Sleep

Sleep tells us so much about ourselves. If I google sleep I will find studies into what position we sleep in (I sleep in the fetal position), what side of the bed (I have to sleep on the side of the bed that is furthest from the bedroom door) or what we eat before crashing (nachos and cheese last night). Apparently eating a handful of walnuts before going to bed can help us sleep better and making sure our feet are warm. But even with great preparation before hitting the sack with a hot coa coa and some great sex, this does not guarantee us a good night's sleep! All the hidden anxieties I had forgotten about creep out in my dreams (last night I was dreaming that Imogen was falling from the top of a tall building and I couldn't get to her on time and an old lecturer was showing me photos of him and his wife jogging over a bridge in the dark????) John has taught me that all the weird dreams we have are just our mind's garbage disposal system dealing with all our unfinished or not acted on thoughts. Dreams apparently keep us mentally healthy and we need them. We are not supposed to remember them and there is no real significance in them except that they are to help us deal with the day we have just had. If we have a really stressful day (as i did Saturday), our brains can need to dream so much we wake exhausted. This is why I was so chilled teaching my primary class on Sunday and had no energy to even care that they have verbal diarrhea! So if we have no un-acted out desires or unexpressed words, no unfinished work, thoughts or deeds... we will sleep like a log! HA!

Sandi Thom Time

I listened to this on my way home from the temple and it made me smile :)

Me Quiet?

I laughed when I read this beautiful poem as John often comments on my inability to be quiet. I am sure I am not a constant babbling brook (I hope not!) So John this one is for you! LOL... photo by me and poem by Pablo Neruda

I Like You When You Are Quiet

I like you when you are quiet because it is as though you are absent,
and you hear me from far away, and my voice does not touch you.
It looks as though your eyes had flown away
and it looks as if a kiss had sealed your mouth.

Like all things are full of my soul
You emerge from the things, full of my soul.
Dream butterfly, you look like my soul,
and you look like a melancoly word.

I like you when you are quiet and it is as though you are distant.
It is as though you are complaining, butterfly in lullaby.
And you hear me from far away, and my voice does not reach you:
let me fall quiet with your own silence.

Let me also speak to you with your silence
Clear like a lamp, simple like a ring.
You are like the night, quiet and constellated.
Your silence is of a star, so far away and solitary.

I like you when you are quiet because it is as though you are absent.
Distant and painful as if you had died.
A word then, a smile is enough.
And I am happy, happy that it is not true.

love the guitar in this 0-

some lovely portraits

32 stunning portraits

Rosie Thomas

I read two poems today that made me smile...

This one I can share (written from his experiences of fatherhood) Todd Boss-

This Morning in a Morning Voice

to beat the froggiest
of morning voices,
my son gets out of bed
and takes a lumpish song
along--a little lyric
learned in kindergarten,
something about a
boat. He's found it in
the bog of his throat
before his feet have hit
the ground, follows
its wonky melody down
the hall and into the loo
as if it were the most
natural thing for a little
boy to do, and lets it
loose awhile in there
to a tinkling sound while
I lie still in bed, alive
like I've never been, in
love again with life,
afraid they'll find me
drowned here, drowned
in more than my fair
share of joy.

Finally!

After three years of stress, piles of undone laundry and kids sick of the camera following them around I went to pick up my results today and got a first (photography degree BA Hons) ! No words....

The Burton Family Music Video

schoolfield stars

The atmosphere of my children's school sports day was compelling. Each scream of support and delight hung in the air in a tangible and musical lilt for us all to help ourselves to. I did help myself and felt giddy with it's optimism, genuine love and wonderful humour! Run Shadog run! The sweet Welsh chime lifting the atmosphere further. I tried to capture it all with my camera snapping the running, the skipping the jumping, but gave up and left it still while I screamed RUN SHADOG RUN!!!!

The Exhibition

I sat in a room of my fellow student's hopes and dreams all culminating into a rich mixture of thought processes and creativity. All very different, very personal. When the room was still I read The Golden Notebook and wandered the room reading "it takes a brave man to take any piece of earth and make it into something" and the taxi driver stereotype and fairy tales. When people entered we discussed Clézio and Grayson Perry, polite nods, sweet lingering smiles in gypsy skirts and photographic technical questioning from men with sunglasses on string. I sat waiting for the right time to catch an eye and distance myself from the uncomfortable presence of an onlooker, lets talk, he tells me about his eight children, she tells me this year is better than last.

Marriage

Rilke on Marriage...
The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust. A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky.