the afternoon, I discovered a possible job, and then read. Lovely day!

Music to Rouse You!

We saw two groups in concert yesterday, and both were wonderful.

The Blind Boys of Alabama

http://www.blindboys.com/main.html   They are amazing! Their story is amazing! Their name gives you some indication of their age and the era and circumstances they were born into. They have won 4 Grammys in the last few years. They are showmen who use who they are to woo their audience and get us up on our feeting clapping and cheering several times. (Staid, middle-aged and middle class Canadians yelling and cheering! Almost Unbelievable!)

When they came in, guided in a chain with their hands on their shoulders, and obviously quite old, a kind of patronizing preparation sets in; I was ready to make allowances. None needed! Their voices are truly powerful and so is their stage presence. If you get a chance, go see them. If you can't go see them, get one of their CDs.

The House of Doc

http://www.houseofdoc.com/home.html  Much younger and Canadian; their musicianship is impressively tight. The range of instruments and the intense harmony, plus the  stage commentary of their leader all got the audience (same usually staid folks!) on their feet, clapping and cheering. CDs and show - highly recommend.

technorati tags:Blind_Boys, House_of_Doc, music

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After Epiphany

Christmas is over; the Christmas tree waits on the curb for the municipal truck to grind it into compost and haul it away. Snow covers the land outside of my study, at last! This year with the violent and/or strange weather, even the most blinded and reluctant are beginning to admit that Global Warming is truly happening! An epiphany long awaited and leading, I hope, to more individual and government action.

What can be done?

Christmas

Inherited from my husband's family - a Christmas Tradition

Our 2006/2007 Amaryllis

Happy New Year!

technorati tags:nativity, amyrillus

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