Weekend Coffee Share December 17, 2016.

Welcome to another Weekend Coffee Share!

Today, I’m being a lousy hostess. So, if you’re thirsty or hungry,  you’ll need to head out to the kitchen and DIY. By the way, while you’re up, would you mind getting me a cup of decaf tea please? Pretty please!!!

I’ve locked myself in the lounge room with the air-conditioning on having a lazy Saturday. I need one.

Sunbaking inside enjoying the air-conditioning.

How many sleeps is it now before Christmas? I have no idea. After all, it’s barely registering that it’s Saturday. I’ll blame the heat, but I’m totally incapable of performing such mental gymnastics: 25 – 17= 8. Eight sleeps…that’s better than I thought.Just a quick question: If I don’t go to sleep, does that mean Christmas will never come? I’m not sure.

I guess I should buy myself an Advent Calendar. That way, I wouldn’t have to worry about mental arithmetic. Mind you, it couldn’t be a chocolate one. In this heat, it would go into an instant meltdown. Let’s just say I’ve had enough meltdowns lately.

So,I could also visit Santa’s Countdown Clock.

Anyway, not being much of a number-cruncher, I countdown towards Christmas the same way I give directions… pick out landmarks and hope no one gets lost.

School Carols.

For us, the landmarks to Christmas include: the end of year dance concert, the school carols night, the end of school and then there’s Church Christmas Eve. Somewhere along the way, there’s also checking out Christmas lights, making the Christmas Cake and wrapping presents. Sneaking in a few siestas isn’t a bad idea either!

Anyway, yesterday was the last day of school. Both my kids changed schools at the end of last year, yet I found myself back at their old school. A few of our friends had kids in the graduating class and I went to see them off.

 

It’s a school tradition for the rest of the school and teachers to create a human tunnel for the graduating Year 6 kids to walk through. It’s a rather intense and emotional time for the entire school…smiles, tears and that sense of being in the departure lounge at the airport. I should also add that it gets quite challenging for the ginormous Year 6’s need to crawl through the tiny arches constructed by the kindergarten kids.

While most of these kids will end up together at the local high school, the transition from primary to high school is momentous…a huge leap along the pathway from childhood to growing up. Although they’re taller, their first day at high school feels a lot like their very first day at school all over again, except Mum isn’t allowed to cry this time. No tears allowed.

For better or worse, the end of the year is also a check list…especially Christmas.There’s barely been a tick in mine.  Actually, I haven’t even written the list yet, which could explain a bit. Significantly, I haven’t made my Christmas cake yet. This is a Christmas tradition deemed so important in the past, that when I had three days’ notice that I was having chemo 3 years ago, I HAD to make my Christmas cake. It seems that when I’m not under the pressure of dying, that making my Christmas cake hasn’t fallen onto the back burner. That’s along with writing and posting Christmas cards, wrapping presents and removing the excavation piles from where we squeezed in the Christmas Tree.

As you can see, we are buried deep in the depths of Christmas chaos and won’t be emerging any time soon.

Yet, at least we’ve managed to put up the Christmas Tree and decorate it. We have a real tree every year and this is the first year it’s been at ground level since we had the kids. Miss took over the decorating this year, introducing me to a new form of Christmas madness…CDOCD or Christmas Decoration Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. My usual hodgepodge of decorations made and bought throughout my lifetime was banned. Let’s just say I watched the proceedings.

In addition to all the Christmas hoopla and end of school stuff, we also found out that our daughter has been accepted into Dance Team at the dance school. This isn’t just an honour and recognition of her dance abilities. It’s also a huge commitment and responsibility. That begins with arriving on time and not only being able to find your dance shoes, but also putting them on your feet. This seemingly simple process is harder than you think.

Geoff and Mister sailing.

Our son has also graduated from his Level 3 sailing course and starts racing in January. I know he’s going into his second year of high school, but it  still seems so grown up. Well, considering he’s about to overtake Grandma, he’s not so little any more.

Maybe, I’m the one who needs to grow up but that’s not to say there’s still a long way to go.

Mind you, growth should be a life long journey and I certainly haven’t stopped growing yet (and I’m not just referring to my Christmas waistline either).

