Not a happy gardener, because it’s too wet for me to do any gardening today. My garden is extremely happy though, due to a good, solid soaking of rain that has hardly let up all day.
When I saw a magpie, a currawong, and two kookaburras outside my kitchen window this morning, my first thought was one of amusement – they are social distancing! Then I thought, but this is the way birds always act. They never get into each other’s space, they wait patiently, distanced from one another. No, not social distancing at all. I believe birds understand – they have always known – that they each need their own “personal space”.
There’s nothing to see today where the mountain can usually be seen sitting in all her splendour. Nothing but mist and rain. I took all of my outdoors photos today from either inside, or standing on my back veranda. It’s too wet to venture any further.
I have spent most of today indoors, sorting through masses of papers which have littered my desk for the past three months while I have been engrosed in uni study and assignments. I plonked a grey blanket on top of my sewing table a few weeks ago, and Miss Tibbs seems so happy with it being there that I haven’t had the heart to move it. Now, she sleeps on the blanket, and when she’s not sleeping she’s kneading the blanket! That’s why one of her paws is blurred in the photo – up and down her little paws went, kneading away as happy as could be.
I’m pretty happy too – just look at my desk-top! No really, look at it, because you can! And I can too! This is a rare event! I usually have so many piles of this, that and the other on my desk, but today they have either been thrown in the recycle bin, or put away where they belong. Bliss! ❤
I have another blissful sight to share too – a pile of books that I have been collecting over the past months of uni. I’m reading two book now, and will work my way through these, and others, during the next few months.
In another week’s time, I think I might have my life sorted and back in order. 🙂
Far over the misty mountains cold
To dungeons deep and caverns old
We must away ere break of day
To seek the pale enchanted gold.
~~ J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit.
The mist is below the mountain actually, but what a glorious sight it is! I’ve been looking forward to daylight savings so I could rise an hour earlier, which at 5:30am – in real “Earth” time, even though the clock says it’s 6:30 – is right on sunrise. It’s a magical time of day, when the valley has an atmosphere of belonging to another world at the break of day.
I haven’t heard of any dungeons in the valley or the mountain ranges, but I’m sure many “caverns old” could be discovered there.
If only the kookaburras could talk, they could tell the tales of caverns they have discovered in the valley.
Looking east towards the coast as the sun was rising, I could see the clouds catching glimmers of sunlight – more magic!
There are no dragons from Middle Earth guarding this “pale enchanted gold” at the end of the day, just the sparkling lights in the sleepy town below. 🙂
When my blog-buddy Nicki at the Secret Library Book Blog posted that she intended reading The Sewing Machine by Natalie Fergie, it reminded me that I wrote a review of the book last year for a university assignment. When reading through the review today I had to make a few changes to remove evidence of it once having been an assignment, but I’ve left the basics intact.
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There’s a great deal to like about Natalie Fergie’s debut historical fiction novel The Sewing Machine. The inter-generational weaving of lives, and the social context of various time periods intertwining events spanning over one-hundred years form a complex narrative of intrigue.
The catalyst, a message written by Jean and wrapped around a bobbin before she left the Singer factory is discovered by Kathleen after she purchases a new machine. This message, and the part the machine plays in the lives of each owner as it passes through the generations remains the focus of the story.
The last owner of the sewing machine, Fred, who we meet in 2016, is an unemployed blogger. He is the great-grandson of Kathleen, and inherits the sewing machine as part of his grandparent’s estate. After his fateful meeting with the great-granddaughter of Jean, the two descendants unravel the mystery of the message written in 1911.
I have just one criticism to make regarding the structure of The Sewing Machine. As captivating as the story is, I found the emotional connection between character and reader hindered by the introduction of three protagonists within the first nineteen pages, with each living in a different time period. In the beginning, the plot was difficult to follow. Further preventing intimacy with each protagonist, little is mentioned about their appearance. In an interview with Anne Bonny, Fergie claims she “painted each character’s appearance with a light brush” to enable the reader to form a picture of the person through their personality, avoiding any “long-winded physical descriptions”.
