Before it was Spring's turn...

Winter had one last dance around the garden!

Signs of life...

Keep your faith in beautiful things;

in the sun when it is hidden,

in the spring when it is gone.

Roy R. Gibson

A hush is over everything,

silent as women wait for love;

the world is waiting for the spring.

Sara Teasdale

One swallow does not make a spring, nor does one fine day.

Aristotle

...tiny, but unmistakable.

Not yet a new season but a move in the right direction for me. I'm so over winter and feeling blah. I need light. I need to feel the sap rising. I need my words to come back to me so that I can reconnect.

I miss them.

I miss me.

I miss you.

Signs of life. Tiny, but unmistakable.

Beautiful ice...

...in the blue and white light of an early morning.

It makes the 'up and out' worthwhile.

Crystalline thoughts...

Every piece of the universe,

even the tiniest little snow crystal,

matters somehow.

I have a place in the pattern,

and so do you...

T.A. Barron

(1952)

I choose to believe this, even when it's not entirely clear how, or obvious where that place is. It's as close as I come to faith.

Soul soothers

mosaic meditation, soothing me into a quiet space...

~ Thank you Flickr lovelies for all the beauty - you inspire and delight me always and allow me to tell stories that my heart sometimes can't express in words.

~ Thank you bloggy beauties for taking time and offering advice on my photo format - we're going with the majority who voted for unframed, and just ever so slightly smaller to create more white space. I hope you like it. I do.

~ Thank you EAT for the yummiest breakfasts on the run - your porridge with bananas and spiced chai lattes make very early winter mornings on the rails more than bearable. I'll be popping in to say hi tomorrow...

~ Thank you iTunes for this and this - escapism is sometimes the only route I can face and you always deliver without question.

~ Thank you Mr Sketch for the very best scented markers ever - so much more fun to use 'cause they smell delicious and last for ages. I only wish Amazon.com would ship them to the UK so I could buy this big box with extra flavours!

~ Thank you Samuel Johnson for reaching out across time to remind me that "kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not." - I needed to read those words today and there they were. You knew.

~ Thank you. You know why.

Balancing act - a reflective retrospective

Yesterday started bright and sunny but it turned grey and heavy and then at about three o'clock snow swirled down in big feathery flakes and dusted everything pretty. I know that some parts of the northern hemisphere are having much more snow than they'd like and others less than they need but this was just the right amount. Not enough to stop things moving but quite enough to make it look lovely.

I noticed that the evening light is starting to last fractionally longer and although it was already pretty gloomy when I walked home and not the best for taking photographs, this is what the acrobatic statue on the canalside looked like, all dressed in white.  I actually like how it turned out. And the combination of not walking in the pitch dark, and the fluffy whiteness, really made me feel better.

As I wandered along I was thinking about how this walk, brief as it is, always has an impact on my day. Sometimes it reflects my mood and sometimes it lifts my mood. It never leaves me unmoved.

I looked back over a few of my previous posts and I was struck by how some of the walks I've recorded capture these reflective moments and the changing seasons - the everyday ramblings, routines and rhythms of my life. I like that.

This statue is something I especially enjoy seeing and respond to and depending on how my day, week, or month is going it reflects for me either joyful exuberance, the achievement of perfect balance, or the courage and staying power it takes to stay upright no matter what the universal elements fling at one. It's always beautiful.

I hope you've had a good week so far and, like me, are looking forward to the weekend...

Textures in white

Microcosm

Macrocosm

More snow forecast for today...

Last of this sweetness...

...for this year. 

April 2009

I popped out this morning for a toasted cinnamon bagel (an all too regular weekend treat) and stopped in the park on the way home to enjoy the last of the blossom. There's much more green than white on these trees now.

May 2009

So summer really is here. Shame that the temperature's only 11 degrees and there's rain forecast for later. But the sun was out briefly this morning, the bagel was delicious, the blossom sweet, and this afternoon I'll just curl up with my book and listen to the raindrops hit the windows... Still sweet.

Looking up

white on white

April 2009

I've had my head down for so long. Watching my feet to make sure that they stay on the ground and keep moving forwards. And it's good to be grounded, right?

But there's a lot that's missed when hearts and eyes are kept averted.

This weekend, I'm going to find a quiet spot and spend a little time looking out towards the horizon. And up. Around and up.

Who knows what I might see out there...

Yearning

–noun

1.a persistent, often wistful desire, deep longing, esp. when accompanied by tenderness or sadness.

2. an instance of such longing: a yearning for romance and adventure.

[Flickr credits]

Let's meander shall we?

