This is likely not the most common one in use – it comes from Milton where tripping refers to dancing lightly – and doing so quite fancily. The poem is called L’Allegro and addresses the Grace Euphrosyne, being the goddess of happiness or mirth.
Come, and trip it as ye go
On the light fantastic toe,
I bought some blackberries today as an indulgence. I feel like I was spoiled as a child because I had that garden next to the house where mum painstakingly and lovingly cultivated a single Himalayan blackberry vine to give us glorious fat blackberries every year. These ones, while tasty, will never hold a candle to the flavour of those sun-warm berries that went straight from vine to mouth. They are, however, enough to evoke the nostalgia of those days. I think this single memory; the garden next to the house where we could find fresh lettuce, basil, berries – is the main reason I ever wanted to own a house.
Saturday was Lindsie’s birthday, so we celebrated by eating a lot and drinking wine. I mean what better way to celebrate a birthday? We exchanged gifties (both BTS themed, of course) because she brought me a treat from her family adventure to New York. I was so full when I got home!
Yesterday was one of those rare bright spring days that still have the bite of winter in them. (I thought the weather change from the drizzly grey mess that was yesterday would have triggered a migraine, but I seem to have escaped!) Even though the equinox has come and gone, the nights are still cold and there is still a chill in the wind. Oona and I talked a bit about how our summers have definitely changed – last year we didn’t have much of one – not heat dome the likes of which we had in recent years, which also meant less beach time. But we still had little to no rain – which to me marks the fifth year of drought – and the accompanying wildfires. In fact there is at least one fire that is still burning from the summer, just beneath the earth, along the root paths of the trees. How horrifying is that? Fitting that I found the word “weltenschmerz” (an all-encompassing kind of melancholic pain that affects the human being as a result of the deplorable state of the world itself) today in my incessant internet rabbit holes.
Speaking of rabbit holes, I also dug out some of my old class notes from my classes at UVIC. My desire to return to poetry has highlighted the fact that I’ve let my skills get a bit rusty, so it was kind of fun to see the formal approach to it again. All the notebooks have *read more poetry* written in the margins. That is excellent advice for many of us. I feel like poetry is a genre that gets overlooked quite a bit – I mean it’s not as accessible as a lot of other art forms. You have to think. You have to be willing to let it make you feel things. That’s a lot easier with TV shows and music. Not that either of those things are in any way lesser – gods no! I just think that poetry is capable of things that other genres are not. I think one of my favourite things ever is when you recognize a reference to earlier art/poetry/plays in a current work. I love the referential stuff – like the unapologetic amount of Shakespeare that’s in Star Trek, you know?
There are also various snarks in my margins about how we were once again learning about old dead guys – the classics, of course, are riddled with those and this one class was all about the Romantic Poets. I feel like my next rabbit hole is looming ahead – who are these old dead guy’s contemporaries? Surely there were also women writing? (ah-ha yes! Anna Laetitia Barbauld, and Joanna Baillie to the rescue.) Mr. white rabbit? Have you got the time?
*slips down the rabbit hole*
listening to: Like Crazy – Jimin reading: BashÅ eating: Blackberries drinking: ginger ale and pomegranate juice word count: 1530 headspace: Mare Vaporum
oppression, depression, faith, belief, self-confidence, desire, control: you cannot control and faith is giving up control.It’s about control in a way. The world throws you a curve ball and you can change your perception of the situation by imposing the parameters of your world view on it – but you have to have faith in that world view or said curve ball will shatter it.
Faith is surrendering control (or rather, the illusion of control) and is not necessarily connected with religion. (Like spirituality is not necessarily connected with religion.)
Personally, I’d like to have faith in human nature. I’d like to trust that every person is out to treat others well in the hopes that others treat him/her well. But then, we all know how well the practise works out versus the theory, don’t we?
So I’m walking up the street with the groceries in one hand, and my oversize purse-ok-fine-it’s-a-fucking-suitcase in the other and I’ve got like, three million things going on in my head. I kid you not. I get to the door and I’m fishing out my keys thinking, I really need a pen, because some of this is good shit, but where was I?
