circle these dates

i had no idea, when i took this picture a few months ago on the haarlemmerdijk, that the subject matter would ever say more to me than "lime window, lime bike"; now, however, it does.
this funky little gallery - an annex of galerie buuf - is where the participants of the europephotobloggers 2006 meetup (september 22nd-24th) will get acquainted, and exhibit their photographs, and toast to an inspiring and rewarding couple of days together.
if you have a photoblog, you are van harte welkom: you can read more, and sign up, over at the wiki.
please do; more is definitely merrier, and amsterdam - as you may have guessed - can be a veritable photographer's feast!

no rest for the weary

a smooth exit here, and a supple entry there - just two weeks from now - rather hinges on me doing my daunting duty: sifting through stuff, endless stuff, so much stuff, and making it all shiftable.
*
i'll get a move on, then, shall i?

unlimited cake

"i had three chairs in my house: one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society."
- henry david thoreau (american essayist, poet and philosopher, 1817-1862)

a found friend, fine and fortuitous; a faceless twist of happenstance:
i am a happier person today than i was a month ago.

four score with fervour

my mother always told us stories.
while she stirred, and sewed, and sang, and brewed lemonade-from-scratch, and spun the clothesline out to the far edge of the garden, she told us stories, and this was one of our favourites:
she and her two teenaged sisters shared a room in their ottawa home, and they were - all three - desperately untidy.
my fiery little grandmother soon tired of the total disarray.
"i will take measures," she warned them. they paid no mind. they shed their finery, kicked off their pretty pumps,and went their merry adolescent way. "if i find it on the floor, it will fly out the window", my grandmother reiterated.
snow fell. they began to miss things: a blouse here, a scarf there.
"where is my blue sweater?" my mother asked. my grandmother shrugged. "whatever happened to my tweed skirt?", demanded her sister. my grandmother shrugged again.
their wardrobe continued to diminish. my grandmother continued to shrug.
and then spring arrived.
and the snow melted.
and the thaw revealed a garden splashed with sodden garments, strewn with ruined footwear. the lost had been - uselessly - found.
my grandmother? she, a woman of her word, shrugged, and clucked.
*
happy 80th birthday, mom! (i usually call her ma, but for this one time.)
i wish you were here. or that i were there.

remind me

the errant strands of auburn, the comely curve of ear, the glimpsed gold, dangling, delicate: he stops short.
"margaret?", he whispers.
and when he stumbles, and she turns, he realises.
he feels old, and flushed, and foolish, but oddly exalted. she was so near, and she has been so far away for such a long time.

the great escape

it's not actually the queen's birthday today - it's not even the old queen's birthday today, for that matter - but everybody, and everything, is celebrating early, and anyway: frivolous, and festive, and overwhelmingly orange.
not me.
i'm far, far from the crush, and happy to be there.
*
happy koninginnedag, all.

a distant beckoning

norfolk was grey and cold, and suffolk was cold and grey, and i'm sure that some of my full-colour images will turn out perfectly monochrome, given the mist and the mood.
there, there on the imperceptible horizon: could that be the month of may?

calling the world home

my daughter unfurls her wings tomorrow, and flies - tentatively and temporarily - across the channel to norfolk, where she will alight in a pretty little village by the sea and start her "new" life.
i hope that the branch she settles upon will be supple and supportive, and that her nest will be warm, that the wide blue sky will give her room to reel and soar, and that her songs will be as sweet and joyous as spring-going-on-summer.
but i will miss her, even if it is for just a month.

mary, mary

funny: as contrary as i am - and i AM - i am also intrinsically obedient, in the civil
sense, at least.
i don't walk on the grass.
i don't cycle on the sidewalk.
i don't feed the llamas musty bread.
*
i do, however, always "engage the driver of the bus in unnecessary conversation".
and the driver?
he - or she - doesn't seem to mind at all.

early, with the sun

"start every day off with a smile and get it over with."
- w.c.fields (american comic and actor, 1880-1946)

there is simply no time, mornings early, to sit at windows and sip; in the minimal minutes between bus and train, i am into the station café and out again - before you
can say "één-koffie-verkeerd-meenemen-alsjeblieft".
my daily detour, it must be said, has more to do with the sweet boy frothing the capuccinos than it does with the cafeine itself: he cheerfully chats half working
alkmaar into positivity.
he always gets out of bed on the right side.
unlike me.