When I took geography in high school, I remember how I loved learning that a meandering river was the sign of a mature landscape, millions of years in the making. A river that flowed sinuously, at a relatively leisurely pace, through scenic valleys... I liked the sound of that. 

Whether journeying on foot or in conversation, I like to wander in this way, to take a winding path. To meander. Sometimes I set out simply for the pleasure of seeing where it'll take me. Sometimes it brings me right back to where I started. Sometimes I end up somewhere entirely new. Normally I end up where I need to be. 

Sometimes I know exactly where I'm heading and how to get there but I still like to veer off course and then circle back to the path. Sometimes it takes me a little longer to get there but oh, what sights I've found along the way, what creativity uncovered, what tangents of thought and feeling have been explored. Some of my most interesting discoveries, enjoyable interactions, or profoundest moments alone have happened as the result of a spontaneous meander.

But I've noticed that I haven't been doing this as much recently. Tending instead to stick to the straightest path, the well-worn route, the fastest journey time, the safest subjects, the most succinct expression. I still indulge the whim to wander here occasionally but in some areas of my life I've curtailed it almost entirely. And there's obvious value in that. It's direct. It's efficient. It's sensible. All good things. But I miss the leisurely meander.

In this month of considering want daily I've realised that, especially on brief journeys and in conversations where must and should need not apply, I want to allow myself to explore freely and randomly again. 

To encourage myself to meander more.

Some days

I just want to pause.

And see.

And savour.

And breathe.

And chat.

And laugh.

And refill.

And then I'm ready to move on. Replenished.

Today is one of those days.

Can't do it. But I want to.

Maybe tomorrow...

How 'bout you?

Happy Friday!

[Flickr credit]

I want to show you something very cool...

...and very cold.

This is how it started - my walk to work and the view from my desk yesterday.

[click pic to see it up close]

Worst snowfall here in 18 years, they say. 

I say, how wonderful. 

I've never seen the like.

Please may I leave the office so that I can go and play?

A garden of fragrance, please.

I currently live in an apartment without even a balcony, let alone a garden. I'd love to have a garden again. If or when I'm next lucky enough to have a little patch of green space I'm going to fill it with beautifully fragrant flowering plants. In the meantime, I try to have cut flowers that are scented in my home and on my desk at work. They brighten my day. I love the smell of flowers. I love to walk into a room, open a window, or sit on a park bench and catch the scent of a beautiful bloom. 

And like many smells, the fragrance of flowers is incredibly evocative; redolent with emotion, evoking deep and lasting memories of places, people and happenings. 

Unlike the other senses, smell needs no interpreter. The effect is immediate and undiluted by language, thought, or translation.

Diane Ackerman

(1948-)

A Natural History of the Senses

If we do try to describe smells in words, we find it's very hard to do so without referring to how they make us feel - "disgusting", "lovely", "nostalgic"... The smell of flowers generally has very positive associations for me.

These are some of my favourites, and some of the things they remind me of:

• Frangipani - Buddhist temples and shrines; warm night air wrapping me and my sister in the buoyant, carefree spirit of a tropical island interlude; watching sunrise from a beach in Zanzibar on the first day of the new millennium, with all the peace, trust and hope that moment held.
  
• Gardenias - My mother, beautiful in a black dress, younger than I am now; two little girls making "perfume"; reading a book curled up on cushions in a sunspot, in a conservatory.

• Freesias - Being a flower-girl in a yolk-yellow, floral-print lawn dress, with my hair curled and my heart full, at the age of four or five; Easter holidays with my cousins and siblings; affordable cut flower treats bought from a local street stall.
  
• Lily of the Valley - Nana; living in Paris on May Day; Crabtree & Evelyn milled soap, received in a Christmas parcel, posted with stamps of red-breasted Robins and love.

• Iceberg Roses - My great aunt Jess, so worldy, so sophisticated; cut crystal vases on a glass-topped dressing table; lying on the lawn in a historic rose garden, on long summer days, watching cloud animals pass overhead.
  
• Jasmine - My first kiss; spring in Cape Town, a brief but magical season; a high school friend who was murdered but still visits me in my dreams to tell me that he loves me. I still love him too - always will.

• Snowdrops - A dear friend's February Birthday dinner parties where they always appear, and a painting in her welcoming hallway; a walk in the woods wearing borrowed Wellington boots, two sizes too big; a dusting of snow in the Peace Park, last March, numb inside and out.
  
• Madonna Lilies - Living in Harrow-on-the-Hill with six housemates and two cats, fun-filled days in an overgrown garden; pollen on a favourite dress; the cool interior of a church, dressed for a wedding - not mine...
  

Smells are surer than sights or sounds

To make your heart-strings crack

Rudyard Kipling

(1865-1936)

[Flickr credits]