This morning...
Power by Adrienne Rich
Living in the earth-deposits of our history
Today a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earth
one bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-old
cure for fever or melancholy a tonic
for living on this earth in the winters of this climate
Today I was reading about Marie Curie:
she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness
her body bombarded for years by the element
she had purified
It seems she denied to the end
the source of the cataracts on her eyes
the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends
till she could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencil
She died a famous woman denying
her wounds
denying
her wounds came from the same source as her power
I read Rich when i was nineteen. It was part of the English degree i did and i was mesmerised by the watery, feminine poetry that flowed like a stream over the earth and beneath it and then emerged somewhere else that never was where you thought it might. Together with Woolf, De Beauviour, Plath and other female writers, they began to create my first real imaginings of myself. They gave me the first words for a new language - for the first time i understood the frustration within - of not having my own language to describe the feelings which i had as a woman, a girl, a child. They unlocked the world around me, made it stand on its head, taught me how to challenge the edifice ... my little emperor has just come in and i must go... and then they taught me another language too... but that's a different rambling...
.....
Sorry there are no photos. I left the battery at work and i still haven't got it.
I had a cold - the after effects of standing in the rain watching one plane after another do the loop de loop - and thought that i wasn't going to push it - especially since i was feeling low on the weather and stuff. No pun intended. So i stayed home. I told myself if i have another three months of coughing i'm going to SCREAM. And so are my colleagues. So i took a Vit C shock - that is loads of Vit C, loads of honey and cod liver oil. And then i wrapped myself in a duvet and when i did go out i put on my new red coat and didn't care that i looked ridiculous in the middle of Sept wearing the thing. I'm not going to cough till January, and beyond, was all i kept saying to myself.
Ma has said that Pa misses Ireland. At least we could go to places. Singapore is too small, i'm retiring next year, and so on he droned. See if i stayed in Singapore again - which i probably won't - if i did, i would seek out the small weird places. The places the scholars and Christians have forgotten. Or wouldn't dare to go to. I'd avoid the pretelligensia like the plague. There is lots of do in Singapore - but it's all hidden. I'd learn Indian Classical Dancing, or the rongeng. I'd go to Chinese Temples, volunteer for the Asian Civilisations Museum. Join the Nature Society. There's LOADS to do - but you just have to avoid the obvious.
In all truth, i'd probably try to live in Indonesia, but a beach somewhere - and save a rainforest. Or try to. Probably get killed trying to do it, but hey at that point i'm be old right and being old means that we can do anything we like...:-)
What Pa probably misses doing is being part of a family. The noise and the demands it makes on you. Fetch Stephy, get Ghin, what are we having for dinner tonight, etc. That's what he misses. I don't miss that obviously, but i do miss them.
We've been harvesting flowers from the garden. Calendulas and lupins - sweet peas and nasturtiums. Yesterday Ghin picked some broadbeans and proceeded to devour the lot uncooked. I had to restrain him. He also helped cook the dinner, insisting in putting in the salt and tasting the cream, which he liked very much, thank you. He is definitely a creature of the earth - even the way he arrived here - decisive and sudden - and he found us, not the other way round. I'll never forget that ancient woodland in Glenstall where in encountered his wee soul-spirit...so alive and full of love.
For a change i'm having spelt cereal with soya, wild Basque honey (from Ronan) and fruit juice. It's disgustingly healthy, but that's what the body wanted to eat today. I have been eating waaaay too much of meat and things and sometimes i think that i need to get started on the 21 juice fast. So perhaps this is the time. Perhaps i'll start this weekend.
Nothing but juice for 21 days. All kinds of juice, mostly vegetable. It's very good for you. I did it once and it was fab. I felt great, alive and i lost so much of weight. I think that since the seasons are changing i might as well do the same. Get ready for winter.
Still sneezing, not good. But i'm going to wrap up warm. I think yesterday i was on the balance of becoming ill and recovering. Today i've moved into the recovering. Ah well, such is life.
Did i say i have also discovered TKMexx in Belfast - the new one? It has three floors, maybe even four - and some incredible bargins. Lovely outfits for good prices. Last season, of course, but who cares? Loads of good stuff, especially scarves. Between charity shops and TKMexx, IKEA and my sewing machine, i've got my life covered.
