Be nicer. Do better. Go to Australia. Swim with dolphins. Swim with whales. I find last year's list at the bottom of a mountain of thoughts. The list is just the same. Did I do any of them? No. But here's a picture of a juvenile swan I saw walking along the road.
The Road was a book by Cormac Mc Carthy who I greatly admire. As a writer I've often thought of myself as a cross between Cormac Mc Carthy and Enid Blyton.
Suppose God came back from wherever it is he's been and asked us smilingly if we'd figured it out yet. Suppose he wanted to know if it had finally occurred to us to ask the whales. And then he sort of looked around and he said
"By the way where are the whales?"
Yes - If we're not careful there won't be any whales to swim with.
The crow with the white feathers is still with me.
The other birds have all left now - the jackdaws may be the ones nesting on our chimney - but the crow with no name stays even though he/she could leave any time through the open door. He/she has shed her/his baby feathers and is very sleek but still has the white wing feathers and still doesn't/cannot fly. I gave him(I can't keep writing her /him) a pouch of cat food - one of those cat sized portions in shiny foil and just opened the top a little and left it on the side. After examining it and pecking fiercely with his beak to extract the meat he then drags it over to the water bowl where he dumps it, treads on it and pushes the rest of the meat out into the water where he eats it. So clever. We should be asking the crows if they'd figured it out yet.
Rocket loves putting his head under things, bed clothes, cushions and here under a curtain. "Get thee to a nunnery" I say to him.(Hamlet Act 111 scene 1))
Narcissi Erlicheer - mmm the smell is so fragrant - sadly I haven't worked out how to do scratch and sniff on this post - perhaps that should be one of my new resolutions to work it out. Either that or try and figure it all out. Or try and be more whale. Or clam.
Rocket loves putting his head under things, bed clothes, cushions and here under a curtain. "Get thee to a nunnery" I say to him.(Hamlet Act 111 scene 1))
"These are wild and whirling words" pipes up Rocket, informing me that this thought had just entered his head.
That's Hamlet Act 1 scene V I tell him - I didn't know you'd been studying Shakespeare. He looks at me as if I have no idea what I'm talking about and informs me he is writing a play called
The Tragedy of Hamlet the Cat of Denmark
I don't argue and imagine if I asked him if he'd figured it out yet he'd come up with some hocum pocum involving felines. He did however tell me that cats (and he assumes all animals not us silly humans) don't have a desire to live a long life. They don't want to make it to Xmas or someone's birthday or be ten years older or meet their grandchildren or fulfill some bucket list. They just want to be happy day by day.
Like a clam? I ask. He ignores me. Are clams happy I wonder?
Narcissi Erlicheer - mmm the smell is so fragrant - sadly I haven't worked out how to do scratch and sniff on this post - perhaps that should be one of my new resolutions to work it out. Either that or try and figure it all out. Or try and be more whale. Or clam.
from Humpbacks by Mary Oliver
We wait, not knowing
just where it will happen; suddenly
they smash through the surface, someone begins
shouting for joy and you realize
it is yourself as they surge
upward and you see for the first time
how huge they are, as they breach,
and dive, and breach again
through the shining blue flowers
of the split water and you see them
for some unbelievable
part of a moment against the sky -
like nothing you've ever imagined-
like the myth of the fifth morning galloping
out of darkness, pouring
heavenward, spinning; then
they crash back under those black silks
and we all fall back
together into that wet fire, you
know what I mean.
