Roly Poly - Zeal is Real

I wanted Zara to have puppies. but the attendant difficulties - primarily my own desire to keep tham all - meant that I needed to have her speyed. On the 8th of February we visited the vet. Fortunately, and with her own natural ability to bounce back, all went well, and tomorrow the stitches will be taken out. Here she is, recovering from surgery. I have to say that the cone she was supposed to wear over her head to stop her bothering her stitches was tried on, very briefly, twice, and quickly removed. She looked so desolate in it, I had to take it off. I'm sure it will soon be tossed out into the garbage. Not once has she bothered her stitches at all. One of the things she loves to do most in the world is push herself along, chin on the ground, front paws tucked under, like she's swimming. I'm sure she was a powerful fish - a tuna or a salmon - in a former life!

What the Wood

I'm wondering what to do with the branches that have fallen in the winds.

I want them remembered.

I'm trying to find a way to make the connection they have for me real to the world outside my own.

They twist and bend as I do. They grow towads the light.

My ideas are still forming. Nothing that is real ever dies.

Bungle

The Ghosts of My Summer...

 

My days have been determined not only by the heat, like a wind against which I stand, but by my computer's malfunctioning. If I appear to have been out of touch, it's not voluntary...

Under the Glare

In Melbourne's summers, the grass burns to straw,

leaves and branches fall from Eucalypts,

the soil turns to dust

and all that moves are the wind and insects.

Even hardy succulents and sun-lovers wilt and singe.

Days in the mid-30s ( 35 degrees Celsius = 95 degrees Fahrenheit ) are not uncommon.

You go outside into the simmering heat and want to faint.

You realise it's silent because the birds have stopped singing.

I am spending countless hours watering, nursing the garden, keeping strong.

Follower

Follower

Never give me what I want -
I, losing my footing,
am the font
of all meandering.

You had suspected
someone, with some gumption,
would have trodden
purposefully -
unlike me - to all the others
pandering.

You will want to replace me,
sooner or later,
with an individual
unable to make an assumption -

Faisal Grant, 21/01/2012.

The genuine writer: Frank O'Connor.

I've not found a story of Frank O'Connor's yet that makes me want to disconnect. He had a big heart, a sharp eye and a sense of fair play. My favourite of his stories come out of his observations of childhood: the child, ever perceptive, is nonetheless captured within the confounding circumstances of family, and must express himself.
A gentle man, I highly recommend his short stories, regarded as among the best ever written.