By the way, although I’m not ready for Christmas, I have been doing plenty of writing. I have been working away on my Paris memoir. In addition to typing up excerpts from my diaries at the time, I’ve been reworking poetry I wrote at the time, writing new poems and short stories and being very productive. There was:

Poem:Slide Night- Dumped In Paris.

Poem:Welcome to the Yellow House.

Paris Syndrome – Disillusioned By the City of Lights.

Photo: c Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

I also took part in Friday Fictioneers again, writing All for Love. It’s the story of an Australian war bride living in a US town.

How are plans going for your celebrations? I’d love to hear what you’re up to!

This has been part of the Weekend Coffee Share hosted by Diana at Part-Time Monster.

xx  Rowena

 

 

 

Y- Yeats On Life…Letters To Dead Poets

For the last six weeks, I’ve been working on a series of Letters to Dead Poets, which have been inspired by my own experiences of reading these poems, being inspired by the poets as well as the happenings in my own life.  I’ve re-read poems, discovered new poets, as my footsteps have forged ahead through virgin soil. Yet, there has also been this other force, which writers through the ages have called “the muse”. Yet, who or what is it really? Could it be the spirits of poets past posting ideas into my head like letters into a mail box? Is it my subconscious mind or even God?

Irish poet William Butler Yeats had a strong belief in the supernatural, which is reflected in his response.

 …………….

“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”
― W.B. Yeats

Dear Rowena,

“Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.”
― W.B. Yeats

At last, I finally received your letter. I’ve repeatedly tried reaching you throughout the last month, watching as you’ve plucked out but a select few of my colleagues to receive your letters. It’s been an agonising wait, not knowing whether I would be chosen. Thank you. Your letter means the world to me. I am most honoured…and relieved!

By the way, if I ever come back on a more permanent basis, I’m going to change my name to Aardvark. I spent most of my life waiting, waiting…A,B, C,L,M,Q…! Even after death, it’s taken an eternity to get to “Y”!

Getting back to your letter, my dear, you asked so many questions. Too many, for me to respond to each one individually and give each their due. Besides, I am but a poet and “what can be explained is not poetry”.

However, before I offer a few over-arching observations, please know that “I have believed the best of every man. And find that to believe is enough to make a bad man show him at his best, or even a good man swings his lantern higher.”

Wisdom – WB Yeats:

“There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven’t yet met.”

“People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind.”

“This melancholy London – I sometimes imagine that the souls of the lost are compelled to walk through its streets perpetually. One feels them passing like a whiff of air.”

“Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, We are happy when we are growing.”

“You know what the Englishman’s idea of compromise is? He says, Some people say there is a God. Some people say there is no God. The truth probably lies somewhere between these two statements.”

“Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.”

“Why should we honour those that die upon the field of battle? A man may show as reckless a courage in entering into the abyss of himself.”

“Every conquering temptation represents a new fund of moral energy. Every trial endured and weathered in the right spirit makes a soul nobler and stronger than it was before.”

“All empty souls tend toward extreme opinions.”

“We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.”

Knowing how you’re a romantic at heart, here are a few thoughts about love:

 “Never give all the heart, for love
Will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women if it seem
Certain, and they never dream
That it fades out from kiss to kiss;
For everything that’s lovely is
But a brief, dreamy, kind delight.
O Never give the heart outright,
For they, for all smooth lips can say,
Have given their hearts up to the play.
And who could play it well enough
If deaf and dumb and blind with love?
He that made this knows all the cost,
For he gave all his heart and lost.”
― W.B. Yeats, In the Seven Woods: Being Poems Chiefly of the Irish Heroic Age

“WINE comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That’s all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and sigh.”
― W.B. Yeats

Of course, being an Irishman, love is also touched by tragedy…

 “A mermaid found a swimming lad,
Picked him up for her own,
Pressed her body to his body,
Laughed; and plunging down
Forgot in cruel happiness
That even lovers drown.”
― W.B. Yeats

By the way, the questions haven’t stopped since I reach Byzantium. Indeed, my journey has barely begun. Eternity awaits!

“Come Fairies, take me out of this dull world, for I would ride with you upon the wind and dance upon the mountains like a flame!”

Yours,

WB Yeats

Coffee! Coffee! Wherefore art thou, Coffee

Welcome to Another Weekend Coffee Share!

