language & communication – Page 8 – don't confuse the narrator

looking ahead

When I went online to find about about dates for rubbish collections, I didn’t expect the local Council to have gone into the fortune-telling game.

It seems, though, that my future is all sewn up.

What’s worse, these upcoming ‘rubbish Fridays’ include not only Christmas Day, but the first day of 2016, so the New Year will get off to a bad start.

I think it’s time for the first Bah, humbug! of the season.

all mod comms

Yesterday I said I didn’t really know what to post, so made do with some old photos.

I’m not doing much better for inspiration today, but even if I still don’t have much idea about what to post, I do have a picture of a post box.

It’s a typical old pillar box – I think it’s Victorian – and the modern red brick houses in the background don’t exactly set it off very well.

Fortunately I didn’t need to go far to find another one with a better backdrop, and with a traditional red phone box alongside as well:

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I’ve written and re-written that title, putting the comma in, then taking it out, then putting it back. Flowers instead of thoughts, or thoughts of nothing except flowers? I guess if I knew which I meant, I’d know which I should have written.

biscuits and other ambiguities

When I’ve quoted Sandburg – “poetry is the achievement of the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits” – in the past, I have always felt the biscuits were there to represent the everyday, functional side of life: I’ve always assumed he meant Rich Tea, not Hobnobs.

But apparently yesterday was National Biscuit Day, which set me thinking: as I am not really sure which nation was celebrating, I don’t know whether the biscuits in question are the ones you eat with morning coffee or with gravy. And even if it were definitely a British celebration, they might be cheesy biscuits rather than gingersnaps.

Now I am wondering whether Sandberg was thinking of American biscuits – the plain scones eaten with thick sausage gravy – with all the social and regional connotations that they bring to bear. Suddenly hyacinths have become the clear and unambiguous aspect of the quote: a natural Truth alongside the unnecessarily complex human view of things.
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it’s complicated

I’ve posted this poem before, but this time I have a photo to go with it.

Lacemaker

  You sit, bent over the pillow; 
beaded memories
 click back and forth. 

Deftly, you weave silk threads:
 over, under, twist and hitch; 
under, over, pin and twist. 

Beneath your fingers
 a brass forest grows
 shrouded in gossamer.

(In the photo, the forest is silver rather than brass, but I think it still illustrates the point.)
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