Poetry

Love the earth and sun and animals,

Despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks,

Stand up for the stupid and crazy,

Devote your income and labor to others...

And your very flesh shall be a great poem.

Walt Whitman

Fetish

I am beginning to understand.

Today I bought three pairs of new shoes. Most unlike me, true enough, but nonetheless no less than three.

Red ankle length all stars, because one must always own red runners. This is a truth of life maintained since G returned from Japan bearing my first pair as a gift in 1988.

Red funky Merrells, because one must sometimes concede to one's girlfriend on the topic of "You can't wear those red all stars everywhere you know."

And funky little black slip ons - just because, OK?

Shopping in sin city is hot hot hot.

I Guess We Are Not In Kansas Anymore Toto

Oh my Lordie that was fun.

I am home from Sin City. Everything seems to lack excitement, glitter, gel, gals, fireworks, flags fun and, oh yeah, the people around here are definitely wearing more clothing.

The view from the penthouse was 180 degrees of Sydney skyline from the 71st floor.

The company was excellent, the team was on fire, the weather was good, the Curly was grand.

All in all, a most excellent adventure.

Waking Up Tired

I haven't had a holiday since last May.

While there is plenty of good stuff going on in my life emotional exhaustion is taking its toll.

Conflict is endemic in my life, it is what I do for a living. And I am a bit of an adrenalin junkie. I like nothing better than a good fight for a good and just cause. In those circumstances I can slug it out with the best of them. But I have no tolerance for sensless fights that serve no greater good nor can they be resolved. That is just pointless destruction.

A peaceful, fun, relaxing holiday is on my agenda next weekend.

Happy Birthday Control Freak Baby

My little venture has been afloat for a year now. The actual anniversary was passed locked in combat with a mortal enemy, (as per my previous post.) I haven't lost one yet but the fight was a doozy.

Kind of fitting really that the anniversary passed me by. I was so busy slugging it out I didn't notice.

I can't say the first year has been easy - far from it. But I can say that things are humming along now, having survived the worst of the set up and admin chaos accounting phase, and I haven't starved to death yet. Slowly but surely all systems are falling into place, and my assistant has a place for everything and everthing in its place. She says I am her work in progress. (She is a neat freak and now rules the office - OKAY??)

What I love most about it is being my own boss, doing the work I love, and running a flexible office. My staff love it too.

All in all, we are a happy bunch of vegemites now we have created our own show and are running it just the way we like it.

Unholy Trinity - the Christian Brother, the lawyer and the fool

When the Christian Brothers taught "Turn the other cheek" they meant offer the cheek of your behind to the next brother.

And they are still doing the same thing - all in the process of pastoral caring - bending people over desks and rodgering them senseless.

90 Good Years

"90 Good Years" was several blissful hours of party celebrating a combined 50th and 40th and basking the the radiant love that these two souls have for each other.

I wonder at these two tiny atoms that have bumped into each other in a whole universe of random chaos and have fused their neutrons and protons. They are in their own eliptical orbit around the other - the centre of each others' worlds.

They are both such eccentric characters. One could talk the leg off a chair and the other speaks volumes with silence.

Wonderful friends spanning 20 years filling the room with chatter and catch up and change of the world.

Long Live the Revolution.

Come Fly to Me

Curly and C Minor are winging their way toward me as we speak.

This Week Was Brought to You By the Letter "C"

Just when you think that life

might settle down for a few days without a

CRISIS

there is

CARDIAC CONGESTION

and a

CYCLONE.

As you were.

Just another day in the office.

More News

Mum is responding well to treatment and is on the mend. Lungs are clearing. Investigations are cointinuing into the dodgy ticker.

Curly and C Minor survived the cyclone, but have been stuck in their hotel room since Monday night with no power or water (so no flushing dunny, no TV, no radio, no pool, no beach, no shopping etc). They are safe and dry, which is the main thing, but that is about the most that can be said for the situation.

They are unsure if they can leave Fiji as scheduled on Friday as the road to the airport is currently cactus (bridge out) and flights out of the country are operating subject to good weather conditions. Although the worst of the cyclone has passed, 250,000 people in Fiji are still without essential services. Tidal surges, gale force winds, flooding and torrential rain continue to batter the island.

That is all.

News

Mum's recent illnees gave me a scare. Fluid on the lungs sent her to the ICU for 10 days about this time last year.

So I cancelled my holiday and packed Curly and C minor off to Fiji - Where there is a cyclone bearing down upon them tonight.

I wish that the mere force of my mind thinking about them could transport me to the eye of the storm.

http://www.met.gov.fj/index.php?id=54&area=Fji_and_Rotuma_(Fiji_Warning)&file=20021.txt

The Passion

The third is to refuse the passion as one might sensibly refuse a leopard in the house, however tame it might seem at first.

You might reason that you can easily feed a leopard and that your garden is big enough, but you will know in your dreams at least that no leopard is ever satisfied with what it's given.

After nine nights must come ten and every desperate meeting only leaves you desperate for another. There is never enough to eat, never enough garden for your love.

So you refuse and then you discover that your house is haunted by the ghost of a leopard. When passion comes late in life it is hard to bear.

Jeanette Winterson, The Passion

Delicious Ambiguity

We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.

Sam Keen

Dark Night

If I could reach up and hold a star for every time you made me smile, I would have the whole night sky in the palm of my hand.

(Unkown)

Act of Faith

Love means to commit oneself without guarentee, to give oneself completely in the hope that our love will produce love in the loved person. Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love.

Erich Fromm.

Of Hardship and Difficult Things

It would be difficult for me to express all my thoughts about it. It remains a constant disappointment to me that my drawings are not yet what I want them to be. The difficulties are indeed numerous and great, and cannot be overcome immediately. Making progress is like miners' work: it doesn't advance as quickly as one should like, and also as others expect; but faced with such a task, patience and faithfulness are essential. In fact, I don't think much about the difficulties, because if one thought of them too much, one would get dazed or confused.

Vincent Van Gogh

Love's Growth

Here are the fruits, flowers, leaves and branches. And here is my heart which beats only for you.

Paul Verlaine.

Neruda

We came by night to the Fortunate Isles, And lay like fish under the net of our kisses.

Diamonds Are Hard

Everytime you are with me I am struck by your beauty, by the exquisite shape of your lips, by the perfect fall of a curl and the nourishing curves of your form. I am struck by all that I love about your diamond mind and by all that I am at risk of losing.