This weekend I’d like to invite you around to join me for  William Shakespeare’s 400 Death Day Party. Since I doubt Shakespeare was much of a coffee drinker, we’ll be having tea served in my Shelley tea cups with generous slabs of birthday cake…along with Tim Tams. No doubt Shakespeare would approve!

For those of you not embroiled in the Blogging A-Z April Challenge, we only have six more sleeps til the grand finale next Saturday when our all stops journey through the alphabet finally comes to an end for another year. My theme this year is Writing Letters to Dead Poets. This has become quite a philosophical journey as I ask them about the nature of happiness, the role of suffering, advice for young poets and a love of the natural world. My ignorance has been growing my the day!

Once again, I’ve posted An Alphabet Soup Post listing links through to posts A-T.

Since starting Letters to Dead Poets, I’ve retreated into my cave and switched off from the outside world as much as is possible being married with two kids on school holidays and two dogs desperate for walks at the beach. Indeed, I’ve just returned with two pooped pooches from the beach. Nothing like chasing the ball and running round with other dogs. Heaven help me if I show any sign of going out! I was lucky not to be wiped out in the stampede.

On Friday night Geoff and I went out for dinner at a Mexican restaurant on the local waterfront. The kids were staying with my parents for a few days and it was great to be able to kick back and converse. After not leaving the house for a few days immersed in my writing, I also needed to be pulled away. Do something else. Look beyond the screen and the four walls around me.

Walking back to the car, we were stopped in our tracks. A huge cloudy galleon hovered   over the beach, silhouetted by the full moon. Mesmerised, we stared in awe and dashed home to get the camera and tripod.  By the time we came back, the clouds had changed and weren’t quite as breathtaking but the photos were still impressive. Geoff took most of them. He is much more technically adept than me and also has a excellent eye. We are both keen amateurs.

We also spotted this very ambitious spider building its web across our backyard by night. It’s been dubbed “Bob the Builder” and “Luke Skywalker”.

I guess you could say things have been quiet when photographing spiders is one of the highlights of the week. That is aside from writing.

Tomorrow , will be ANZAC Day here in Australia. The 25th April commemorates the landing of Australian and New Zealand troops at Gallipoli, Turkey, during WWI. Geoff’s Great Uncle served at Gallipoli and his mother’s cousin served at Kokoda. The kids will be marching locally with their Scout Troop.

How has your week been? I hope things have gone well.

The Weekend Coffee Share is hosted by Part Time Monster and I encourage you to pop over for a cuppa via   the “Linkup Linky“.

xx Rowena

N-Oodganoo Noonuccal: Indigenous Australian Poet.

All One Race – Oodgeroo Noonuccal

Black tribe, yellow tribe, red, white or brown,
From where the sun jumps up to where it goes down,
Herrs and pukka-sahibs, demoiselles and squaws,
All one family, so why make wars?
They’re not interested in brumby runs,
We don’t hanker after Midnight Suns;
I’m for all humankind, not colour gibes;
I’m international, and never mind tribes.

Black, white or brown race, yellow race or red,
From the torrid equator to the ice-fields spread,
Monsieurs and senors, lubras and fraus,
All one family, so why family rows?
We’re not interested in their igloos,
They’re not mad about kangaroos;
I’m international, never mind place;
I’m for humanity, all one race.

Dear Ms Noonuccal,

It’s a real honour to write to you and touch base at long last.

I am currently writing a series of Letters to Dead Poets and although I risk offending your cultural sensitivities, I am wanting to be inclusive. I am hoping that we could share a metaphorical walk and chat together. Talk about what it would take for all Australians to belong.

We need diversity and to celebrate and respect a kaleidoscope of difference and yet still come together as one. Not as one amorphous bunch of clones but as human beings with a dazzling array of colours, shapes, textures all glued together through respect, understanding and acceptance. While this might sound like a utopian dream, we have to have a go. Do our best. If every single one of us makes a small personal change, then collectively this must amount to something monumental. I know when I was growing up we never thought the Berlin wall would come down, and yet it’s gone. We weren’t all just a bunch of dreamers, after all!

Yet, more and more walls need to come down.

More bridges must be built.

Yet, we sit in our brick bunkers with our technology and remotes basking in our own private worlds.

While there’s apathy, there’s also animosity, resentment and an “us” and “them”. The racism you fought so hard against through your political activism and poems:

Racism – Oodgeroo Noonuccal

Stalking the corridors of life,
Black, frustrated minds
Scream for release
From Christian racist moulds.
Moulds that enslave
Black independence.

