Words…

© James Currie

I can’t breathe. George Floyd

Black Lives Matter.

Eye_ology

Behind the mask @Joan Currie

We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.

Winston Churchill

Thanks to all our healthcare workers – true heroes!

No worries …

Tags

carefree, J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan, Youth

All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow up, and the way
Wendy knew was this. One day when she was two years old she was playing in a 
garden, and she plucked another flower and ran with it to her mother. I suppose she 
must have looked rather delightful, for Mrs. Darling put her hand to her heart and 
cried, ‘Oh, why can’t you remain like this for ever!’ That was all that passed between
them on the subject, but henceforth Wendy knew that she must grow up. You always
know after you are two. Two is the beginning of the end.

J. M. Barrie from Peter Pan

I wish I could remember what it felt like to be carefree…

Tea Time…

Tags

Afternoon tea, Tea ceremony, Tea time

Teacup © Joan Currie

The Tea Party

I had a little tea party
This afternoon at three.
‘Twas very small-
Three guests in all – 
Just I, myself and me.

Myself ate all the sandwiches,
While I drank up the tea;
‘Twas also I who ate the pie
And passed the cake to me.

By Jessica Nelson North (1891-1988)

A lovely cup of tea punctuates the day…

Another spring…

Tags

Bird nest, Christina Rossetti, Nest, Poetry, Spring, Victorian poetry

Spring Nest by Joan Currie

Another Spring
If I might see another Spring,
I’d not plant summer flowers and wait:
I’d have my crocuses at once,
My leafless pink mezereons,
My chill-veined snow-drops, choicer yet
My white or azure violet,
Leaf-nested primrose; anything
To blow at once, not late.

If I might see another Spring
I’d listen to the daylight birds
That build their nests and pair and sing,
Nor wait for mateless nightingale;
I’d listen to the lusty herds,
The ewes with lambs as white as snow,
I’d find out music in the hail
And all the winds that blow.

If I might see another Spring –
Oh stinging comment on my past
That all my past results in “if” –
If I might see another Spring,
I’d laugh to-day, to-day is brief;
I would not wait for anything:
I’d use to-day that cannot last,
Be glad to-day and sing.

By Christina Rossetti

Savoring the signs of spring…

Rijksmuseum

Into the sea…

Tags

Aging, Circle of life, loss, Mandala, Pema Chodron

Twenty Tropical Shells by Johann Gustav Hoch, Rijksmuseum

We are all like children building a sandcastle. We embellish it with beautiful shells, bits of driftwood, and pieces of colored glass. The castle is ours, off limits to others. Yet despite all our attachment, we know that the tide will inevitably come in and sweep the sandcastle away. The trick is to enjoy it fully without clinging and when the tide comes, let it dissolve back into the sea. by Pema Chödrön

Sometimes it is hard to accept what we know lies ahead.

Designing a New Year …

Tags

Danielle LaPorte, Jonathan Fields, Lauren DiMarco, New beginnings, New Year's Resolutions, Photography

Design is love. Good design is love – it’s well-thought. Good design considers everybody. It considers your emotions, it considers the ecology. There’s beauty in it. Good design – there’s always some kind of elegance to it.
by Danielle LaPorte in an interview with Jonathan Fields

Designing a big, beauteous, beguiling, and bodacious New Year!

Model: Lauren DiMarco

Christmas in reflection…

Tags

A Child's Christmas in Wales, Christmas, Christmas Day, Dylan Thomas

Lauren DiMarco in Vancouver © Joan Currie

One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now
and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights
when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.
from A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas (YouTube reading by the author)

I will have no trouble remembering this wonderful Christmas day!

You, on the other side…

Tags

Art, Grieving, Loss of loved one, Memories, Mixed media, Poetry, Remembering, Woman with Roses

Lauren DiMarco at Joshua Tree

 Still Too Sharp
by Joan Currie

My memories of you are like shards of glass, 
they have to be handled very carefully.
Fearing that if I were to sustain a wound,
the bleeding would never stop…

A life worth living…

Tags

Alfred Austin, Art, Charcoal sketch, Poetry, Summer, Youth

African White Iris photo by Joan Currie

When Summer, lingering half-forlorn,
On Autumn loves to lean,
And fields of slowly yellowing corn
Are girt by woods still green;
When hazel-nuts wax brown and plump,
And apples rosy-red,
And the owlet hoots from hollow stump,
And the dormouse makes its bed;
from Is Life Worth Living? – by Alfred Austin

This poem brought me back to the delicious summers of my childhood…

Rijksmuseum