I mean, it starts out with kind-of-relevant to the day things, like: how am I going to word the intro on the staff meeting notes? or: I have to remember to key that order tomorrow morning, to something I read on the bus: I wonder how Bear came up with that idea for a trancendental alien race, was she watching too much star trek? (then I get distracted) I really need new shoes, these ones squeak, maybe I can go hunting for some Friday after work, what was that song that was on the radio this am, I should really look that up because it’s still in my head and it’s going to bug me if I don’t… and then I dive right into the plethora of crap that’s always roiling about in the back of my head: oh hey, I wonder what happened to Marlon and Aimee’s mom, was she affected with the fever, and just what is the difference between an endemic, pandemic and an epidemic, I gotta look that up because that makes a difference to what happens in the story and oh hey, what if she didn’t die of that, but the dad did because oh hey, I left him out, perhaps that’s the reason she was a jade-head and then that would certainly explain… crap did I remember the onion?
Of course it’s not exactly linear, but you get the drift.
It’s that damn onion that makes the rest of it take a freaking hike. USB jack, WRU?
listening to: Ashley MacIsaac – Sleepy Maggie (I love Mary Jane Lamond’s voice…)
eating: stew
reading: The Snow Queen – Joan D. Vinge
craving: a sunbeam
feeling: zoned
word of the day: crescendo
Think I’m still affected by the carbon monoxide incident from yesterday, since I’m still kind of nauseous. (It’s too bad because that butter chicken was uber delicious last night. /sigh.) Some guy had parked outside the door of the office and when he started his car this cloud of bluish exhaust billowed inside. He must have had some kind of engine trouble, because it was an excessive amount and he wasn’t even there for long. It floated inside and I could not get away from the smell of it. I even went outside for a few minutes after I started to get dizzy, even though that’s really against the rules because I was there all by my lonesome, but I thought I was going to pass out. I turned all the fans on and even then it took a good couple of hours before at least the smell of it was gone, but the damage was done. Was kinda weird all day!
Oh, and I found out what the cannon fire was for. (Lindsie told me this am!) Something about an address from the throne – apparently they do this every time they open a season of parliament. Funny how I don’t ever recall them firing the cannons before. I’m so spacey dammit!
Had one of those wake-up-every-three-minutes kind of nights last night. So many things in my head and not enough energy to sort them out. Bills, moving, applications, volunteering, moving, dreams. Omg the dreams… I’ve been having some exceptionally vivid (as in I’m there type vivid) ones of late – when I do sleep. /sigh.
Also, useless debates… I’ve been reading Carnival by Elizabeth Bear and I’ve been distracting myself with the politics. Speculative fiction does that to me (yes, I have this, as well as all the other crap running through my head. It’s like streaming radio… dear god I want a usb jack for my brain!). I think the conflict will unravel around the central question of equality. The argument being, of course, is if it’s possible for men and women to operate as equals in a society. It seems in a lot of fiction I’ve read that there always ends up being that whole powerful/powerless dichotomy no matter how you slice it – but is that the result of the society or the units that comprise it? You can throw biology and enlightenment into it all you want, but I think it comes down to the individual in the end. I’m curious to see how the novel pans out.
In other news, J’s mom is again MIA… Not good.
mmm… gonna go peel some taters…
listening to: Muse – Stockholm Syndrome
eating: again, nada (correction! seared cow flesh! mmm!)
craving: still blackberry wine
reading: my brain… o.0
feeling: sleepy
I feel a sudden urge to reorganize the entire house and clean everything. And I mean everything. I want to dig everything out of the cupboards and go through it all and junk a bunch of things and make everything useful and organise it to death. Why is it that that happens after I’ve had an entirely boring day at work? I had an urge to take all the jewellery off the rounder today and sort it by colour and item. I mean, WTf? I am one seriously mis-wired chick.
But the good news is that tomorrow, I can use that energy to work on my novel, since I’m home all day, and since I doubt I will get much of it done tonight since J has the TV on. Lets just hope that I don’t organize myself into a corner, lol!
Social norms… aren’t they weird? i.e. certain sounds you’re not supposed to pay attention to, like farts from old ladies or that weird rattle that’s coming out of the heater on the bus?
And isn’t it funny that you can all of a sudden look at something you’ve looked at every day of your life for a few years and suddenly see it like it’s the first time?