Winter haiku

Stepping out

morning cold

kisses my face

Overcast morning

my walk begins with

springy steps

Muddy river

memories of this year's flood

slowly receding

The old house

winter winds

rattling its bones

Sunny kitchen

the open recipe book

splattered with batter

Through the small window

a shaft of morning sunlight

sparkling bath water

Tamarillo harvest

hot jars lined up on the bench

my home-made chutney

Soft winter sunshine

a cold westerly blowing

its misery

Meeting with an "artist"

She called herself an artist and showed me a piece of pottery she had made some time ago.  Obviously proud of it, she kept it on show in her living area.

"I call this the Witch's Hood.  It is my depression."

Why did she keep this thing hanging around?  This dead thing of the past.  Hadn't the creation, the act of making it done its job of catharsis?  Surely now was the time to smash it to smithereens.

But no, it was displayed where she could see it every day and show it to all her visitors.  This I do not understand.  What was its purpose now?  Hadn't she let go of her depression once it was over?  Is something else going on here that I don't know about?  A few theories pop into my mind:

*  Depression was part of her identity.
*  Even though depression had gone, the experience still had some kind of psychological hold.
*  The piece represented who she was as an artist.
*  Her ego was tied up in the piece.
*  [Please add your own theories if you have any.]

I have often been impressed by people who create works of art that are intended to survive just for a single event.  Hindus make likenesses of deities for a procession at the end of which they will be toppled into the river.  Cake icers spend hours making gorgeous creations just to be gobbled up at weddings and birthday parties.  And buddhist monks can spend days carefully making a sand painting with the intention of destroying it.

I'm not suggesting that this should be the fate of all art ... but I'd love to have taken to that Witch's Hood with a hammer.

Getting the knives out

A bunch of us - ladies of a certain age - were Sunday lunching in a boardwalk cafe.  The topic of conversation turned from "recent overseas trips" to "job interviews from hell".

We recounted our tales, each hoping to beat the other in the horror stakes, but Jane had hung back until the rest of us had spoken.  Then, in her quiet way, she told a story that left the rest of us standing at the starting gates, so to speak.

"In the late '60s, I was looking for a second job" she said.  "Just part-time so's I could save some money to go to England.  A friend lined up an interview for me.  I didn't know what the job was, but I was told to bring my bikini along."

Now, this would have rung a gazillion alarm bells for me, but not for Jane.  Either she was devil-may-care when she was young ... or just plain stupid.  In any case, she went along.

She was asked to stand, bikini-clad and very still, with her back against a large board and her arms outstretched, crucifix-style.  At this point, the "interviewer" started throwing knives at her - real knives, sharp knives.

"Aaaaah" she thought as day dawned slowly but surely into her brain.  "I'm to be a knife-thrower's target girl, am I?  Not bloody likely!"

Then from the depths of our open-mouthed silence, someone piped up:  "But did you pass the interview?"

"Well, I'm still here, aren't I?"

Twitter etiquette

I've recently taken to writing in the bath.  In my head, of course, because paper gets soggy.  Only trouble is, there's no SAVE button on my brain.  By the time I'm dried and dressed, I've forgotten all my "priceless" gems.  What happens in the bath, stays in the bath.

However, I did remember this and am writing it down, bare-bottomed, before it vanishes, like the two stories I thought of earlier.

Oh, hang on, I've just remembered what one of them was about - Twitter Etiquette, or more precisely, the etiquette of re-tweeting, probably not something yet taught at finishing schools.

First, the tweeter (AKA the re-tweetee) thanks the retweeter for their retweets (RTs).  Then the retweeter replies with something like "My pleasure" or "No worries".  Usually it ends there, but on rare occasions, the original tweeter will round off the exchange with yet another tweet.  "Cheers", "OK" or the like.

When I first joined Twitter, I observed these unspoken rules of etiquette (twittiquette or tweetiquette, take your pick) in case I was thought of as rude.  Then I became slack with my tweetiquette, just checking what was being RTd and by whom - my favourite part of the day, my ego-boost.

These rules have just manifested on their own without discussion (to my knowledge) or a vote.  They just are.  Maybe there's a hashtag somewhere where people discuss these pressing concerns.  But I don't think I'll bother checking it out.

English words and their meaning

English is my native tongue, but really, I stand outside it, just looking in.  I use its words, I know what the sounds mean in today's world, but in fact, they are mysteries to me, especially their origins.

Leafing through the Oxford Concise Dictionary of English Etymology, I happen upon "pall-mall".  This is where our shopping "mall" comes from, but what it means has nothing at all to do with shops.  Pall = ball; and mall = mallet.  They were used in a game of the same name in which a ball is driven through an iron ring.  Hence, the name of the London alley where this game was played became known as Pall Mall.  From there, a mall became a shaded walk and a shopping complex.  The disconnect from its roots is now complete.

