Take that!! Aaaaannnd THAT! Hahahahahahaha.
The Ever Increasing Bump - Yesterday.
Sunday afternoon, a windy walk to the farmers market and pumpkin carving with the kids.
Tuna steaks marinated in soy, honey and smoked sea salt, with lime butter asparagus spears and potato rosti.
Morning. Poxy happy Dutch lift, grrr. Where’s the feckin coffee, eh? Eh??
Conference centre, Amsterdam. Amsterdam, as organised as Germany, but with a sense of humour…
Lonely in Gatwick. En route to Amsterdam for work.
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The word ‘witch’ pulled my eyes down into this poem when I saw it first. I don’t know if it’s a romantic notion of paganism, or just a lingering fondness for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but I like candles. (Not like that, you sicko) And studying the moon. And using words like ‘widdershins’. It might explain the tattoo that runs from my upper thigh to my heart and half way round my back.
To me the first stanza reminds me of my first decade of wildness, ‘braver at night’ and ‘out of mind’. I was young, and ‘possessed’. I put myself in danger, repeatedly. And ’not a woman, quite’.
The second stanza is where I found myself, despite all my best efforts - a ‘warm cave’ the home I bought and paid for myself, a husband, a child - a safe place where I ‘fixed the suppers’. An I too felt ‘misunderstood’, because in my heart I feel wild still, and here I am, digging a garden, wearing sensible shoes and adding insulation to the attic. (And liking it)
The third and final piece allows me, in an odd way to reconcile these two states of being - without having to betray one or the other. I think Anne is referring to Joan of Arc here, who was burnt at the stake for her beliefs, but personally I choose it to be about accepting my own nature, I will ‘wave my nude arms at villages’ and be a ‘survivor’ despite being judged harshly for my eccentricities. I am ‘not ashamed’. I am ‘a woman like that’. A witch, a wife, a woman with strong beliefs. And proud of it.
I have gone out, a possessed witch, haunting the black air, braver at night; dreaming evil, I have done my hitch over the plain houses, light by light: lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind. A woman like that is not a woman, quite. I have been her kind. I have found the warm caves in the woods, filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves, closets, silks, innumerable goods; fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves: whining, rearranging the disaligned. A woman like that is misunderstood. I have been her kind. I have ridden in your cart, driver, waved my nude arms at villages going by, learning the last bright routes, survivor where your flames still bite my thigh and my ribs crack where your wheels wind. A woman like that is not ashamed to die. I have been her kind.
anne sexton
Irish Times, Page 5 - Yesterday.
I wonder if I should put air holes in it?
Remember that movie where a couple bought a young boy who was really a robot, but he started to have real feelings, and he liked chocolate icecream? This reminds me of that movie. Also, I WANT AN EVIE IN A BOX!
Typhoon Ketsana left Viet Nam and is now a tropical storm. It made landfall at about 0700 GMT about 80 kilometres south of Vietnam’s fourth-largest city, Da Nang. So far there are 240 reported deaths. 1.8 million people are effected. Over 374,000 people have been evacuated.
A quake in Samoa has triggered a tsunami in the Samoa/Tonga region. The quake was centered about 125 miles from Samoa, an island nation of 180,000 people located about halfway between New Zealand and Hawaii. It was about 120 miles from neighboring American Samoa, a U.S. territory that is home to 65,000 people.
There has also been a quake in Sumatra at 12:40 CET, not much is known except that it was magnitude 7.9 Richter and at a depth of 85 km.
Cold weather is coming -
I have a photoshoot with three toddlers and a quite famous actress in twenty minutes, I really should be working on the draft presentation on technology and innovation for the developing world which needs to be done by lunch, there’s a typhoon warning in Vietnam and I have to organise Finn’s birthday party for Saturday - (he’s going to be 3, and for his birthday, he wants his mum and dad to be spidermummy and spiderdaddy) Hmm.
So I thought I’d switch hemispheres and post this moment on Tumblr. The Liffey is really green, I am due to get a large envelope in the post any day with my novel’s first official rejection - so exciting, you know you’re a writer when you start counting the number of agents who don’t want you - and my office on the fifth floor is a joy given that I’m lugging a 5 month bump everywhere.
And still, I have a heart full of love today. Must be the frikken hormones. Happy humpday people!!
