A SMALL THING

“All relationships change the brain - but most important are the intimate bonds that foster or fail us, altering the delicate circuits that shape memories, emotions and that ultimate souvenir, the self.” - Diane Ackerman

This week, Poets and Storytellers United has given the theme of “Stubborn About the Small Things”. My poem was triggered by the trifles we have kept as mementos in some unopened drawer or closed cupboard. We look at those as we one day come across them and they awaken memories. Here is a poem on that theme:

A Small Thing

I clutch it tightly in my hand

A small thing, a bagatelle, a trifle -

And yet for me it’s special, grand,

Worthy enough my breath to stifle.

I feel its smoothness, and its metal -

More precious than pure, fine gold,

More delicate than a flower’s petal,

More rare than something choice and old…

“Love me”, you’d said and gave it me,

Feeling your soul were given to me also.

I took it looking at the wide blue sea,

Capturing sun, sky, your face - all I saw.

“I love you”, I’d whispered to you softly

And I grasped your gift so very tightly;

The tiny trifle was for me dear, costly,

Its dullness sparkling, shining brightly…

I look at it again, so many years later

And I feel a pleasure so much greater,

Than what a rusty metal fairground token

Would give, or our words then spoken.

“I love you”, you had said so tenderly,

“I love you”, I had said so slenderly.

And then goodbyes were uttered

Our hearts were closed and shuttered

And now a token is all that’s left

Once our union’s bonds were cleft.

I clutch it tightly in my hand

A small thing, a bagatelle, a trifle -

And yet for me it’s special, grand,

Worthy enough my breath to stifle.

POETS UNITED - WEALTH

“There are people who have money and there are people who are rich.” Coco Chanel

The subject of Wealth is today’s topic at Poets United. The challenge is to write a poem about wealth, whatever wealth means to us. Here is mine:

As Time Passes

As time passes, I remember how:

We used to share a single bed

And laugh as we squeezed so close together

That our breaths would synchronise

And our hearts would beat in syntony,

As each heartbeat would fall into the other.

As time passes, I remember how:

Our hands would clasp each other

And through the sense of touch our souls

Would mingle through the skin;

And our chemistries would share reactions

In the test tubes of our sweaty palms.

As time passes, I remember how:

We would share a simple meal

And the food was made delicious

As we poured happiness on it –

Better than the richest sauce,

Our joy a condiment better than the rarest spice.

As time passes, I remember how:

Our lips would thirst for kisses ceaselessly

And our mingling breaths would communicate

Our innermost desires, our thoughts, our hopes…

Our eyes, though closed, would clearly

See into the depths of each other’s soul and share our boundless wealth.

Now, we share the broad expanse of a large gilt bed

And touching is rarely anything but accidental.

Now, our hands may hold each other every once in a while,

But our dry palms are places too arid for the excursions of our souls.

Now, every meal a rich repast: Caviar, truffles, champagne…

But we may as well be eating cardboard.

Now, our lips are locked closed, imprisoning our souls,

And our eyes wide open, barely acknowledging each other’s presence

When circumstances would have us pretend to kiss…

FOOD FRIDAY - QUICK MUSHROOM SOUP

“Life is too short to stuff a mushroom.” - Shirley Conran

Although we eat mainly slow-cooked food that is prepared from scratch, occasionally time constraints or impromptu visits necessitate some fast food solutions that usually involve raids to the well-stocked pantry and fridge. A few cans of tinned soup and tinned vegetables are usually on reserve and there is milk and/or cream in the fridge that can be put to good use. The garden has a stock of fresh salad vegetables and herbs for a quick salad. Here is a very rapidly concocted cream of mushroom soup that is enhanced by various additions that make it taste a little better than fresh out of the can.

Quick Cream of Mushroom Soup

Ingredients

420 g can of cream of mushroom soup

220 g can of sliced mushrooms in butter sauce

100 mL cream

100 mL milk

1 tbsp dried onion flakes

1/2 tsp garlic powder

1/2 tsp dried coriander leaves

1/2 tsp mace powder

Freshly ground pepper to taste

Method

In large saucepan, warm the sliced mushrooms in butter sauce thoroughly and add the herbs and spices, stirring thoroughly. Add the canned soup and keep stirring, warming the soup over medium heat.