My own name, Gaye (or Gay), has also changed its meaning through the centuries.  Once meaning merry or brightly-coloured, in the 17th century it meant dissolute, dissipated, and was often used to describe a prostitute or "fast" woman.  More recently, it is both noun and adjective, referring to male homosexuality.

Originally, an epicure was a glutton, whereas today it describes someone of refined taste in food and wine.  "Nice" comes from the Latin root for ignorant and originally meant "foolish".  "Pretty" meant "crafty; wily", coming from the West Germanic "pratt" meaning trick.

So many words have travelled far from their roots.  Here are some more original meanings:

display = unfold

generous = nobly born

hussy = housewife

jest = deed

minister = servant

minx = pet dog

quaint = skilled, clever

startle = kick, struggle

uncanny = malicious

uncouth = unknown, unfamiliar

undaunted - untamed

vibrant = agitated

wistful = closely attentive

So, if someone says:

"She was a generous hussy, quaint and wistful in household ways, without uncanny jests, her minx by her feet, she became vibrant when confronted with the uncouth."

... what they are actually saying is:

"She was a well-born housewife, skilled and closely attentive in household ways, without malicious deeds, her pet dog by her feet, she became agitated when confronted with the unfamiliar."

When compasses go crazy

Hi again Cormac, I'm so selfishly happy you've decided to start another site.  And welcome to Coraline (or is it Nicole) in her new role as co-moderator.  I'm confused.  Anyhow, here's my first story for the new site, "Icarus' Flight to Perfection", it's Premiere Session, October 2010.  I've chosen to write using the four words: Trip. Triptych. Pick. Tropic.  Here it is:

A trip to the tropics.  North Queensland.  As the train sped up the coastline, the accumulations of my old life began to fall away.  A sense of freedom seeped in with every mile.

Magnetic Island, or Maggie as I call her, drew me to herself at these times of my life.  Times of recovery, healing, refreshment.

But there was someone I wanted to visit on the way.  A friend from down south had married and was living in one of the sugarcane towns.  Married.  This was not the woman I had known.  She had been a free-loving, free-spirited hippie; the one who had admonished me for being jealous when she enticed my boyfriend into her bed.  "We" don't try to possess people she had said.  Our "set" was open-minded, new-thinking, experimental.

She had gone north for work, met a local mill worker and married.  A jealous, monogamous guy, not one of the "set".  She was now trotting out localisms with ease, like describing a young woman as "the town bike".  She had slotted right in without a backward glance at her old liberal ways.  Living her cane town life, she had taken on a cane town persona.  It seemed that, wherever she went, she mirrored the values and ideas of those around her.  She needed acceptance.

Like a three-sided triptych, it was "Take your pick - which face do you want me to show to the world today?"  Or a Rubik's cube with endless combinations of clicks, she was capable of chameleon-like changes to suit her surroundings.

But she didn't need to recolour herself like this.  She had a lot to offer from inside her own being, and this continued to shine through.  She had a beautiful nature and I'd learnt so much from her about organic gardening and vegetarian cooking.  I wish I could have told her that at the time, but I was just confused then.  My swirling thoughts and feelings have only now coalesced into words.

After a few days in the cane town, I continued on my way north.  Captain Cook had so named Magnetic Island in 1770 because his ship's compasses went awry as they passed by.  My mind's compasses too were now all over the place.  I didn't know north from south, east from west, so to speak.  But dear old Maggie would enclose me in her arms and work in the opposite way for me.  A few weeks amongst her huge boulders and blue bays helped to sort through my swirling thoughts and put things right again.

Running the gauntlet at the supermarket

I risked another trip to the supermarket yesterday.  After last week's fiasco with the nit-picking mother (see my story "At the Checkout" on ThinkingTen"), I was understandably uneasy.  But, after pushing my trolley uneventfully for a few minutes, I began to relax.  Maybe I could, after all, run the gauntlet of the aisles without seeing or hearing something that would send me into paroxysms of inappropriate laughter this time.

But as I went past the deli counter, the shop assistant called out: "No. 1?  Do we have a No. 1?  No?  How about a No. 2?"  I couldn't stifle my laughter, but everyone else remained unsmiling.

No-one owned up to being No. 1 or No. 2, probably from embarrassment, but when she asked for No. 3, a woman said: "Yes, that's me".  Clearly, she had never watched Miss Jocelyn, the English comedian, who has at least up to No. 4 for things you can do in the toilet.

Maybe such euphemisms are a bit twee, but I knew a family who went to the other extreme, saying things like: "We'll stop for a urination break soon" or "Mummy, I need to defaecate".  I kid you not.  I heard it firsthand while on a picnic with them.  Those kids had never wee-weed or pooed their pants in their lives.  It would have been linguistically improper.

Anyhow, I managed to finish my shopping and escape through the checkout without any more trouble.