by chance, by choice

"friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, 'what! you too? i thought i was the only one!'" 
- c.s. lewis (british scholar and novelist, 1898-1963)

indeed.

treading water

i was feeling, yesterday morning, like taking a long walk off a short pier: blame dark-
to-dark workdays, calamitous commutes, and stubbornly sullen skies.
yesterday afternoon, though, the weather turned, and my mood turned, too, as it tends to do, in the clear cold healing light.
i have the next five days off, and fine friends to meet, and enough film to see me
through these final strokes of winter.

keeping the faith

this careful eating has me craving sweetness; this full agenda has me lost for words; this weary winter has me longing for the scents, the songs, the colours of spring.
my disgruntlement is minor, though, and my distress negligible, so a kind email -
and an envelope of images that looked just as i'd hoped they might - was more than enough to make my day smile.

worse through a window

a patch of blue sky sidled by, yesterday, almost imperceptible between the hailstorm and the rain.
this has been a vacuously dreary winter, weather-wise, and i wish it would make up its mind: for better or for worse.

rolling down the years

i could propose a dozen toasts:
to the new house, to the old house, to the well-being of those i cherish, to peace, love, and happiness (i'm a child of the sixties: i may always have flowers in my hair), to friends lost and friends found, to winter sunshine, to summer shadow, to ventures and adventures and pets-come-home, to bravery, and tenacity, to the glow of a perfect light, to good luck and less luck and the generosity of strangers, to tales, to wonder, to potential realised, to those who dare and those who don't dare just yet, to those with goodness and compassion, for they make the world a finer place to be.
and then:
one more glass - for here, this place, for two-muses-now-one, for harmony pursued, for the challenge, and the simple joy of creating....and for you - welcome, appreciated - who visit and share your thoughts.
we are three years old today.
thank you.
and proost.

luring the wispy ghost

i have not disappeared: i am merely invisible in the fluster of an undefined future.
i am hovering, though, transparent in the whiteness, and hoping - for inspiration, and, especially, for a swift sale, so that everyday life can resume its familiar homely stance.

and come what may

in the exhilaration of the where-we-are-going, of the moving to, i somehow forgot the where-we-are, and the endless inconvenience of moving from.
buying one house means - in our case - selling another, and for a tense while, our main reality will be uncertainty, and strangers strolling our private spaces, and tedious tidying, and the realisation that we have - tsk! - accumulated far too much, over the past years, of far too many things.

rung down the curtain

it wasn't so much the auction-site cosmic 35 that i coveted, but rather the three rolls of expired-38-years-ago film that were included, possibly as an afterthought, in the sale.

the first one, trusted lovingly to the ricoh - the best possible opportunities and all that - and dubiously processed, made me dance, foolish and jubilant, around the scanner.
as gayla said not long ago: film is magic.
*
but, just for curiosity's sake, where were you in 1968?
or, rather, were you at all?

high time we went

my apologies for the quality of this image (cold day, very cheap polaroid*)...but do you see that sign in the upstairs window?
it reads "te koop" or "for sale"; at least that's what it read this morning.
tomorrow it will read "sold".
we move in june.
and yes: it is that house.

*i don't suppose anyone has - or has come across - a nice polaroid 680 longing for a good home?

hi ho silver lining

i wish you good health and happiness...

time enough to stop and smell the roses...

and sunshine after each inevitable storm.
*
may 2006 be your finest year yet.