The Joy of Being Young

Listening to: Lady Luck (Rod Stewart).
Very much enjoying: Murakami's Norwegian Wood.

Along the Thames

Flanked on either side by a muddled confusion of historical architecture and modern-day glamour, the Thames is still very much a working river. I can't help thinking about all the billions of people who have walked these banks over the centuries, and how the skyline has changed (and will continue to change...interminably).




Lines written near Richmond, upon the Thames at Evening
Glide gently, thus forever glide,
O Thames! that other bards may see,
As lovely visions by thy side
As now, fair river! come to me.
Oh glide, fair stream! for ever so;
Thy quiet soul on all bestowing,
'Till all our minds forever flow,
As thy deep waters now are flowing.

--William Wordsworth, 1790

Ever Had a Blue Day?

Lining the south bank of the Thames between the London Eye and the Royal Festival Hall is a lovely stretch of treed walkways and a dozen or so street performers in colourful costumes. Each performer maintains absolute stillness (sometimes to the point that you sometimes wonder if they're real live persons or not) until they hear the telling clink of coins hitting the bottom of the cash tin, which begins a short performance, no more than 10 to 20 seconds at most. The children are especially entranced and tug at their parents' sleeves, requesting coins, edging up quietly and a little fearfully, dropping in their money, and quickly dashing back to safety before the frozen performer begins to move. Kinda like real live wind-up toys. :)

I could never do this kind of work....I can't sit still for much more'n three seconds.

Listening to: Take It Easy on Me (Little River Band), on iTunes radioioSeventiespop.
Plans for the day: Collect scholarship and grad school paperwork in preparation for sending off reference requests to tutors and teachers.

The London Eye

The London Eye is a marvel of design and engineering. You have to stand right below to get the full "wow" effect. I haven't been on (yet)....There is ALWAYS a line-up, because it averages 10,000 visitors A DAY! But I'm also pretty happy to sit on the south bank and just be awed by the magnificence of it.

Cathedral at Greenwich University

Cathedral
by Gillian Clarke

Before the Saints, Dyfrig, Teilo, Eiddogwy;
before the bishops, the builders and stonemasons;
before artists and sculptors, Rossetti, Epstein;
before music, organists and choirs;
before the architects, Wood, Seddon, Prichard, Pace;
before the poetry of psalm and hymn and common prayer;

before there were words
for ‘cathedral’, ‘architecture’, ‘art’,
when our first house was the great original forest,
when our ancestors walked in the aisles of trees
and gazed up at such loftiness confused,
perhaps, by inexplicable longing;

before there was a word for wonder,
or names for stars, or footprints on the moon;
before St Teilo raised his little church just here;
before a man looked at a tree and made a cross,
and felt the hammering rain and thought of nails
there must have been a first creative act.

First mark, first word, first hymn to awe,
first poem with something to say of the human heart,
first vision of a building taller than a forest,
aisled, vaulted, clerestoried with sunlight,
because we were forest-dwellers once
and learned our metaphors from trees.

A favourite...

To a Butterfly
by William Wordsworth

I've watched you now a full half-hour;
Self-poised upon that yellow flower
And, little Butterfly! indeed
I know not if you sleep or feed.
How motionless!--not frozen seas
More motionless! and then
What joy awaits you, when the breeze
Hath found you out among the trees,
And calls you forth again!

This plot of orchard-ground is ours;
My trees they are, my Sister's flowers;
Here rest your wings when they are weary;
Here lodge as in a sanctuary!
Come often to us, fear no wrong;
Sit near us on the bough!
We'll talk of sunshine and of song,
And summer days, when we were young;
Sweet childish days, that were as long
As twenty days are now.

* * * * *

Stay near me -- do not take thy flight!
A little longer stay in sight!
Much converse do I find in thee,
Historian of my infancy!
Float near me; do not yet depart!
Dead times revive in thee:
Thou bring'st, gay creature as thou art!
A solemn image to my heart,
My father's family!

Oh! pleasant, pleasant were the days,
The time, when, in our childish plays,
My sister Emmeline and I
Together chased the butterfly!
A very hunter did I rush
Upon the prey:--with leaps and springs
I followed on from brake to bush;
But she, God love her, feared to brush
The dust from off its wings.

---

My thanks to Bluestalking Reader for bringing this poem to my attention.... The photo is from a woods-wandering expedition I enjoyed last Wednesday in the Great Bois Wood here in Chesham.

At Least I'm Not Missing Anything....

Stuck inside. Recuperating from a cold. Waiting (see my last post). Day after day of rain and dreary weather at least validates my inactivity. With any luck, the rain will stop before school starts again in October. Sigh.

Lemon hot toddies all around. My treat. :) Now where's that book I was reading.....?

Rain
Rain surrounds you
It kisses your cheeks
And you imagine
The rain
As arms
Holding you,
Protecting you
Safe
In the rain.
--Anne Lacy

Listening to: Train in Vain (Annie Lennox), on iTunes mvyradio (from Martha's Vineyard).
Just finished: Signing up for a monthly DVD rental program through Amazon. If it's gonna rain for a month, I may as well catch up on all the films I've missed in the last year.

