Good News! And A New Home!

The Golden Flask has a new look, a new name, and a brand-new home!!!
Indeed!... CdnReader has moved!!

I do hope you'll all stop in at the housewarming party which is already in progress. I'm waiting for YOU to come by and see the new place! My new address is http://betweenplace.wordpress.com/ .... or for instant access, just....

CLICK HERE!

P.S. Don't forget to make the appropriate adjustments to your bookmarks, your blogrolls, and your blogreaders. Thanks!

Here Is a Door (iv)

Here is a door
that leads to an otherworld.
Turn the handle and step through.

In this otherworld,
rabbits climb trees with purple leaves.
Long-bearded storytellers in short green coats
sit on every street corner, playing dominoes,
and gabbling to passersby of whales and wintertales and roquefort cheese.
Eighty-year-old children skip through fields of polka-dot roses.
Skyscrapers are only three and a half inches tall,
right is always the one that's left,
and all downs go up.

Come in and be amazed...
just like Alice.

DLD/05SEP07

Here Is a Door (iii)

Here is a door to my world.

Don't mind the broken glass --
the window fell out last week
and I haven't yet repaired it.

Yes, I know some of the stick-on letters
have lost some of their stick-on-iveness
and the sign on the door now says, "C nR ade ."

Don't mind the peeling paint --
I want a new colour
and haven't decided yet which one.

Yes, I know the handle is broken....
the door still works fine
if you just give it a little push.

But please do come in.
I've saved you a seat on the patio
where we can watch the sunset
and catch fireflies.

DLD/04SEP07

Here Is a Door (ii)

Here is a door
to my heart...
The key's a bit rusty
and the lock squeals some,
but you will find that it still works.
Please oil the latch, shake the dust
from the welcome mat,
and close the door behind you
when you leave.

DLD/04SEP07

Here Is a Door

Here is a door
to the rest of your life
Where do you want it to lead?

Will you turn the handle
and walk through sedately?
Or will you rev up the bike
and smash the door to bits,
as you wave hasta la vista
to your past?
Or will you tiptoe silently
across the threshold,
hoping that no one sees you leave
...or arrive?

Will you stop and look
before proceeding?
Or will you run roughshod
over the cobbled path,
leaving muddy footprints
and scattered laughter
in your wake?

Does the door lead to a place
you've dreamed of going?
Or maybe you're one
who hasn't given one bit of thought to
where you're headed...

Is it a path you dread to take?
Does the darkness frighten you?
Or does your doorway open onto
sunshine and waterfalls?

Here is a door
to the rest of your life.

DLD/01FEB07

Listening to: Hung Up (Madonna).
Frustrated about: Maintenance workers' strike. Nine of twelve London Underground lines suspended. No library for me today. :(

Growing Up in Alabama

#45 - To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
Finished 9/4/07
Rating: 5/5
Total Pages: 281
Reason for Reading: b-a-w ATF list
REVIEW: I can’t believe I’ve never read this book before. Sometimes some of the best ones slip by, I guess. I knew it was about racism, and law, and justice, and community. What I didn’t know is that it’s mostly about childhood and learning. Certainly the trial of Tom Robinson is a pivotal point in the novel, but To Kill a Mockingbird is about so much more. It’s about growing up in Alabama in the 1920s, it’s about the games that children play, and it’s about social conventions and expectations. I love that Lee told the story through the eyes of a child, the precocious and observant nine-year-old Scout. In my opinion, the brilliance of this book is in describing how an adult world impacts on children, what they take in from the world they are traveling through, and how they learn about and react to the experiences of the grown-ups around them. Brilliantly well-told story.

Suffering for Territory

#44 - Suffering for Territory: Race, Place, and Power in Zimbabwe, by Donald S. Moore
Finished 9/3/07
Rating: 3/5
Total Pages: 322
Reason for Reading: Ethnography
FROM BACK COVER: Since 2000, black squatters have forcibly occupied white farms across Zimbabwe, reigniting questions of racialized dispossession, land rights, and legacies of liberation. Donald S. Moore probes these contentious politics by analyzing fierce disputes over territory, sovereignty, and subjection in the country’s eastern highlands. He focuses on poor farmers in Kaerezi who endured colonial evictions from their ancestral land and lived as refugees in Mozambique during Zimbabwe’s guerrilla war. After independence in 1980, Kaerezians returned home to a changed landscape. Postcolonial bureaucrats had converted their land from a white ranch into a state resettlement scheme. Those who defied this new spatial order were threatened with eviction. Moore shows how Kaerezians’ predicaments of place pivot on memories of “suffering for territory,” at once an idiom of identity and entitlement. Combining fine-grained ethnography with innovative theoretical insights, this book illuminates the complex interconnections between local practices of power and the wider forces of colonial rule, nationalist politics, and global discourses of development.