Take care! White racists!
Black can be racists too.
A violent struggle could erupt
And racists meet their death.

Colour, the gift of nature
To mankind,
Is now the contentions bone,
And black-white hatred sustains itself
on the rotting, putrid flesh
That once was man.

Oodgeroo Noonuccal

Before we go any further, I’d like to apologise for not reading your poetry until recently when my son brought it home from school. At least, I’m fairly sure I never studied your poetry at school or university, despite studying Australian Literature. This means that I’d never read a single poem by an Aboriginal poet until I was 46 years old. That despite growing up memorizing verses of Banjo Paterson’s Man From Snowy River and Dorothea Mackellar’s My Country by heart, I never knew your poems. I’d never read or learnt about your vision for Australia. I don’t need to spell out what that means. That a nation needs to know its own and not just experience one dish but to feast from the full smorgasbord.

My son’s poignant Aboriginal Spirit Man Painting Age 8.

It is my hope that by sharing a few of your poems here and just a fraction of your vision, that others will also be spurred on to get to know you better. Find out what you were fighting for and even pick up the baton and carry it forward.

Unfortunately, with writing over 26 letters to dead poets in a month, time restraints prevents me from thoroughly researching each poet and allowing myself to immerse myself in their poetry in the same way I studied the poems of John Keats when I was at school. I am meeting so many incredible poets for the very first time along this journey and while I would usually undertake lengthy, meticulous research before putting pen to paper let alone posting it online, I feel like I’m flying blind. Indeed, flying blind and straight into the flames. I hope I’m not screwing up, making mistakes and getting it wrong. There are people who have studied each of you individually in such depth and detail and in so many ways I’m just skipping over the surface trying to dig in as deep as I can but inevitably having to move onto the next one too soon. At least, I’m honest about it and don’t pretend to know you well.

However, perhaps that’s all I’m meant to do. Light the spark that ultimately gets the fire going.

Municipal Gum

Gumtree in the city street,
Hard bitumen around your feet,
Rather you should be
In the cool world of leafy forest halls
And wild bird calls
Here you seems to me
Like that poor cart-horse
Castrated, broken, a thing wronged,
Strapped and buckled, its hell prolonged,
Whose hung head and listless mien express
Its hopelessness.
Municipal gum, it is dolorous
To see you thus
Set in your black grass of bitumen-
O fellow citizen,
What have they done to us?

Oodgeroo Noonuccal

Getting back to my original question, what do you think it would take for all Australians to feel they belong and how do we expand that to build bridges around the world?

I’m not really expecting you to answer that but perhaps you could nibble around the edges. I hope it’s nothing but a rhetorical question!

Yours sincerely,

Rowena

Further Reading:

https://www.qut.edu.au/about/oodgeroo/oodgeroo-noonuccal

This post is part of a series of Letters to Dead Poets for the Blogging A-Z April Challenge.

More Caffeine Required!

Welcome to another Weekend Coffee Share.

If we were having coffee today, I’d be asking for a hammock for my head. The Blogging A-Z Challenge has been incredibly intense and my brain is simultaneously firing on overdrive and completely exhausted, even though that makes little sense. When you’ve been writing Letters to Dead Poets for a month and even receiving replies, nothing makes much sense.

Crow

Roald Dahl.

I’ll be putting out an Alphabet Soup every Sunday, which will be listed my challenge posts to date and I encourage you to do the same. It can be difficult navigate your way through missed posts. Here’s the link: Alphabet Soup

Pictured with Thomas & Meg Keneally at an author lunch, Pearl Beach.

Yesterday involved another brain blow out when I attended a literary lunch with Australian authors Thomas Keneally and daughter, Meg. While you might not recognise Keneally by name, he wrote Schindler’s Ark, which became Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster movie, Schindler’s List.

Not unsurprisingly, Keneally is an incredibly intelligent man with a deep social conscience and is also a flag-waving Republican. What did surprise me, however, was his incredible wit and humour and his passion for Rugby League. I felt so incredibly blown away meeting this  inspiring man, who has well and truly stuck to the road less travelled and turned it into the yellow brick road. Actually, on second thoughts, he would’ve made an excellent Wizard of Oz hiding behind the curtain fiddling with the controls…no doubt with a huge grin and his gutsy laugh.

