reaching for the sky
the Shard of Glass,
mast on a proud city
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This post can also be seen in Stella’s Stones here
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Monthly Archives: January 2011
The bird’s eye view
Leaves and branches rushed past, a spade, buckets, a car, crates, tyres, a barrel. She clung to the rough, furrowed bark of the Eucalyptus, terrified that it might not hold on to its place for long.
She felt the torrential rain lashing her and the waters indiscriminately, feeding the swollen rivers. A desolate water land covered fields and low-lying areas. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of a book floating past, opened upside-down, then another, then several specimens, as if the entire Amerold town library was being carried away by the flood. Her heart tightened. She had spent her youth in the library, growing up through its books. She used to wash her hands before opening them. She had become Miss Bell’s preferred reader, and she had even been allowed to stay on reading during lunchtime.
Scrunching up her eyes, she tried to make out the titles floating past, as if her life depended on it. The water kept rising. Brushing past, a raven flew to perch on the tree’s highest branch. She felt her hold loosening.
Feeling the bark for a better grip, she remembered the story of Noah’s Ark, the raven and the dove sent out to see if the flood waters subsided; and the book she’d read about ravens’ intelligence. She sensed the storm lessening. The bird was scanning the vast expanse; she was not alone. She sighed with relief and dug her nails into the tree bark.
This story was first published on 52|250 A Year of flash here
Pink-footed geese
Pink-footed geese circling the fields,
dot the golden sky
fill the air with their harsh calls
for home.
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This post can also be found in Stella’s Stones here
Edition #3 of > Language > Place is out
The new edition #3 of > Language > Place blog carnival is out!
Hosted by Michael Solender, of “Not From Here, Are You?” it is a feast of stories, personal accounts, poems, photographs. In a number of excellent contributions, several bloggers explore what it means to feel at home, be at home, or indeed, where home is: the theme of belonging.
For information on what the blog carnival is all about, how it came into being and instructions on how to join, please visit Dorothee Lang at Blue Print Review and she will tell you all about it.
In addition, there is a special place to go to for information on the contributors and what they are blogging about http://languageplace.blogspot.com/
The next edition, issue #4, will be hosted and edited by Jean Morris of “tasting rhubarb.” Jean is inviting submissions during the period from the 5th to the 20th of February 2011. For details and also the specific theme of the edition see here
I am happy to report that links to two of my stories are included in edition #3: “Ariadne’s Thread” and “Where Home is.” Both stories first appeared on 52|250 A Year of Flash here; they can also be found in my blog here
A Case of Mistaken Identity
Diamond doves are small, beautiful birds, which can be kept as pets, ‘Wiki-Marion’ told me once. Since I knew she enjoys dispensing information, I did not think more about it, until she invited me to see her new pet, “Love”.
A bird of beauty! Light blue-grey head, neck, and breast; dark bill, spotted wings fringed in black; orange eyes. I fell in love with Love. He kept bow-cooing, fluffing his wings, strutting, kissing Marion’s hand. I felt jealous, knowing I could not compete with my friend for the bird’s affections.
Walking back home, I stopped at the park, looking for doves, ducks and this winter’s migratory birds. None had the exquisite and delicate beauty of the diamond dove. I was heartbroken by the time I arrived home, vowing to stop visiting Marion to avoid the pain.
A few weeks later, she phoned me. “Love died,” she announced.
“What?”
“These birds seem to fall in love with their owner if they don’t have a bird partner. I encouraged his bonding to me. But that was all I could do – I could not let him mate with my hand as if it were a female! He felt rejected and died of love.”
“It was only an animal. Animals behave differently,” I said, breaking into hysterical laughter.
I put the phone down struck by an acute pang of unease. Who are the animals here, I asked myself, my face burning with shame.
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This short story was first published on 52|250 A Year of Flash, January 2011. It can be found here.
For information about the diamond dove, including the dangers of it becoming over-dependent on its owner see here.
London needs
Sometimes, like today, with a chilly wind spraying drizzle over grey London, I feel that this city needs the Aegean to be closer.
This post is also in Stella’s Stones here
Silence
Silence has lost its shape today.
A single carnation bursts into song.
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This post is also in Stella’s Stones here
Poem
poem–
the old soup bowl
filled with cream
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The Moon
The moon is kind tonight, bathing the room in milk.
A breeze rustles the Eucalyptus and I realize I daydream.
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This post can also be found in Stella’s Stones here
Still
Picking fishnet tights, a shoe, and a pair of torn jeans, the wordsmith assembles her poem; plenty of time in her workshop.
This post can also be found in Stella’s Stones here
Night
Night
As darkness falls over the Thames,
a liquid haze swims in from the sea
and the city steels its heart for the night.
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This post can be found in Stella’s Stones here
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Ariadne’s Thread
| Recently, I started wanting to learn to knit. My mother knitted, her mother crocheted and they both embroidered. For the first half century of my life, I bluntly refused to touch a needle. Then, out of nowhere, I felt the urge. I googled immediately.