REVIEW: I found this a somewhat difficult read, but the overall message was clear. The Zimbabwean government has gone through numerous phases of how to distribute land, and very few of their strategies have taken into account the cultural and social views of the people who make their living from the land. An old story that continues to repeat itself in many areas of the world. In most regions across the globe, owning land is a source of power and security, and those who maintain control of how land is distributed need to be well-informed about how people use that land.

* * * * *

This is the first of many books piled up in teetering stacks at my elbow.... all background or suggested readings for the major papers I will be writing over the next two to three years -- final-year BSc dissertation this year, hopefully followed by a Masters degree thesis in 2009 or 2010. Why am I reading so far ahead? Because I'm in the midst of writing proposals for my Masters research....proposals that will accompany grad school applications and scholarship submissions....and I have to make it sound like I know what I'm talking about. :P

Listening to: Sparkling (E.O.S.S.), on iTunes Space Station Soma.
Watching: First season of Firefly.

Back in Business, But Warily....

I'm still uncertain about what exactly has happened, and I'm very annoyed about my address being spammed. This whole business about viruses, and trojan horses, and malware, and fake postings, and trackers and hackers -- it all makes me very nervous from time to time. Perhaps, I'm overreacting, but I think it pays to be vigilant. Make sure that your virus protection software is always up-to-date, everyone, and educate yourself about the myriad of ways these crazies are trying to trick people into surreptitious downloads.

Now..... where was I? ..... :)

Blogging On Hold

Please take the time to read the following article, published 31 Aug 07, on the BBC News website -- Bloggers Battered by Viral Storm. Click here to read the article.

I am concerned enough to suspend my blogging activities here until I have further investigated this issue, particularly since I began receiving spam emails about three weeks ago that perfectly match the criteria stated in this article. How is it that this group has picked up my email address from this blog? I have taken great care to not publicly display my email address here. As a matter of fact, to my knowledge, there is nowhere on my blog that you can click to connect to my email address. This suggests to me that the personal information recorded with Blogger that connects me with my account may have been compromised.

Read the article. Evaluate your own vulnerabilities.

Poe Short Story #1: The Domain of Arnheim

Actually more in the nature of an essay than a story, I thought. Beautifully written. Puts forth the premise that what we create artistically -- whether paintings, or poetry, or music, or even gardens -- is in fact more beautiful and more perfect than nature itself. The latter third or so of the story is a description of a fantasy landscape created by the main character, who inherited 450 million pounds and this is how he decides to spend it. Certainly not a Poe story of darkness and murder and things-that-go-bump-in-the-night, as we might expect, but I quite enjoyed it regardless.

A passage worth thinking about: "He admitted but four elementary principles, or more strictly, conditions of bliss. That which he considered chief was (strange to say!) the simple and purely physical one of free exercise in the open air. "The health," he said, "attainable by other means is scarcely worth the name." He instanced the ecstasies of the fox-hunter, and pointed to the tillers of the earth, the only people who, as a class, can be fairly considered happier than others. His second condition was the love of woman. His third, and most difficult of realization, was the contempt of ambition. His fourth was an object of unceasing pursuit; and he held that, other things being equal, the extent of attainable happiness was in proportion to the spirituality of this object."

Read on-line at The Literature Network.

Searching

With nothing to guide me
but the star at my back....
I set my course for away.

Whispering prayers of longing and release,
I grasp the cool air, breathe it deep....
view it transformed into the essence
of what I can become.

The sword at my side glints wickedly
mirroring the smile of he who awaits....
and the jewelled hilt brings back a memory
of blue eyes, both deep and serene.

Driving for the forest....refusing to ponder
what dangers may lay ahead....
leaves blown from my path
as though a zephyr passes through
and one foot follows the other
in an intricate dance of mystery and invitation.

The star behind is now hidden...
vanished behind the blackness of tall trunks.
Wandering blind
I search still.

