Words fail me at the moment, so I’ve been doing a bit of postcard colouring instead, using the output as birthday and thank you cards.
Quite smudgy in places, but life is not lived by colouring between the lines.
Vale Cynthia Jobin
On my return to blogging in April, I was deeply saddened to discover that one of my favourite poets of all time had died in December 2016.
Cynthia Jobin was a blogging friend and a masterful poet, whose art was superior in form, structure and rhythm. But what I love most in her work is the way she infused it with mischief. Her intellect and humour shines through her poetry.
Sadly, Cynthia’s WordPress site is no longer up. I hope her unpublished work will not be lost.
I will miss you, Little Old Lady. You were a beautiful light in the darkness.
Light in the Smog
It’s been 8 months since my last blog post (sounds like confession). Where has the time gone?
Since then I’ve changed jobs and finished my degree.
And the world seems to have gone quite mad.
At least the Blogosphere is still turning.
Shanghai Smog
Cherry on the top
My work meeting finished at 4pm. I still had minutes to type but was also due to meet a friend for dinner and the theatre at 6:30pm on the other side of The Bridge.
Anybody who lives in Sydney knows that trying to get across the Sydney Harbour Bridge by car into the city from 5pm onwards gobbles time. So I made the journey at 4 and typed the minutes here. A lovely way to end the work day.
Look Up
Concealed in the sameness
the faded blue suit
Clark Kent by day
Who cares, who cares to look?
But out there
when darkness falls
it’s kite-flying breathtaking riddles
out of dayshadows, an infinite teasing
of zetetic minds
unphysics exploding:
The Universe –
ultimate mystery man.
Opposites
Ugg Boot Face-off
To find oneself, at 50-something, studying astrobiology (under duress) as a subject in a Bachelor of Arts (Linguistics) degree is a little discombobulating, to say the least. Particularly if your last contact with the fields of chemistry, mathematics and physics was some 30-odd years ago (and geology, never). But the university at which I’m studying crawling through my degree has a rule (which only came into effect after I started) that every undergraduate student must complete a Planet unit and a People unit outside of their stream in order to complete said degree.
So, every week this semester just past, a very grumpy band of Arts students, including me, would huddle together in the prac room, muttering furiously over concepts such as chirality; and biomarker composition; and whether the lump of rock before us was sedimentary, metamorphic or igneous; and whether another lump of rock before us was a stony, iron, or stony-iron, meteorite; and whether the earth was oxic or anoxic when another lump of rock before us was formed.
On the opposite side of the room, sat a bunch of engaged, aspiring astrobiologists, scientists and geologists, who spoke in a language even the polyglot Arts student doesn’t care much for. We were strange bedfellows; almost different species. 😀
What a discomfiting experience.
But, it blew my mind!
I learnt so much. About how far (and not) scientific knowledge has come since I was at school; why the exploration of our solar system (so what’s the big deal about a bunch of dead rocks and gassy balls in the sky?) is deeply interesting; the mysteries of the vast and strange universe that we find ourselves in; and, most fascinating of all, the extent of the microbial and extremophile world around, beneath, on, and in us. I even had a bit of fun with the Design-a-Lander-for-Titan assignment (the tutors mentioned that they were looking forward to the Arts students’ designs. Yeah, I thought, some comic relief).
There is much value in seeking out our opposites and differences in knowledge, beliefs, philosophies and interests.
What have you learnt recently that has broadened your mind?
Shanghai
Tonight
I’m in a city of 14.50 million
souls. I know no-one
here. I’m a nano-human, a speck
in the smog. I make myself big
riding the subways with no-one
with light-coloured hair. No-one notices
the gweilo; the ghost-person, I think,
until I step into the deluge at Shanghai
Library, and a dark-haired
girl steps in time beside me, her umbrella
banishing the rain, her words, my ghostliness
“Where are you going?
Can I take you there?”
***
“They’re irresponsible”, my husband says, “sending you there on your own.“
“It’ll be fine. I’ll be careful”, I say. I have an unspoken list of no-go countries for work, but China’s not one of them; my 8-year-old self has waited a lifetime for this. From a young age through most of my teens my dreamscapes were exotic places far from my home in Africa, in particular, somewhere intoxicating called the Far East. There…
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Curve
I’ve had the good fortune to travel to Shanghai twice in the last 6 months for work. On my most recent trip there, I was lucky enough to be shown around by wonderful hosts, and so I got to see the some of the incredible architecture in the Pudong area for the first time.
This is the interior of the Shanghai Grand Hyatt hotel from the top floor, a view not for the fainthearted.
Evocation of Art
‘Anti-mimesis is a philosophical position that holds the direct opposite of mimesis. Its most notable proponent is Oscar Wilde, who opined in his 1889 essay The Decay of Lying that, “Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life”. In the essay, written as a Platonic dialogue, Wilde holds that anti-mimesis “results not merely from Life’s imitative instinct, but from the fact that the self-conscious aim of Life is to find expression, and that Art offers it certain beautiful forms through which it may realise that energy.”.