Add the milk and cream and keep heating while stirring. Season with salt and extra pepper to taste. You may dilute with a little warm water if desired to make the soup thinner. Keep hot until ready to serve. Garnish with parsley, sliced mushrooms or ground mace. Accompany with seasonal green salad and fresh, crusty bread.

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POETS UNITED - TIME

“Time stays long enough for anyone who will use it.” - Leonardo da Vinci

Poets United this week is looking at the topic of “Time” and Sumana is enjoining participants to think about time and its ambiguous nature. My ideas turned to language, words and grammar and how we perceive time’s vagaries grammatically. A rather academic viewpoint, but one that is required in order to express the subjective nature of time’s passage for even the most romantic and poetic amongst us. Here is my offering:

Grammar Lesson

Past, present, future:

Tense is the sea of time,

That little boat is me.

Past continuous, present perfect,

A storm brewing,

The boat is struggling.

Future and aorist, present continuous,

The battle unequal,

The boat sinks and the waters are calmed.

My world is lost,

Your world is changed,

My boat sunken,

Will never float again.

Past continuous, past perfect,

The wind abates,

The still waters rot.

And yet, if one parts

The glassy surface of the indicative,

If the imperative is to dive

Deep into the sandy bottom

Of subjunctive and conditional,

The boat is there and passively awaits

For one active voice that will command

And raise it from the depths…

POETRY JAM - TIME

“Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend.” – Theophrastus

Poetry Jam has prompted its contributors for the final time this week. As this poetry site is having a rest (only for a while, I would like to believe), the parting prompt is all about TIME… I would like to thank especially Mary, Peggy, Gabriella, Alan, Sumana and Brian who have prompted, encouraged and appraised poetical efforts. I would also like to thank all other participants for the fine offerings every week, and also all readers of the poems who have the time to read, ponder and comment on each other’s poems.

My contribution for this week, below is a villanelle, its cyclic nature perhaps the most suitable for the depiction of cycles, things beginning and ending, and above all the inscrutable passage of time as all things change:

The Time of Change

The time of change is here:

Awake, renew, revise,

I feel the freshness near.

There is no need to fear,

Look up with cloudless eyes

The time of change is here.

Smile brightly then, my dear,

Gone are the endless sighs

I feel the freshness near.

Sweet songs again you'll hear,

The truth defeats all lies –

The time of change is here,

Wipe clean the frown and tear.

As darkness ebbs and dies,

I feel the freshness near…

As we defeat night drear,

Our hope will climb and rise;

The time of change is here

I feel the freshness near.

POETRY JAM - THIRST

“A person can only be born in one place. However, he may die several times elsewhere: in the exiles and prisons, and in a homeland transformed by the occupation and oppression into a nightmare.” - Mahmoud Darwish

Leaving one’s place of birth and settling elsewhere, for whatever purpose, may often be followed by success, with one’s new life being comfortable, prosperous and filled with content. While one is grateful for the new homeland’s bounty, the need to visit one’s place of origin is a thirst that can only satisfied by a return there. However, nostalgia is a bad advisor and often what we fondly remember is forever lost and the water of return is contaminated by the bitterness of irrevocable change.

Poetry Jam this week is looking at the theme of “thirst” and my offering is below:

The Return

My heart searches to slake its thirst
In heady wine of the return, so ruby-red.
Vermillion poppies are sweet draughts
In emerald chalice of unripened corn.

My heart searches to revive itself
With life-giving blood and sacred breath.
Anemones like drops of blood on hillsides
And in the azure of sky a breath of God.

My heart searches for a cordial word to hear,
A smiling friendly face to warm itself.
In every boat of the Aegean I see a letter spelling “welcome home”
While ancient statues smile at me like next of kin.

My heart searches far and wide for honey, balsam,
A therapy for all its wounds so that it will love again.
Violet-coloured, scented evenings in islands white,
And sweet fragrances are medicine enough in balmy nights.

My heart searches for all of these and more,
But as time inexorably flows, it passes, wounds, destroys.
Time conquers all that I knew and fondly recalled,
And my return is poison, soured wine and bitter gall.