DLD/31AUG07

Listening to: End of the Road (Kim Waters), on iTunes SKY.FM Absolutely Smooth Jazz.
Celebrating: Five more weeks of summer break. Classes begin on Oct 8th. :)

A Magical Journey through the History of Modern India

#43 - Midnight’s Children, by Salman Rushdie
Finished 8/31/07
Rating: 4/5
Total Pages: 463
Reason for Reading: Literature Network
REVIEW: I very much enjoyed Midnight’s Children, my first Rushdie novel. This book has often been compared to Marquez’ One Hundred Years of Solitude, for its qualities of magical realism. I agree, but I found Midnight’s Children to have much more of a sense of reality than One Hundred Years of Solitude. Midnight’s Children is the story of Saleem Sinai, who was born in Bombay at the stroke of midnight on August 15th, 1947 – the same day that modern India was “born.” The book makes a running commentary on religious and political matters in the nation, using parallel occurrences in the life of Saleem as a counterpoint. Rushdie’s writing is intensely detailed and involving. Even the most mundane of daily activities, such as making chutney, are brought to life with delightful colours, scents, and sounds. I’m left feeling that it needs to be re-read strictly for the purpose of fully enjoying all the intricacies of Rushdie’s masterful use of language. Highly recommended.

the spilling

within me
a building intensity,
a threatened smothering
that demands release...
a submersion into emotion
uncontrolled

my body feels ill-conceived
to contain within its boundaries
this thing
this sea swell
that fills up and spills out

flowing from me
in a voiceless cascade

DLD/30AUG07

Listening to: Better Now (Collective Soul)
Watching: Comfort & Joy

Maelstrom

There have been times
when disaster seemed to court my every step.
My heart, desire, my very being
captured in a whirlpool.....
ever spinning, ever drowning....
the waters pulling me down
.....down
..........down
until even breath
threatens to cease.

That whirlpool pulls our limbs
every which-way, all at the same time....
so misdirected as to be misinformed,
unable to focus, unable to imagine escape,
unable to see beyond the blackness
of the swirling maelstrom.

So easy to
give up.

Yet even whirlpools and maelstroms have endpoints,
and yes, we are spit out the other side...
.....eventually
...........and with strength and determination
a firm set to the chin
a glint in the eye
and a sense of humour
about what just happened (!)
we can rise above those tattered sails
and battered hulls....
and find a new island...
a place and a time
to begin again.

Would I choose to brave that maelstrom again?
Not sure it's my choice. :)

But yes.

Being inside the chaos
is the only way to appreciate
the serenity that follows.

DLD/28AUG07

Listening to: Roll with the Changes (REO Speedwagon)
Ran out of: Amazon DVD credits till September 14th. Ack! What will I do??? :P

Very Little Happens....

...in one day's work, as you can see by comparing these two photos. :)

But I do like it when they open their eyes. Hehehe.....

Caught

Caught
within a swirling maelstrom
feet lifted from sea bottom
while my spirit yet sinks....
I struggle to regain my footing
but am swept away over and over again.
Recovery seems torn
from my grasp.

Shall I surrender to the waves....?
give in to the urge to
breathe deeply....
fill my lungs with salty remembrances
of past disappointments....
Shall I sink into memories....?
resist the pull of the future....
or refuse the tides that call me home.

DLD/27AUG07

Stardust

To be born within stardust
Afar from the shackles that bind us here....
Can we be born again, on the far side of the universe?
And still continue our earthbound journey?
At once?

If this is possible,
I shall send my wings skyward
.....now.....
I shall pry thy fingers from my ankles
.....now.....
I shall lift thee from thy knees and take thee with me
.....now....
and we will travel there
as one,
floating high over this
troubled world....

I will wipe the worries from thy brow.
I will capture thy spirit within mine own.
I will hold thy heart in the palm of my hand
and whisper words of grace.

If this is possible,
then I wish it for all.

DLD/26AUG07

Listening to: Everybody Hurts (REM)
Planning: A day of utter laziness. The paperwork can wait.

One-Stitch, Two-Stitch

It's a long weekend in England, so I've taken a day away from books and writing and forms and decisions. Now that my glasses are updated, and now that my eyes have had enough rest, and now that I've moved the furniture in my room to give better light, I found for the first time in a year that I could sit and enjoy my cross-stitching again.

I'm sure this will be a short-lived burst of energy. It takes hundreds of hours to complete a project like this. I won't have that kind of time on my hands until all this schooling is done. But today -- for now -- I loved reconnecting with thread and needle, painting colours on my canvas. This piece is called Bundle of Bears, and will eventually become a Christmas stocking for my granddaughter. The design is by Donna Vermillion Giampa, and I'm stitching it on 28-count white Cashel linen. (Click on the photo to enlarge.)

i fall

i fall
into you

into your soft words
that create a melody
within the
quiet

into your soft embrace
that surrounds
my world with
gentle

into your soft eyes
that see my faults
and view me
beautiful

into you
i fall

DLD/26AUG07

softly

softly
come to life
stirring gently in the morning warmth
consciousness arising....slowly, quietly,
climbing up from the depths of sleep

gradually
the dream-mist slips away
leaving pools of reflection....
memories of before-that-happened
imaginings of what-is-still-desired
watch silently as the visions
swirl and drift...
join to one

the past and the future
become now
softly

DLD/26AUG07