Buttercupchappati Chronicles

some spare time and a mini love affair

So - I got an impromptu day to myself, kind of.

After the meditation class this morning, my patient rang to change her appointment. That's ok, it happens, life happens to all of us. It's not something I get too upset with.

Free time and the number two son at home all day, that's where the path goes all dark and twisty.

You know that what's coming next is not going to be good when he appears asking how his Brownie points are? With four, count them, four pairs of pants in hand that need the hems taken up.

Seriously? I thought I was having a day off.
Brownie points?
When he still owes me churros from our last bet (the standard wager in our house)!

Thankfully I am in the grips of a little love affair and it's tiding me over all the domsestic tedium

Why has it taken me so long to meet Wislawa Szymborska?

It was love at first sight when I found a copy of "Here" at Readings.
That picture is of  someone you want to be your best friend, immediately.

And the writing is sublime.

But it gets better, I open the book at a random page (the only way to read new poetry) and there it is, five perfectly crafted lines about my favourite painting.

Vermeer

So long as that woman from the Rijksmuseum
in painted quiet and concentration
keeps pouring milk day after day
from the pitcher to the bowl
the World hasn't earned
the world's end.

Wislawa Szymborska

sigh, when I grow up I want to write like that, or paint like this...

a new one

Two thousand and eleven, a year well launched with friends and family, laughter, dancing, singing, momo's, Texas chili, margaritas and The Rocky Horror Picture Show on dvd.

I suspect the horror part was all of us doing the time warp some time around midnight, but anyway...

It was cozy - and that is one of my main words for this coming year. I want to snuggle in and read, study, work, create, be myself; with occasional outings for travel where I do all that, just in a different place.

Key words for 2011:

reflection

meditation

mantra

reading

study

music - really listening, not just playing in the background

healing - myself and my patients

art

writing

solitude

gratitude

poetry

a dharma year
a catching up year
a year where I return to Amdo - always!
a year where I say hello to myself, everyday

well - resolution comes from resolve, so let's just see.
Intention is everything, I tell everyone else that! Best listen to my own awesome advice.

Happy new year everyone!
Peaceful, safe, prosperous and brilliant.

Breakfast, book shops, poetry and painting

All in one delicious Sunday morning.

PRS and I headed towards the city for a change on Sunday and spent some time on Brunswick Street in Fitzroy, arguably the home of cool in Melbourne, Melbourne cool - a quite specific kind.

After a great but decadent breakfast, eggs florentine, what diet? We then went into the bookshop bardo, my favourite!  The Grub Street book store is an institution and should be classified by someone other than me as a treasure. It smells and feels like a book shop should, has everything, really, and the the staff will smile and interact. They don't subscribe to the "I'm so hip I don''t have to do anything except take your money" attitude that some other businesses along this strip seem to encourage.

Anyway, after foraging through the one dollar boxes laid out to lure hopeless book buying addicts like me, I found a treasure in the five dollar box.

"Journey of The Wind" by Tomihiro Hoshino is a gorgeous anthology of poetry, essays and watercolour paintings. Like all Japanese published books it is a beautifully crafted edition, the typesetting, the colour printing, the stock and the binding are outstanding. As is the content. Five dollars well spent.

What I found inside when I got it home made it even more priceless (if you can quantify priceless-ness).

These works of art were painted by Tomihiro using a brush held in his mouth after he was terribly injured in an accident. He spent 9 years in hospital. Extraordinary.

Add to this discovery a few more bookshops, some great clothes found, a cruise around the Rose Street Artists market and a fantastic Sunday morning was manifested for us.

Vigils, Anzac day and horse chestnuts

Yesterdays vigil to support the Tibetans was a quiet but worthwhile day. Naturally in a small town there was not a horde of people, more a steady flow. What was noticeable was the intentness of their prayer or contemplation, the strength of the desire to affect positive change on the situation, and the emotional impact the whole thing is having on people.

Every candle, every thought or prayer, every wish will help. I have to hang on to that, we all do.
My favourite quote at the moment is from Rabbi Hillel, a renowned Talmudic scholar, he said:

"If I am not for myself, who is for me?
If I am only for myself, what am I?
If not now, when?"

I always run these days from sunrise to sunset, and I have to admit it is lovely getting into the shop so early in the morning (very cold yesterday though, I had to dig out the Tibetan robe I bought in Mahlo last year!). But after such along day yesterday I have piked out for the first time on being open today, Anzac Day. Usually it is a nice day to be open. I don't open the door until after the march past; anyway I have to stand out the front and wave to all my 70 year+ boyfriends as they go by! Tomorrow is flat out at work, I have 8 clients booked and only a half hour break all day (a case for chocolate if I ever heard one!). So today is one of rest and things I want to do, not have to do.

Painting, painting, painting, and maybe a nap. It is a glorious sunny day and the chestnut tree is unveiling itself in the wind, dropping leaves and chestnuts to make an amber yellow carpet. The cockies have been hungry but they won't eat the ones on the ground. They sit in the tree and eat them while still attached by the stem. They hold the nut in their claws and only pull it off to throw it on the ground when they are finished with it!