Living in the earth-deposits of our history
Today a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earth
one bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-old
cure for fever or melancholy a tonic
for living on this earth in the winters of this climate
Today I was reading about Marie Curie:
she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness
her body bombarded for years by the element
she had purified
It seems she denied to the end
the source of the cataracts on her eyes
the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends
till she could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencil
She died a famous woman denying
her wounds
denying
her wounds came from the same source as her power
I read Rich when i was nineteen. It was part of the English degree i did and i was mesmerised by the watery, feminine poetry that flowed like a stream over the earth and beneath it and then emerged somewhere else that never was where you thought it might. Together with Woolf, De Beauviour, Plath and other female writers, they began to create my first real imaginings of myself. They gave me the first words for a new language - for the first time i understood the frustration within - of not having my own language to describe the feelings which i had as a woman, a girl, a child. They unlocked the world around me, made it stand on its head, taught me how to challenge the edifice ... my little emperor has just come in and i must go... and then they taught me another language too... but that's a different rambling...
.....
Sorry there are no photos. I left the battery at work and i still haven't got it.
I had a cold - the after effects of standing in the rain watching one plane after another do the loop de loop - and thought that i wasn't going to push it - especially since i was feeling low on the weather and stuff. No pun intended. So i stayed home. I told myself if i have another three months of coughing i'm going to SCREAM. And so are my colleagues. So i took a Vit C shock - that is loads of Vit C, loads of honey and cod liver oil. And then i wrapped myself in a duvet and when i did go out i put on my new red coat and didn't care that i looked ridiculous in the middle of Sept wearing the thing. I'm not going to cough till January, and beyond, was all i kept saying to myself.
Ma has said that Pa misses Ireland. At least we could go to places. Singapore is too small, i'm retiring next year, and so on he droned. See if i stayed in Singapore again - which i probably won't - if i did, i would seek out the small weird places. The places the scholars and Christians have forgotten. Or wouldn't dare to go to. I'd avoid the pretelligensia like the plague. There is lots of do in Singapore - but it's all hidden. I'd learn Indian Classical Dancing, or the rongeng. I'd go to Chinese Temples, volunteer for the Asian Civilisations Museum. Join the Nature Society. There's LOADS to do - but you just have to avoid the obvious.
In all truth, i'd probably try to live in Indonesia, but a beach somewhere - and save a rainforest. Or try to. Probably get killed trying to do it, but hey at that point i'm be old right and being old means that we can do anything we like...:-)
What Pa probably misses doing is being part of a family. The noise and the demands it makes on you. Fetch Stephy, get Ghin, what are we having for dinner tonight, etc. That's what he misses. I don't miss that obviously, but i do miss them.
We've been harvesting flowers from the garden. Calendulas and lupins - sweet peas and nasturtiums. Yesterday Ghin picked some broadbeans and proceeded to devour the lot uncooked. I had to restrain him. He also helped cook the dinner, insisting in putting in the salt and tasting the cream, which he liked very much, thank you. He is definitely a creature of the earth - even the way he arrived here - decisive and sudden - and he found us, not the other way round. I'll never forget that ancient woodland in Glenstall where in encountered his wee soul-spirit...so alive and full of love.
For a change i'm having spelt cereal with soya, wild Basque honey (from Ronan) and fruit juice. It's disgustingly healthy, but that's what the body wanted to eat today. I have been eating waaaay too much of meat and things and sometimes i think that i need to get started on the 21 juice fast. So perhaps this is the time. Perhaps i'll start this weekend.
Nothing but juice for 21 days. All kinds of juice, mostly vegetable. It's very good for you. I did it once and it was fab. I felt great, alive and i lost so much of weight. I think that since the seasons are changing i might as well do the same. Get ready for winter.
Still sneezing, not good. But i'm going to wrap up warm. I think yesterday i was on the balance of becoming ill and recovering. Today i've moved into the recovering. Ah well, such is life.
Did i say i have also discovered TKMexx in Belfast - the new one? It has three floors, maybe even four - and some incredible bargins. Lovely outfits for good prices. Last season, of course, but who cares? Loads of good stuff, especially scarves. Between charity shops and TKMexx, IKEA and my sewing machine, i've got my life covered.
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