What is found in life and nature is not what is really there, but is that which artists have taught people to find there, through art. As in an example posited by Wilde, although there has been fog in London for centuries, one notices the beauty and wonder of the fog because “poets and painters have taught the loveliness of such effects…They did not exist till Art had invented them.” ‘ Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_imitating_art
Nature creates art in the Dr Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden, Vancouver
I don’t agree with Mr Wilde; surely the fact that artists painted the fog is because they saw its beauty in life, and thus art imitated life in this case (chicken vs egg). But I concede that art provides us ways of seeing and appreciating life from a number of different perspectives which we may not otherwise notice.
Nature Conquers All
In time, Nature conquers all.
Vibrant
A Rainy Day – Ningxia Road, Shanghai
“This week, share a photo of something vibrant. Let’s wash the web with a rainbow of colors to keep the winter gloom at bay.”
The Daily Post
Think Big
Eurasian Tree Sparrow – Yuyuan Gardens, Shanghai
He’s thinking, “Lunch!” I’m thinking, “Wildly optimistic.”
Alphabet Arcana
S – The Annotated Ultimate Alphabet by Mike Wilks
This is a page from one of my most treasured books: The Annotated Ultimate Alphabet by Mike Wilks. The page contains over 1000 things that begin with the letter S, including the Semaphore alphabet.
See what you can find.
Jesus, take note
Shanghai
I’m in a city of 14.50 million
(give or take a few, including me)
souls. I know no-one
here. I’m a nano-human, a speck
in the smog. I make myself big
riding the subways with no-one
with light-coloured hair. No-one notices
the gweilo; the ghost-person, I think,
until I step into the deluge at Shanghai
Library, and a dark-haired
girl steps in time beside me, her umbrella
banishing the rain, her words, my ghostliness
“Where are you going?
Can I take you there?”
Treasure Hunting
Shopping is one of my least favourite activities, so I usually try to avoid it. But when I’m travelling, I love to shop for small, unusual gifts for family and friends.
Shopping prep, Granville Island. Photo by Vi.
My husband’s not an easy giftee. He has everything he needs, and although he doesn’t have everything he wants (who does?), my budget doesn’t extend to Beneteaus and Breitlings. So his gifts from my travels are somewhat (ahem) eclectic. This is the latest.
Miniature Solar-powered RainbowMaker designed by David Dear
It’s an elaborate yet simple piece of engineering (to delight a child of any age).
Rainbows…go, catch some.
Careful
My husband and youngest niece are the most observant people I know, invariably picking up on details which other miss. (They should start their own detective agency). I’ve learnt to be more observant, particularly in nature, from them both. But I’m still no master at it.
I was so busy taking photos in the Butchart Gardens that I almost missed this wormhole in the hedgerow to another galaxy. 😀
Take care to notice the world around you.
Is it just my impression, or is technology making the human race less observant?
The Unanswerable Question
Cynthia Jobin, over at littleoldladywho.net, is one of the finest poets I’ve read. Her poems are exquisitely crafted, evocative, and at times wonderfully mischievous.
A recent poem of Cynthia’s – The Palpable Obscure – is a spine-tingling evocation of the ongoing mystification endured by those of us who have experienced the death of a loved one. In it, she writes:
“Once a day, at least, I stop to wonder
where you are.”
Is this puzzlement not at the very heart of the Human Condition?
If my father were alive today, the 27th November 2015, he would be 83. I started this blog mainly as a response to the lingering grief I felt about his dying. And this poem, which I first posted on the 27th November 2010, is about the day he died.
Like Cynthia, I still wonder…
Eternal Mysteries ( a repost)
With the ring back on your finger
you sighed and slipped away
but forever it’s a mystery
where you went that day
Did you see them watching you
and whispering in your ear?
When you took your final journey,
did you know that they were there?
Did you sense that we were not?
No-one can ever know,
yet child-like we still ask ourselves –
that day, where did you go?
————————–
Extraordinary
About 19 years ago, I spent two months working in Vancouver during the Summer but never got to Vancouver Island. However, in mid-November, I was fortunate enough to return to Vancouver for work, and my brother said I absolutely must try and get to Vancouver Island and see the Butchart Gardens and Victoria. So on a gloomy, grey Fall day absolutely deluged with rain, I made the 90-minute ferry trip to the island, and, although I ran out of time to see Victoria, I managed to spend a wonderful few hours in the Butchart Gardens, an extraordinary place of beauty.
Butchart Gardens
Happy Place
“In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die:
Ever drifting down the stream –
Lingering in the golden dream –
Life, what is it but a dream?”
A Boat Beneath a Sunny Sky – Lewis Carroll
Photo by Belinda Price-Sinclair
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