However, as much as I was thrilled to meet and listen to Thomas Keneally, I was riveted listening to his daughter, Meg, who is co-authoring this series of novels with her Dad. As a writer beavering away to get my first book out the door, I really appreciated her insights into her own journey. Just because her father is a famously successful novelist, there were no guarantees that she’d follow magically in his footsteps. As with any kid with a successful parent, it’s very hit and miss. Moreover, as she said, writing is a very solitary process, so it’s not like she’s been looking over his shoulder all her life!

Meg Keneally is an experienced, successful journalist and a Mum. Some years ago, she apparently wrote a few novels which she said wouldn’t see the light of day. That didn’t surprise me as a lot of writers have a few of those stashed in the bottom drawer. She went on, however, to explain that she was “half-baked” when she wrote them. Her choice of words immediately captured my attention. These are words I’ve used to describe my writing process, although I leave my stuff “to stew”. However, I’d never thought that I needed to cook or bake as a writer and it was only once I was fully baked, that I could finally pull off “my book”. Yet, this made a lot of sense!

After having a number of serious efforts at my “Book Project”, I’ve finally found my voice writing these Letters to Dead Poets. Indeed, I can feel that sense of galloping hooves in my head. There’s incredible momentum. Indeed, it feels like I’m on the homeward strait, even though I’m only just through the gate. I’ve only made it through H.

Why does this writing game have to be so hard? Why couldn’t that book just fall out of the sky and into my lap?

I know! I know! If it were that simple, it wouldn’t be worth reading. Or, would it?!! Am I making it all too hard?

As you can see, I’m well and truly immersed in my writing and making great leaps ahead… just in time for the kids be on school holidays. Now, I’m having to switch hats and go into the entertainment business. Not that I can or want to drop the writing project altogether. That’s the beauty of the A-Z Challenge. It keeps you in the flow so you can actually produce a body of work.

When it comes to what’s going on beyond these four walls, I have absolutely no idea. I’ll be rising to the surface 1st May and until then, the world can wait. At least, I hope it can!

If you are doing the A-Z Challenge, how are you going? Do you have a theme? Please share your links!

Hope you’ve had a great week and an even better one awaits!

The Weekend Coffee Share is hosted by Part Time Monster.  You can join this week’s Coffee Share on her blog or by clicking on the “Linkup Linky“. It’s a fabulous blogging community!

Best wishes,

Rowena

 

E-TS Eliot’s Reply.

As you may recall, yesterday I forwarded TS Eliot a letter which I’d found. Signed by the “Pollicle Dogs” their poem expressed vehement opposition  to his compilation of Cat poems, which ultimately led to Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber’s blockbuster musical, Cats. Cats the Musical has really pained them and they’re now clamouring for: Dogs The Musical…all in the name of equality, of course.

Anyway, this morning there was a knock at the door and the dogs barked twice and as much as usual and I found this letter, which they seemingly mistook for a cat. After all, it’s not surprising  that a note from TS Elliot would smell of cats, is it?!!

So, without further ado, I thought I’d share his letter with you before I head off.

Rowena,

So much for the “Polittle Dogs”! They’ve left a present on my door step and I strongly object to such tactics.

This is WAR!

Please come at once and bring your trowel!

Tom

….

Oh dear! I’ve told my dogs before that there are ways of means of making complaints to management and that’s not one of them. It also sounds like there could well be a hole under the fence I have to deal with.

The Troublemakers!

If those dogs are looking for supporters, they’re certainly going about this the wrong way. After all, that’s not how you win friends and influence people!

By the way, in case you’re wondering what “Pollicle dogs means, Peter Ackroyd – T. S. Eliot: A Life, New York, NY, Simon & Schuster, 1984 explains:

“Eliot heard this word [Jellicle] from his young niece, who sounded as if she were saying “Jellicle cat” whenever she called for her ‘dear little cat’ (“Dea-lickle Cat”) and “Pollicle dog” whenever she called for her ‘poor little puppy’ (“Po’-lickle Dog”).”

By the way, if you missed my letter to TS Eliot and the poem by the dogs, here’s the link.

So, I hope you are having a wonderful day. The weather here is see-sawing between Summer and Winter and I guess that’s what makes it Autumn.

Best wishes,

Rowena