Unfortunately, descriptions of a nurse dressing for her shift on page 178 are long-winded. The paragraph begins with “she assembled the uniform in stages, fixing the collar on to the dress with three studs”. After a detailed fifteen-line commentary of a nurse dressing, complete with accessories, the nurse “gathered her red woolen cloak around her and set off, past the discreetly signed mortuary and up the steps to the long surgical corridor”. With similar detailed narrative of the characters lacking, I formed mental images of faceless people while reading.
At times, it is difficult to foresee how all elements of the story will come together. By the conclusion, however, the connection of every significant event occurring within the two families over one-hundred-and-five years is cleverly explained.
I read The Sewing Machine over four days during April 2018 and my rating for the book on Goodreads is four stars.
“A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it.” – Roald Dahl
The month of November in the blogging world each year brings forth challenges, writing challenges to be specific, usually in the form of something along the lines of NaNoWriMo, which I joined once, way back in my early days of blogging. It gave me confidence, I met other novice bloggers (and some not so novice!) and learnt some about the World of Blogging.
A few days ago I signed up for a month of daily November learning sessions, offered by WordPress ~ Blogging 201, which I am hoping will help me to understand the technical side of WordPress blogging more fully, ie ~ how to make all of those little widgets and gadgets work in my dashboard area, and Writing 101, to encourage me to write each day, a practice of which I have been extremely tardy of late!
The task today in Blogging 201 is to discover a new feature that you never realised you had, connected to the theme chosen for your blog. That was an easy task, as I had been wondering if my theme, Twenty Ten, offered a drop down box option option below the header. It does, and I have combined my other websites  into a drop down option, when the computer mouse is hovered over where it says “about” ~ give it a go, it works, and takes away some of the clutter at the top of my page! I have something else in mind to add there, a new idea though, which will need a bit more thought before I take action.
Today’s task for Writing 101 is the purpose for today’s post, in which students are asked to tell why they write. It will be interesting to read how others have answered this question (or completed the sentence, whichever way you wish to look at it) as for me, it’s a moot point ~ I have always written something, poems, letters, cards, fiction and non-fiction. I need paper, pens, pencils and books to keep my world spinning, and the world of the computer, and the internet, simply enhance my literary world. Why? I don’t know. Writing, words, are a part of who I am. Whether the words I write, when strung together in sentence form, are regarded as good, bad or otherwise is of no consequence. And as long as my sentences continue to make some sense, I will continue to write.
This November challenge arrived at just the right time for me. I remembered something recently, a forgotten dream, from over twenty years ago. When we lived in Sydney, with two young children and another on the way, planning to build our dream home “up north”, I saw my future home as one in which I would relax my soul and find a snippet of quiet time in every day. I had, and still have, a beautiful desk at which to write, and I dreamed of sitting at my wonderful desk and writing down all of the words I had wished to write during recent years, when my children were young and taking up all of the time in my days, and my writing was limited to the occasional letter.
My desk is still waiting for me. Don’t get me wrong, I have spent countless hours sitting with head down and pen in hand at my desk, writing business letters, or adding numbers into columns for the tax man. I’ve written out cards for various occasions, notes to school teachers, checked homework, even written out cheques back in the old days, and in more recent years these tasks have been promoted to another larger desk, complete with computer, printer, scanner….when all I really wanted was my simple desk, a pen and some paper on which to write the words told to me by the voice inside my heart.
So, I write because….I can, and in the hope that my words may hold some meaning to another soul who finds my words and reads them.
I write because….it is often easier to write than to speak. Forming written words clears my busy brain and has even answered questions to problems which I have imagined were insurmountable.
I write because….there may be something that I say that will be significant to a future generation, which is why I write down the information I have discovered, and the stories I have remembered, from past generations.
I write because I love to write. I write from my heart, I know of no other way. And I will continue to write.