Repost: Landscapes of Wales

The top photo is the town of Barmouth. The middle two are from my hillside hike, and the bottom is taken from Panorama Viewpoint.

Repost: More Hiking Photos from Wales

tides

i sit at the shore
mesmerized by the tides
that rise and then subside

the water comes to me
filling the sand with pools
of reflected sunshine

then the world tilts
and the sea flows back to you,
leaving me empty

like the ocean,
i search for balance
within the endless motion...
the ebb and flow...
of life and love

the tides that rise
and then subside

DLD/17JUN07

A Week by the Water

The train journey to Barmouth was longer than I expected....over eight hours. I didn't know you could travel eight hours by train in Great Britain without falling in the ocean! LOL! The last hour of the journey, however, was pretty close to that. The tracks hugged the hillside above the sea, and the scenery was spectacular. At right is the tiny community of Barmouth, tucked between the sea and the hillsides...very picturesque indeed.


I'm not sure from whence emerged the intense desire to go to the seaside, but when I booked this vacation some two months ago, the sensation just wouldn't go away. Somehow being near the water refreshes, soothes, and renews in a most remarkable way. I love the sound of the waves, whether they're gently lapping the shoreline or rushing in with a great crash. The beach at Barmouth is one of the most spectacularly beautiful that I have ever seen. When the tide was out, there was a huge expanse of soft, fine sand that seemed to go on forever. And what amazed me was how few people seemed to be around most of the time. As the weekend approached, more and more families and arm-in-arm young couples appeared to take up space with their blankets and coolers, but for most of the week I was there, the beaches were as uncrowded as the photos here portray. Even on the busiest days, the sun-worshippers didn't show up till well after 10 a.m., and were gone again by 5:30 p.m.



One of the my first stops was at the Tourist Information Centre to pick up maps of self-directed hiking trails. I'm a little out of shape for longer treks (since I spent all of my "spare time" in the last eight months stuck in my room reading books and writing papers, rather than keeping fit), but I was pleased to find that I could still put in three to four hours without too much difficulty.

Pathways are one of my favourite subjects for photography. I love the perspective, and the hidden message of a new destination and undiscovered mysteries right around the next corner.



Another hike, another day.....and here's yours truly....proving that I did indeed wander through these beautiful landscapes. My camera is a 5.0 megapixel Canon PowerShot A530, with 4x optical zoom. Mostly I just set it on automatic and let it do its own thing. This was the first time that I stopped long enough to learn how to use the auto timer. I carefully balanced the camera on a large rock, set it for 10 seconds and scooted over to the gate. This was taken very near the Panorama viewpoint looking over the harbour, and the photo at left is from the viewpoint itself, showing the train bridge over the mouth of the Mawddach estuary.


It took me about an hour and a half to climb to the highest point of the hills behind Barmouth, and I was rewarded with beautiful views of the Welsh countryside (and the odd sheep as well *smile*). I was intrigued by the natural stone "fences." Aren't they beautiful? Many houses in Barmouth are constructed of the same local rock, and I loved how they blended right into the hillside.

I spent a lot of my time just looking at the water, mesmerized by the magical motion of the waves. I had a lovely room with an unobstructed view right over the water, and a big comfy armchair settled nicely in the window nook. And several times a day I'd head out to wander the beach. Walk, refresh, renew, breathe. Very very relaxing.

The tides fascinated me. They made me think of the world as a great huge balancing mechanism, and I visualized the water flowing gently back and forth between the continents. I wonder if it's the earth's way of always trying to find that middle ground where the water could be perfectly still and serene. :)

The photo above right is my favourite of the entire trip, taken on a peaceful, quiet evening.

Poppet at the Seaside

Look up, Poppet,
look w-a-a-a-a-a-y up.....





















Poppet perched on a piling, gazing out at the seascape.














Poppet wonders where the water goes when the tide goes out, and what does it feel like to dip your toes in the surf? (Poppet has no toes, you see.)










Poppet checks out the rocky shoreline....











....and climbs up to the Promenade for a wide view.

Writing Habits

Andi over at Tripping Toward Lucidity blogged today about writing rituals and habits. I responded there, but enjoyed the topic so much that I'm copy-and-pasting my comment here:

The only truly unbreakable writing habit I have is procrastination. I can find all kinds of other things to do before starting the paper. Wash dishes, take a shower, go for a walk, straighten my bookshelves, braid my hair, sort out my photos, and OMG look at how those coloured pens got all out of order!!! *snort* My writing space looks kinda like the photo you posted, though. 'Cept my chair is worn out, faded fabric with a really yucky brown/beige floral print; and my "footstool" is the wooden desk chair that I pull across the room cuz I don't own a proper ottoman, don't wanna spend the money, and don't have space to keep one anyways; and the walls are grungy used-to-be-white horrid wallpaper that's peeling off in every corner and along every seam; and I don't own a dog. Okay. Now that I think about it I guess it's not much the same at all. But I do have that annoying sloped ceiling above my head that always seems to get in the way when alighting into or emerging from one's writing fervour. Just one of the perils of life in a third-floor dusty Dickensian garret.

