Buttercupchappati Chronicles

one more sleep

until tomorrow night with NEIL GAIMAN!

Not that I am over-excited or anything - much.

A truly great double header at the Athaneum Theatre tomorrow featuring Neil Gaiman and Tom Stoppard speaking on writing.

Would it be too too stalker girl to refuse to go home until I have had my picture taken with him? Just wondering ...

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.

back to the christmas thing

Still struggling, sad but true, no christmas spirit hiding anywhere at all. Nothing to define this time as special.

Then I found this poem!

When I had my shop, and as a general part of my self-imposed life task of being not ordinary, my decorations for the festive season were different. (And always included a letter to Santa asking for among other things - Johhny Depp in my stocking. Still waiting big guy!)

And on the last Christmas, I found as many Christmas poems as I could, and more importantly, ones I could stomach, and put them in the window.

So we had e.e.cummings, Robert Burns, Dylan Thomas, and lastly the fabulous Abigaile Housemans. I had never heard of her before and have been able to find out very little since.

But here is some magnificent writing.

I don't know about you, but it kick-started my heart when I first read it, and again this week when I re-found it.

christmas list
and christmas wish
all apart of the christmas theme
without any of it its like there is no
meaning
but im here to tell
im here to yell
that christmas is not all about you
christmas she get you in the spirit for
what you need to do
help the poor
help the needy
help the ones that dont get this or that
help the ones that have that and this
christmas is not all about you
if i need to yell or scream
to tell you what christmas means
i will
i promise
because christmas is not all about me
its not all about you
just what you need to do

 

put it on a t-shirt

Great line from the Number Two son on the weekend:
"I'll get to it when I am done with the hunchback."

Seriously, how good is that!

How many stories and scenarios could you weave from this starting point ... it's glorious!

Context?

We were having book chat, as we often do, and this was his reply to a suggestion of a book for him. He is currently reading "The Hunchback of Notre Dame"!

travel absolute essentials

visa, tick

ticket, tick

pack, sleeping bag, hiking shoes, camera, yes yes yes

now the exciting part! I ordered my Moleskine journals this morning!

Hello, my name is Karen and I have an expensive addiction to Moleskine.
Oh, you should hear me justify and rationalise this habit, you would think I get a commission.

They are light (Cahiers are the ones I use).
They are well bound, so don't fall apart.
The paper is good quality and therefore ink does not bleed.
The last pages are perforated so you tear them out, neatly, if you need to give someone a note.
They have a pocket in the back for storing notes other people give to you!

I have run out of notebooks when Tibet before, and let me tell you, Chinese stationery is not fabulous, more like writing on toilet paper really.

The fun (okay, obsessive) part is that I have three kinds I take along.
Large for notes during the course.
Medium (Mamma Bear?) for my journal.
And a very handy pocket size where I keep all the bits of information I need and acquire while I am there, names, emails, addresses, jobs I am given to do.

This year I have got different colours as well - I am almost ashamed to say it out loud. Almost.

In the past I've mostly bought them from that big book store with the coffee shop and the indifferent assistants. Now I have found an on-line supplier (dealer?) who sell them even cheaper and I can have them delivered to my own front door - perfect.

Sharing the love http://notemaker.com.au/

Been busy eating, drinking and making merry,

oh and making fun of PRS and his BIG BIRTHDAY.

Fancy turning 50.

Not happening here let me tell you!

But we had fun. It started with a lovely dinner out for the two of us and our wedding anniversary on the Friday night, at the Royal George in Kyneton. Just beautiful, a real treat.
Then Saturday we had a gathering of friends and family for the Really Old Person and his birthday. It was a great afternoon, a beautiful warm Woodend day and the restaurant Zarby's, kept the delicious food and wine coming.
My super-shopper-sister-in-law stayed over with us before her trip back to Sydney the next day and took us out to lunch at the very lovely Lakehouse in Daylesford.

Spoilt? Oh yes!
Fasting this week? Oh yes!

And I must complain that all this festive behavior has put me way way behind the eight ball for my tilt at the 50,000 words for National Novel Writing Month. The crystal ball shows a few late nights on the Powerbook headed my way.

 

National Novel Writing Month

You write your 50,000 words, you win, we can all win. Go and sign up right now.

http://www.nanowrimo.org

(So much to say today, have you noticed?)

You never know when you might need to know this

http://www.teachingbooks.net/pronunciations.cgi

TeachingBooks.net
It is so precise that I simply quote from their site:
Author Name Pronunciation Guide
A collection of brief recordings of authors & illustrators
saying their names. Hello, my name is . . .

    * Have authors and illustrators introduce themselves

    * Learn correct pronunciations of hard-to-pronounce names

     * Reveal stories behind the names

How micro is this information! I now have a new phobia, that I have been mispronouncing all the names of my favorite authors, probably since birth! And imagine the embarrassment of not knowing where their names originated from?

I need a Bex and a lie down while I process this latest bit of over-information from the Wonderous Woolly Web.

Banned Books - rant alert!

It has been Banned Books week in the US, you can read more about it here.

How bizarre that we need a week of advocacy for the book when you can now find everything, good, bad and ugly on the internet.

This photo is a little unclear, (the ALA site has a complete list of this years "winners"), but you can see some Penguin Classics and MAYA ANGELOU!!!

People, wake up!

The ability to read is such an enormous gift, the ability to write, to read and the myriad forms of the book have uniquely defined our lives on this planet. Give someone the ability to read and you give them everything. Unless you remove the reading material.

And while I am up here on my soapbox. The kind of mind that assumes people don't have the ability to make judgments about what they read should not be given the power to make that true. Save the censorship for, um, ... how about nothing. Let everyone be responsible for themselves, imagine!