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Sunday, October 31, 2021

The Light Fades

The light fades.

Each 6 a.m. is darker than the one before.

I wince to see the passing of the halcyon days.

The kingfisher days are coming to an end.

It isn't exactly unexpected.

It may have taken me 50 years

            to become aware of time's passing,

but once I saw it . . .

Well, since then I have always sorrowed at

            the inexorable nature of Nature.

Even if we knew how to stop it,

it wouldn't be wise to do so.

 

Yet I accept it all (on a good day).

The aging.

The death watch.

All of it.

Except the loss of light so early every year.

The hallway is darker now when I get up,

and it will remain dark (get more dark, even)

for another ten months.

I ask you: is this fair?

It could be worse, I suppose.

I could be in the Far North with its light-free days

for months on end.

Time passes and that's okay.

But does it have to be marked by the loss of light?

Oh, bother metaphors!

 

 
Copyright © 2021 Ann Tudor
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com
Audible.Ca: go to https://www.audible.ca and search for Ann Tudor
Audible.Com: go to https://www.audible.com and search for Ann Tudor



Sunday, October 24, 2021

Colour Me

The hues and tints of my long life are

ecru, eggshell, cream, vanilla--

the dirty dishwater colours

of an unsure soul struggling for identity

and a modicum of stability

as my little canoe is battered by the waves

of this expanse of wet wilderness

beyond the capabilities of my fragile craft.

 

Now turn on the spotlights.

Those unsure off-whites refract the light

through prisms I didn't even know I had

and now even I can see, and say:

colour me brilliant and beautiful.

Red, yellow, blue—

these are just the beginning.

Read the colour wheel in all its combinations

to glimpse the harmonies and euphonies

that define me.

I sail in my untippable canoe

through all weathers,

wrapped in my rainbow.

 

 
Copyright © 2021 Ann Tudor
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com
Audible.Ca: go to https://www.audible.ca and search for Ann Tudor
Audible.Com: go to https://www.audible.com and search for Ann Tudor
 



 

Sunday, October 17, 2021

Timing Is Everything; Scenes from the Journey, vol. 18, no. 42

I can't cook without a timer. Once I could. Once I'd remember things. In those olden days I could use a simple timer that went "ding" when the time was up. Numerous failures led me to know that what I needed was a timer with infinite settings, one I could clip on to my clothing so that it stayed with me and that had a continuous beep that I couldn't ignore. (Okay, I could push the little off- button and ignore my pot in the kitchen—but at least the beep got my attention, so it was a great improvement over the single-beep kind of timer.)

 I found the answer to these dreams at Lee Valley, the go-to place for all my wants. The package cost about $10 but there were two timers to a package. I had two timers! Hurrah!

 One of them I keep upstairs. The other lives in the kitchen. I set it and clip it on whenever I am cooking or baking, and then I leave the kitchen to do other things. So handy. When I'm finished cooking I unclip the timer and leave it on the counter for next time.

 And then, ten days ago, it disappeared. I hunted. I checked all the clothing I'd worn for the previous two weeks (because sometimes I would leave the timer attached to a sweater or an apron.) But no timer.

 Dino, helpful as always, made sure it was still available in the Lee Valley catalogue, just in case, and then, because this is who he is, he also found it on Amazon—at more than twice the price! He also (again, this is who he is) ordered a set of eight baby batteries

in order to re-activate the dead timer that I hadn't told you about because that story is long and boring. So as soon as the batteries arrive he will insert one into the old dead timer. If that doesn't work (for some arcane, battery-type reason) we can order a couple of new ones from Lee Valley.

 In the meantime, however, I had to make do with lesser timers—the kind that "ding" one feeble time and are then silent.

 This morning I was trying to put together an outfit to wear for a day out in the world--writing class, a theatre matinee, dinner at a restaurant. [This was written back in the days when one could go out and about with impunity.] As usual I locked myself into shoes first and then had to scramble to look pulled together above the ankle.

 I began pawing through my large tub of sweaters—most of them handmade and left from the days when I knitted one-of-a-kind sweaters for the world. I'd gone through the top four or five sweaters in the tub when I finally pulled out a store-bought black and white knitted coat-jacket. I hadn't worn it since early autumn. I knew I hadn't. Yet there was the timer, pinched onto the lapel of the coat-jacket. Big as life and twice as ugly, as my mother often said. It was the answer to my (admittedly shallow) prayers.

 

Sunday, October 10, 2021

The Point Is

The Point Is

 

. . . variable,

depending on circumstances,

depending on who's defining the point.

 

The point is to learn.

The point is to feel.

The point is to know yourself.

The point is to make a pile of money.

The point is to live well.

The point is to help others.

The point is to hug,

but the point is to be detached, avoid clinging.

 

Your point and my point are not the same

so one of us must be right, the other wrong,

I'll let you guess which is which.

The point is to forgive others

(i.e., those who are wrong),

because it isn't their fault.

 

The point is to pay attention

to everything.

But bottom line?

The point is to love.

 

 

Copyright © 2021 Ann Tudor
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com
Audible.Ca: go to https://www.audible.ca and search for Ann Tudor
Audible.Com: go to https://www.audible.com and search for Ann Tudor




 

Sunday, October 3, 2021

Fw: Oops! Forgot to include September's Book List

Here are the best of the books I read in September. Hope you find a few you like,
 
Ann


Ripeness

Ripeness passes so soon into the overripe.

The firm and perfect banana becomes,

overnight,

fit only for banana bread,

delicious if you have the wit to lard it with walnuts.

The inside Of your avocado morphs

from its smooth green

(the colour of a 1950s refrigerator)

to an inedible pulpy brown.

 

And as with these fruits

so it is with us,

the humans only too aware

of the future that awaits.

During the fateful decade

between 80 and 90

we also morph (more slowly than a banana but faster

than, say, a sea turtle)

into an overripeness

that begs for the surcease

we can attain by resisting

the insistent aid of those

determined to prolong our being

until we are of no more use

than the aforementioned avocado.

 

 
Copyright © 2021 Ann Tudor
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com
Audible.Ca: go to https://www.audible.ca and search for Ann Tudor
Audible.Com: go to https://www.audible.com and search for Ann Tudor