In & Out

The sun caught a corner of my desk the other day. I immediately reached for my phone to capture the fleeting moment.

The poet Alan Loney wrote that very thing in response to some poems I sent him at some stage in the 1980’s. ‘You capture the small moment well.’ Nice of him to write back. It was early stages for me as a poet, so any little encouragement was welcomed. Even so, the poems weren’t accepted. Obviously I needed to move on from capturing small moments. However, photos such as this one are an indication that I find this hard to do.

In this photo I have shifted the bookmarks out – bookmarks which mean something special to me as they were gifts from my friend Chrissie and mark special times. At one stage I was collecting bookmarks.

Now I tend to make them instead. (Here’s one I made two days ago to mark my place in the book A Clear Dawn – a thoroughly enjoyable read.)

Any bookmark worth its salt always has something to say on the back.

And in the interests of justice / fairness / balance – here is the opposite corner of my desk – my second-home-in-my-actual-home.

Have masks become a fashion accessory? This is the first unique-to-me one I’ve bought. I like it rather a lot, even if it does muffle my voice.

Something else I’ve bought to cheer myself up during Level Three – although that may just have been an excuse. A necklace my friend Rebecca made. Her art and jewellery pieces can be found at Stick & Stone in Australia. I LOVE my Orepuki gemstone necklace. And Rebecca generously gifted me a pair of earrings as well. I was blown away. (Which in actual fact is Orepuki’s gift – getting blown away. They have very strong southerly blasts down there in my turangawawae.)

If I gaze too often at the view from the window above my desk, I am usually tempted to drag myself away from my writing and go for a walk – or at least make some sort of contact with what is outside my front door.

These poppies-in-plant-pots have been cheering me up no end. They just keep on giving. There are also red poppies on the way, but for some reason they are slow to the party. Maybe they are biding their time so that they don’t have to share the limelight.

When I wander far enough away from my garden, I am rewarded with what the ocean has to offer.

Being a windy (a cold nor’easterly) on this chilly spring day, there was no-one walking along the beach. And it was too rough for the surfers.

But the seagulls were certainly enjoying the conditions. I was pleased to capture some of them wheeling above the turbulent breakers.