As far as distractions, I cannot work ANYWHERE where people are moving around, such as at the library. I utterly HATE doing research or writing at the library. The whispering around me makes me nuts. But I've gotta have music, and I've gotta use my earbuds plugged into my laptop, and the volume tends to get scooched up higher and higher until it's eventually at its max. The genre doesn't matter -- it can be jazz, rock, blues, classical, whatever -- but It has to be familiar music, not NEW music. Familiar music just blends into the background; new music draws my attention away from the work. And once I do (finally) get out of procrastination mode and settled in my space with the music blaring into my ears, I tend to sit and write until the damn thing is done. Not unusual for me to go five/six hours without stirring from my spot.

And in case you think I'm kidding, the photo above is my writing spot as it looks at this exact moment. I particularly like the towels hanging over the radiator at my left elbow. Charming, don't you think? Yes, I really am living a very very (very!) simple existence just now.

How about you? What are your writing peccadilloes? I'd love to hear about your unbreakable habits too!

Listening to: Could Fly (Keith Urban)
Thinking about: Booking another vacation (Scotland)

The Beach at Fairbourne

I cannot BELIEVE the sheer beauty of the Cambrian Coast beaches. And, yes, they truly are this EMPTY! Utterly amazing. Weekends are much busier, and they tell me July/August is crazy, but these are undiscovered gems -- pure and simple. Fairbourne is just south of Barmouth, on the opposite side of the Mawddach Estuary. Taken from the train, which hugs the coastline a
hundred or so feet above the ground. Yowzas!

The Erstwhile Welsh Wanderer Returns....

I'm having too much fun catching up on everyone else's blogs to update my own (yet), but here's one photo for now....This was taken on my Saturday hike up the mountain. Very...um....Welsh-ish, don't you think?? *smile* Lots more to come! (Promise!) Including poppet pics. Hehehe..... Oh, and book reviews. Three or four, if I remember correctly. Back soon!

Brain-Stretching Techniques, Anyone?

In case you're wondering.....This is where I've been spending all my time lately.... Slamming my head between the books. Over and over and over again. The only reason you don't see me here...doing a face plant into that binder...is because I had to get up to take the photo. Exams are looming, folks, and the pressure is on. If I'm not around much over the next two to three weeks, now you know that I just need you to send coffee....lots of pots of coffee.....and chocolate. Lots of chocolate.

An Evening Walk

Sometimes I forget that I live in England.

The past seven months have gone by in a blur of books, essays, train rides, libraries, tutor appointments, classes, lectures, deadlines, clock-watching, and all of the mental activity that goes with getting used to living a whole new life.


The weather has been glorious this week. In the midst of my tight study schedule, I escaped for a short walk up the hill to enjoy the sunshine and the evening air. This is when it hits me with a jolt that I am actually, truly living in England. Looking around, breathing, drinking in the difference in the landscape, architecture, vegetation.

The photo above shows the houses on my street. Mine is down the hill just a bit further. Yup... it looks exactly the same as these. London suburbs tend to be very symmetrical. Symmetry pleases me. :) And why are the leaves red in the springtime? Who knows? The only thing I know for sure is that it's different and interesting....and I really do live in England.

Tulips in Chesham

The many great gardens of the world, of literature and poetry, of painting and music, of religion and architecture, all make the point as clear as possible: The soul cannot thrive in the absence of a garden. If you don't want paradise, you are not human; and if you are not human, you don't have a soul.

--Thomas Moore

Lost in Buckinghamshire

Getting lost is a very good thing! As my friend J says, "A map will only lead you to where others have already been" (a quote that currently graces the top of my blog, making this an especially appropriate entry).

Yesterday, we got lost in Marlow, a lovely town in the Thames Valley. It's not a very big place....so it took a considerable effort to lose our spot!


Our first stop was a delightful sandwich cafe, with wonderfully friendly father-and-son Lebanese owners who make fabulous coffee and scrumptious sammidges. Scrambled egg and smoked salmon on a bagel for D, smoked salmon and avocado on a whole-wheat baguette for me. Delicious. (Sorry...no food photo. Plumb forgot.)



After lunch, we strolled and wandered, in search of nothing more than sightseeing, window shopping, interesting photo ops, and the pleasure of each other's company. Curious to see what might be found off the beaten path, we followed our noses through the twists and turns of the narrow streets. Hidden in a tiny walkway, we discovered a lovely pink-blossom- covered fence. What a treasure!

Once we relocated the car (and just in time, only five minutes left on the meter), we spun our wheels through the countryside of Buckinghamshire, enjoying the vistas of green, the bright yellow fields of rapeseed already in full bloom, picturesque 18th-century villages, and the hills and valleys of lovely country roads, overhung with branches not quite in full leaf yet. Really must get back here later in the season.

Go ahead! Get lost! It's good for your soul!

Listening to: Concrete Angel (Martina McBride)
Planning to: Complete my third and final essay this afternoon