The photo is "Poppies in Polyhrono, Greece" by Ilian Pavlov

POETRY JAM - TIME

“What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.” - Saint Augustine

We are constantly aware of time’s passage and we speak of it endlessly. We have it on our hands, or we waste it, we double it, mark it, value it, share it, limit it, find it, save it, flex it, kill it, lose it, take it, have it, bide it, keep it perfectly, run out of it. We are sometimes ahead of it, sometimes behind. We speak of things time-tested, timeworn or time-honoured. We have time in bombs, zones, capsules, lines, sheets, exposures, charts and calendars…

“Time brings healing” said Euripides, and it does in fact heal both physical, as well as psychic wounds. It teaches us to be patient, gives us a past and a history to draw upon, a present to savour and a future with potential and promise. Time can be frustratingly miserly, as when it doles out pleasure, giving us only happy moments. And all of this without us fully comprehending what time really is…

Poetry Jam this week is all about time. We were enjoined to consider time in all of its nuances when writing our poem. Here is mine:

Tempus Edax Rerum*

Infinite Time forever rushing forth
You run, you never stop, never to die.
In, out, unendlessly you weave a cloth,
A wily web in which we fall and helpless lie.

Time, tireless traveller, you never tarry
Unheeding to our cries of: “Mercy, stop!”
You hurry forward and Death you carry
His sickle sharp and ready for the crop.

Unending Time, the one without beginning,
How weak we be, if we should try to fight!
You only can the victor be, forever winning;
Glory for you, Time, fame and light; for us an endless night.

Even the strong you break as forth inexorably you fly;
Time in the end only surviving, all other things to die.

*(Latin [from Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” 15, 234-236: = "Time, devourer of all things")

POETRY JAM - SAVOUR THE FOOD

“I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.” - T. S. Eliot
 
Poetry Jam this week has asked participants to: “Write a culinary poem. Write about your favorite food, a special meal you remember, a family recipe that has been passed over the years. Your poem can be literal or metaphorical, simple or complex…”
Here is my offering:
 

Drinking Bitter Coffee at the Café of Broken Promises
 
Quite by chance, I went by the Café
Where once – a lifetime ago – we had sought
Shelter from Autumn rain.
I wandered in, half expecting to see you smiling,
Beckoning me from that same booth
That we had shared, while grey afternoon wore on,
And rain, thankfully, kept falling...
 

We shook the rain off our hair – I remember –
And how we laughed, as the tabletop was spread
With hundreds of diamonds: Raindrops that caught
The pale yellow light of the bare bulb above,
Shattering its puny glow into a million sunrays
That illumined richly for that moment
The deepest cellars of our souls.
 

We sipped the steaming coffee and it was sweet nectar,
Although we clean forgot to sugar it.
Our legs brushed under the table
And your eyes promised me a hundred happinesses;
“Tomorrow...” you had whispered and I only smiled,
My silence more eloquent than a thousand pictures...
 

I order coffee yet again this Spring morning
And though the sun shines brightly outside,
I am sure I can hear the drumming of rain on the tin roof.
I lose count of the lumps of sugar
I am drowning in my cup, but each sip of coffee
Is more bitter than the one before it.
 

I stretch my legs beneath the table
Encountering a bottomless abyss,
While from the neighbouring booth, someone laughs,
And says quite loudly: “It was yesterday!”
 

By chance, I find myself once again
Drinking bitter coffee in some city Café;
A tawdry, cheap, noisy, smoky place,
Where one would never go to more than once...

TEMPUS EDAX RERUM

“Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.” - William Penn
 

Magpie Tales has selected this week an image by Crilleb50 to act as a stimulus for creative endeavours. Here is my offering:
 

Tempus Edax Rerum
 

Infinite Time forever rushing forth
You run, you never stop, never to die.
In, out, unendlessly you weave a cloth,
A wily web in which we fall and helpless lie.
 

Time, tireless traveller, you never tarry
Unheeding to our cries of: “Mercy, stop!”
You hurry forward and Death you carry
His sickle sharp and ready for the crop.
 

Unending Time, the one without beginning,
How weak we be, if we should try to fight!
You only can the victor be, forever winning;
Glory for you, fame light; for us an endless night.
 

Even the strong you break as forth inexorably you fly;
Time in the end only surviving, all other things to die.

TOO MUCH TO DO

“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” - C. S. Lewis
 

Inundated with things to do at work again means that I have very little time to devote to other pursuits, even after I get home. It seems that there are some periods during the year (and they are getting more frequent and seem to last longer!) when everything seems to be happening at the same time. Time management skills, effective delegation and prioritisation of tasks are all very well, however, when one has several major projects with deadlines looming over the horizon regularly, something has to give.
 