I learnt that once a week, knitters, stitchers, and crocheters from all over London meet and knit together. Stitch by stitch, loop by loop, they aim to take over the world and turn it into a warm, benign, woolly place, where humans knit together, refreshed by cups of tea, glasses of wine, cream cakes, and scones. Rich and poor ladies, ordinary women, Oxbridge blue-stockings, illiterates, persons of various religious persuasions, and origins gather under one roof to knit and teach the learners. For free! Is that for real? I asked. Come and see, they replied. Armed with wool and needles, I went. The Festival Hall, bathed in sparkling lights lit up the river; it overflowed with good-natured crowds. The knitters sat clutching their instruments, fingering the wool. Wine flowed, fairy cup-cakes, scones flew into mouths to the tune of clicking needles. I felt lost to alpaca, mohair, merino, cashmere. I am a beginner, I said. Welcome, they replied. Feeling a huge grin mark my face, I picked up my needles. At last, I had found my way home. Afterwards, it dawned on me: had Penelope really wanted Odysseus back, wouldn’t she have given him a thread to find his way home? |
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This short story first appeared on 52|250 A Year of Flash
Flint
London
The Hermit
In sun-bleached deserts, in mountain caves, on sea-sculpted rocks
the hermit slept, forgetting that the essence of being can be found in a single drop of rain.
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This post is also in Stella’s Stones
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Crochet and Knitting Meditation
When I started learning to crochet I thought of it as a relaxing, stress-reducing act, like counting the amber beads of a komboloi.
Now, looking at my hand holding the crochet hook, the wool, at the next stitch to pick up, the stitches I travelled and the one I have to travel to next, I think it is more than that. It is a process like meditation, without however the religious connotations and significance often associated with it: like counting prayer beads, but without the religion.
I was interested to see that, according to Wikipedia, there are two ways of counting the komboloi beads: “a quiet method, for indoors, and a noisier method that is acceptable in public places.” While crochet is quiet, knitting with two needles is not! I wonder whether there is a way(s) of knitting indoors that keeps the noise down!
blackbirds
Yesterday’s photographs
Halcyon Days
Metamorphosing
Shimmering haloes
As darkness falls over London,
the thick, grey curtain of rain
that drowned the city relents,
leaving behind shimmering haloes
of street lights — the night’s rainbow.
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This post can also be found here
Forest Fears
Festival of the Trees, issue 55, on the theme of 2011 UN International Year of the Forests, has been published by Jasmine, of Nature’s Whispers. It is an informative, as well as entertaining post, rich in text, visuals, and creative energy. The links are well worth exploring too, covering a plethora of work about nature, trees, forests, gardening, art, and other fascinating topics!
It also includes an alert about the UK coalition government’s plan to sell off many of the best-loved ancient forests and woodlands, and a link to an online petition to save the UK forests.
Jasmine writes:
“In the United Kingdom, the Conservative Party plan on selling ALL of our ancient forests. Once they are gone, they cannot be redeemed. In order to carry out these environmentally unpopular sales, the government is rewriting laws written in The Magna Carta that have protected woodlands and ancient forests since 1215”
For more information about this issue please see The Guardian here, here and the campaign site here
If you enjoy walking in the forests as much as I do, if you care about the environment and the preservation of woodland, then this is the time to voice your concern and support the petition.
You can sign the petition online here
My short story and post appear here
waking up
Mischievous
cold wind sweeps the street, deposits leaves, sweet wrappers, a juice carton, and a chocolate box on my doorstep.
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This post appears also here
dark morning
52|250 Stella’s Stories
To read my stories published by the writers’ project “52|250 A Year of Flash” please go here
twentysix
“twentysix,” the second anthology highlighting short stories from a quarter of “52|250 A year of Flash,” is out. The editors of this writing project, Michelle Elvy, John Wentworth Chapin and Walter Bjorkman, challenge writers to produce a short flash of 250 words every week for one year. They provide a different theme each week and the resulting creative work is amazing: wonderful stories, and poems, of high quality from a prolific, creative, friendly, and excellent community of writers.
Each quarter, the editors pick and highlight in an anthology the best of the stories written on each week’s theme. The current edition also includes art work, readings, and reflections by some of the writers on their creating a particular piece and the ways they went about developing their take on the theme.
Beautifully and professionally edited, assembled and illustrated, it is well worth visiting, and reading. As you will see, the editors have put an incredible amount of work into “twentysix.”
I am honored to have two of my short stories included: on theme #25 “A private person” and on theme #26 “A hair raising story.”
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You can read the anthology here
My stories in 52|250 can be read here
The Eucalyptus
behind the stonework
behind the stonework
a spiritual space filled with
calm and stillness
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Isn’t this exactly what we are trying to achieve with our stones?
Photo: St. Nicholas Church, Blakeney, North Norfolk.
This post can be found on Stella’s Stones
For more pictures of the area see here
New Year
Happy New Year’s Day!
Remember though …
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a river flows
into a new year
every day
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In a sense this micropoem plays on the theme of Heraclitus‘ Fragment 41: “You cannot step twice into the same river”
Δεν γίνεται να μπει κανείς στο ίδιο νερό του ποταμού που κυλάει δύο φορές.
From today on, though, I, along with others, will be entering the river of stones every single day for a month.
For Heraclitus the appearance of stability is an illusion, “for as you are stepping in [the river], other waters are ever flowing on to you.” However, consider the possibility of re-entering the river of stones: on the one hand, the river consists of the flowing moments of experience as represented by stones; on the other hand, each time we polish and share a stone, we ourselves change, grow through our attending to and encapsulating the moment of experience.
Happy New Year 2011!
This post also appears here
