Every uneducated person is a caricature of himself.
Friedrich Schlegel, 1798
What a profound thought.
Without education, you’re an outline with distorted features. Your worst is accentuated without the tempering impact of learning other perspectives, exploring other values, or discovering alternative possibilities.
Growth of personality happens when you seek wisdom and knowledge.
I stroll the mall, and check all routes
in search of perfect, tall, grey boots.
Store by store I search them all
On tidy shelves and crowded stalls.
I search the net in desperate state
At Fluevog.com The Boots await!
The perfect shape. The perfect heel.
The shade of grey, that’s dove not steel.
Alas, at five hundred bucks with tax,
My happy heart’s cleaved with an ax.
I check the site from time to time
To see if cost has dropped a dime.
But one sad day, the boots were gone
My face grew sad, my mouth was drawn.
.
The Grey Boot Quest began once more
Fruitless, I wandered store to store,
Til a clearance ad came to my in box
and now I can enfold my socks.
My Fluevog Logan boots, were on sale
A happy ending to the tale!
A single pair was in my size,
I quickly clicked, ready to BUY.
Soon from the store in Montreal
My boots will travel, pushed and hauled.
The first miracle was an end to the quest
The Second Miracle Logans are the best!
A week from now, or maybe two,
I’ll pose in those grey boots for you!
.
I think, at least, that it was Buddha who said, “When the student is ready, the master appears.” It’s a good observation; however, the master will no doubt have been there all along, but until the student was ready, he had no focus to see him/her. What if the master is ready, but no student appears?
As a kid, I took ballet lessons from the founder of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Dr. Gweneth Lloyd. Not advanced, pointe work ballet, mind you. Twinkle-toe tots kind of of ballet. I think it was a complete waste of talent for her to have been teaching me. Perhaps others in the class went on to become amazing stars, but not me. Mind you, I can still do the 5 positions, but the discipline of mind and body required by ballet was definitely not mine. I am not of the “No pain, no gain” school. (My particular mantra is “No pain! No pain!” ) I remember her walking through the class, with her bright red lipstick on, stick in hand, prowling to poke at us “Move this, tighten that.” I was rather traumatized by the whole affair.
Then there was the recital. I was a swamp fairy. Unlike the cute flower fairies who got to wear pastels and tutus, the swamp fairies wore dyed khaki green waffle weave underwear. Yes. really. Undershirts and undershorts. Dyed pukey green. They made me go on stage in underwear. Did I mention that I had a personal seamstress who’d kept me in adorable little outfits since birth? All that work to learn a choreography only for public humiliation in underwear. I cried. I didn’t want to go on stage. It was not a happy day. I did dance, of course, because it was a stage, but plainly I’ve never gotten over it.
I did not go onto further ballet studies, which was probably for the best.
There was a master, but I was not meant to be her student.
Explain that one, Buddha.
I needed a poem for the English 9 final exam. It needed to fit the theme, and have some poetic devices. After scanning assorted books, I gave up and wrote my own. The title comes from a literal transliteration of eulogy- Good words.
.
If I could
I would
Follow you forever, friend
Through years of fears, of tears.
I’d follow you
Through toys, boys, noise, joys
To poise.
If I could,
I’d follow, friend
But I am as a hollow end.
Be brave,
I am a memory saved
Despite the cave
of grave.
“What do English teacher authors read for fun?” you ask.
Well,thanks for your curiousity! ;-P We are full of interesting explorations of the literary and linguistic world.
Today, I’ve been pondering the development and usage of the second person pronouns in the English language…
Yes, really.
So, if you‘re curious about ‘you’ too, you might be interested in this interesting article by University of Toronto alumnus and current St Mary’s University professor, Sara Malton PhD:
http://homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~cpercy/courses/6361Malton.htm
Creo, ergo sum.
I create, therefore I am.
Or should that be
I am, therefore I create?
Ego sum, ergo creo
“Time is the longest distance between two places.”
— Tennessee Williams
From The Glass Menagerie
Have I been spending too much time in Diana Gabaldon’s world the last few months? This quote just doesn’t ring true to me. I look at my kids’ baby photos and think how those moments seem like yesterday, and I ponder that time is a circle of interwoven strands, connections between are the tiniest of gaps. You know how you can spend years between a visit with an old friend, yet in a moment of greeting, the time is erased?
No, I don’t believe Tennessee Williams got this one right at all.
A new beginning begins
Another old ending ends
A circle encircles again
Time encloses and bends
.
.
Submitted for Gooseberry Garden. If you’re visiting from Gooseberry, please include a link to your own contribution in the comments so we can return the visit! 🙂
It’s been a good year on the blog! Check out the summary! Quite fascinating, I think.
It’s a day
Just a day.
The sun rises.
Fog clears to clouds
Or the sky is blue.
Snow falls on empty streets.
Stores are dark.
When you meet someone,
they nod and say,
Merry Christmas.
You smile and repeat it.
It’s just a day,
like every other,
but you have to observe
the niceties.
Shawn L. Bird 