Hence the brevity of today’s entry, with a couple of interesting links that are work related!
 

Mayo Clinic - Time management: Tips to reduce stress and improve productivity
 

Sydney Morning Herald: Work-Life Balance
 

Making time for personal goals
 

Now I’ll have to sign off as I have to go and take a dose of my own medicine!

MOVIE MONDAY - FREQUENCY

“Our heirs, whatever or whoever they may be, will explore space and time to degrees we cannot currently fathom. They will create new melodies in the music of time. There are infinite harmonies to be explored.” - Clifford Pickover
 

We had some cold and wet weather over the weekend and it was very pleasant to be able to sit at home in the warmth and watch a movie in the afternoon. It was a rather interesting film that we did watch, Gregory Hoblit’s 2000 movie “Frequency” starring Dennis Quaid, Jim Caviezel, Shawn Doyle and Elizabeth Mitchell. The film was a science fiction drama based on the premise that communication between the future and the past is possible under a set of certain electromagnetic conditions triggered by solar flares. Once you get over this conceit, you can immerse yourself in the possibilities suggested by the movie, including the famous paradoxes where the possibility of time travel in one form or another allows one to change the course of history.
 

For example, one paradox is the idea that if one were able to go back in time, the time traveller could change things in the past by interfering with his own family history. The grandfather paradox and the idea of autoinfanticide are typical of this: In this paradox, a time traveller goes back in time and kills his grandfather at a time before his grandfather met his grandmother. If he did so, then his mother or father never would have been born, and neither would the time traveller himself, in which case the time traveller never would have gone back in time to kill his grandfather… Autoinfanticide works the same way, where a traveller goes back and attempts to kill himself as an infant. If he were to do so, he never would have grown up to go back in time to kill himself as an infant.
 

The plot of the movie has as follows: A rare atmospheric phenomenon triggered by solar flares in the 1960s and the 1990s allows a New York City firefighter in the past, to communicate with his son 30 years in the future via short-wave radio. The son uses this opportunity to warn the father of his impending death in a warehouse fire, and manages to save his life. However, what he does not realise is that changing history has triggered a new set of tragic events, including the murder of his mother. The two men must now work together, 30 years apart, to find the murderer before he strikes so that they can change history again.
 

We enjoyed this film as a thriller/mystery more than as a science fiction movie. Time played a role, but the interweaving stories of past and present were what made the film interesting and involving. The characters were interesting and believable, the family relationships portrayed were authentic and believable and the situations that father and son find themselves in through the tenuous connection over time are often poignant, sometimes humorous and at other times filled with suspense and mystery. The acting is very good and both Quaid as the father and Caviezel as the son do a sterling job with the material that has been given to them.
 

Toby Emmerich, better known as a film producer, wrote the story of this movie and he has managed to combine a great many original features with some old standards of the “Time travel” theme. The strong serial killer plotline that runs through the movie adds so much to the story and as the film progresses becomes an integral part of the story. Michael Kamen has provided an intelligent film score that doesn’t intrude but invests the action with suitable suspense and mystery. Cinematography by Alar Kivilo and film editing by David Rosenbloom contribute to the polished feel and look of the film. Watch it!

MIDLIFE CRISIS TIME

“Old age and the passage of time teach all things.” - Sophocles
 
I was taking a walk early this morning before going to work and in the quiet hours of morning twilight, I was thinking about things. The first was a consideration of my advancing age and the rapidity with which time seems to be passing. The two are related, I think, and there have been numerous explanations put forward regarding the fact that time seems to pass slowly for the young, and quickly for the old… Relativity and accrual of past experiences, crowding of the memory banks, commitments and tasks to be done in a limited period of time may all have something to do with it. I was considering that nearly half of 2013 is already over and it seems only a “short time” ago that it was New Year’s Eve.

The second series of thoughts centred on what I have done in my life and what I still have to do. Achievements, goals attained, travel, relationships, things done, all seemed to pale into insignificance when I consider what I still have undone, so many things I want to try, so many new experiences to enjoy, books to read, music to hear, so much to write, so much to see. And meanwhile time keeps on passing, inexorably, moving ever forward.