Since the year began, I have already, unintentionally, developed a few new habits. Although I read every day, always having a book of some description on standby, to pick up and read a few pages whilst eating lunch, or before going to sleep, this year, reading has become as natural to me as drinking a glass of water.
Every day this year also, I have written a few lines in my own personal journal. Nothing earth-shattering, just a word or two about my day. This particular habit I began in January last year, although I didn’t carry it through the entire year. Not until the last three months, that is, and this year, my daily notes have easily become a habit.
Robin, over at Breezes at Dawn, has spoken recently about Morning Pages. This morning, I tried it. I didn’t follow all the rules, but I did try out the concept.
I should start at the beginning of what eventuated though, leading to my urge to write first thing in the day. Last night, at around 11:30 pm, I finished reading “The Camino”, a book written by Shirley MacLaine. In the book, she describes her own personal thoughts as she walked the 780 kilometres (500 miles) of the Santiago de Compostela Camino, though the north of Spain.
Anyone who is familiar with the writings of Shirley MacLaine will know them, at times, to be rather controversial. This is a lady who says it like it is. She has traveled her own spiritual journey for many years, and through many previous lifetimes, as she continues to learn. When I read another book of hers, “Out on a Limb”, when it was first released in the 1980’s, I was ready for her. Shirley MacLaine wrote the knowledge I had been searching for for a lifetime. The world, however, balked at her candidness, she was ridiculed.
“Out on a Limb”
Reading “The Camino”, I felt certain that I would be prepared for anything she wrote about, but I wasn’t. I won’t spoil the book for anyone by describing the section that disturbed me though, if you feel so inclined, please do read it yourself, it is quite a wonderful book. But when I awoke this morning, before speaking to anyone, before allowing anyone to invade my thought space, I wrote.
On Goodreads, I rated the book four out of five stars, then continued by writing a review. This was my first book review, and it didn’t hurt a bit, in fact, I have written two more reviews at Goodreads today, and have decided to continue this habit (yet another newly formed habit for 2015) with each book as I finish reading it.
I think it helped, writing early in the day. I needed to flush the disturbing section of the book from my mind, and by putting those written words out into the Universe, I believe it has removed the thoughts sufficiently for me to move on to my next book, a light-hearted novel. 🙂
Later, perhaps in a few weeks or months, once some time has passed, I will contemplate “The Camino” again. It is certainly a journey which I would love to (physically) take myself on one day. For now though, time will allow my mind to come to terms with some of the aspects of the story, and I will decide whether what has been written is a truth I am comfortable with. For now, I’m not.
If you are a member of Goodreads, add me as a friend there. If you are a reader and haven’t joined the site, I can recommend it as a site in which you can keep track of the books you have read, are reading, and wish to read in the future.
Here is the review I wrote ~
Years ago, I read “Out on a Limb” by Shirley MacLaine, so knew to expect the unexpected from her.
The first three quarters of the book describe how she heard about the Camino, the journey itself, the people she met along the way, past life regressions she experienced during her quiet times….so far, very interesting, and I enjoyed following her walking travels through the sacred trail.
The last few chapters rattled me. This was where I reached “the unexpected”, (which, of course, I should have expected!) I can only imagine that my own soul’s journey through time was not yet ready to hear the things that Shirley MacLaine wrote about. This is not a criticism of the book, just how it felt to me. The story is written with complete honesty, and I like that. If an author, any author at all, is going to write an autobiographical account of any period of their life, I would expect nothing less, therefore, if what I read in the latter section of the book had not upset my equilibrium, my rating would be five stars. It definitely took me out of my comfort zone!
I would only recommend this book to a person who is open to hearing of possibilities other than those traditionally accepted, as per the bible. And having a mind wide open would help as well. It is evident that Shirley MacLaine realizes there may be some readers who find what they read disturbing, as warnings are strategically placed at the beginning of two such sections. I read past the first warning sign unscathed…but even though I felt my mind open to new theories, it will take some time to digest the possibility of the second concept presented.
In My World 