I then thought of my retirement and when I should actually stop working (well, “stop working” – probably never), or should I say “quit my regular job”. Retirement will be an exciting time for me, as I will be catching up on so many things that I shelved during my life because I had no time to do them (or do them properly). Taking stock of what I have done in my working career filled me with some regret because I feel as though I did not do as much as I wanted to, nor achieved as much as I was capable of. There is still much in me to give, much more I can contribute in my ordinary working life. However, the passage of time intrudes and the ever-nearer possibility of my demise enters the equation.

The question of balance came into my head. So many of us work hard and long for most of our lives and if one is conscientious about one’s job, it absorbs much of one’s life. Certainly my days are full to the brim of activity and by the time I get home in the evening all I want to do is sit down, relax, eat something, amuse myself for a while, and then sleep a few hours (fortunately, about 5 hours sleep is enough). Then another day dawns and away I go again… Regular work can consume one’s existence, especially if it intrudes into one’s personal time in the evenings or at the weekends. This has happened with amazing regularity to me.

Balancing one’s working life with one’s family and personal time is tough. Especially tough when one’s job is a career, and a demanding one at that. It is not infrequently that “the job” takes over and one’s personal life suffers. The older I get the more I seem to be realising this and the more I seem to miss not doing more of the things that I need (or rather “want”) to do when I have shuffled off this mortal coil. And more thoughts followed till I got to work and then I pushed this version mid-life crisis into the shelf right next to many previous versions!

ON THE PASSING OF TIME

“It is my feeling that Time ripens all things; with Time all things are revealed; Time is the father of truth.” - François Rabelais
 
A pebble thrown into a serene pond will disrupt its quiet waters and start off a series of ripples that will travel a great distance across the whole surface of the body of water to eventually reach the distant shores. The perfect reflections on the water will be fractured and the ever-widening wavelets will add another dimension of beauty to the pond. So is the quiet life of routine that many of us lead: A still, quiet pond where all is familiar and ordered. And then, an unexpected event disrupts the routine, just like a pebble thrown in the pond.
 
The pebble that caused ripples in my life this week was an unexpected phone call at work from a person I had not heard from for more than 35 years – an old fellow student from my university days. I must confess that I have not kept up with my fellow students even though the relationships and friendships formed at the time were quite genuine and deep. A group of us, around a dozen, completed our first postgraduate degree together and then we nearly all went off and pursued further study. Our paths separated, we scattered across different institutions, in different states. I had heard of one or another of them over the years through mutual acquaintances or on the net, however, there was no “proper” contact.
 
The phone call earlier this week was quite a surprise. Its purpose was to inform me that a reunion was being planned. This is the first such event that I have ever been invited to and although I was quite pleased to learn of it and have no qualms about attending it, it made me think. We were a closely-knit group for at least two years, we had experienced a lot together and we had enjoyed some excellent times at university, at what was our prime. All of us in our young adulthood, full of enthusiasm, our lives ahead of us, our heads full of ideas and our hearts light, our life full of endless possibilities. Here we are now, all of us now at middle age, many of us contemplating retirement in the next few years. More than three decades have intervened. We have lived the better part of our working lives and have achieved what we have achieved, professionally. Are we ready to confront each other’s aged selves and thus, perhaps more importantly, acknowledge the passage of time over ourselves?
 
How old we feel is sometimes incongruent with our biological age. I have caught sight of myself in a mirror unawares and have been startled by the middle-aged man looking out at me. Who is this stranger looking at me? Especially so if I have been thinking young ideas at the time! Such is the nature of ageing and the passage of time. It touches us more and more with each passing day and when we awaken one morning we find ourselves quite old. Where has our life gone? How have the years passed? Where did we squander all of that precious time?
 
It is a good thing at such times when we reflect upon the passage of time to consider our lives and our achievements. How time has weathered us and has ground away the hard edges. How we have matured emotionally, spiritually, mentally – not only biologically. The success of this self-evaluation, is the consideration of our advancing age and diminishing years we look forward to, contrasted with our increased experience and wisdom. We live and gain each day something new to be added to our storehouse of memories, experiences, knowledge and personal inner space. Life is a wonderful gift and we should learn to appreciate it every living moment. The older we become the more precious is this gift of life. I look forward to seeing my old fellow students at the planned reunion because I will acknowledge not only the richness of their past lives, but I will also re-examine my own life and acknowledge its enrichment as time has washed over it.