A Moment Between Life and Death

I knew this moment would come and am more surprised it's taken so long than anything else. 

We moved not long ago to a light airy maisonette beside a park. Our sizeable garden is bordered by trees, full of squirrels and birds. As Spring blossomed, the trees grew young leaf and the birds were busy.

We have two cats. I knew one day they would bring back a bird.

Season of Mists

Image from Dept. of Culture,
Media and Sport blog

Although Piglet does more of the 3 'R's than when she first started school, she still comes home with artwork, is encouraged to take part in sports, goes for day trips to museums and parks. I wonder sometimes what world she is being prepared for. I look at people in the adult world of work and they seem too busy, too tired to go for group walks,sit down and sketch, join a five-a-side football team. As people hit middle age and their cholesterol levels rise, they often hark back to the years when they played sport at school. It seems a pity we don't have a society that continuously encourages such activities.

I like British Buddhists for the way that as adults they will do collective art projects, engage in nature and everyday meditation.

I don't want to join in with them, LOL. If I go along to British Buddhist events, they treat me with cautious reverence - as if I might innately know more about Buddhist philosophy via my Japanese blood than they do through their years of study. It makes me feel like when we were children and our cat had an eye infection. To remind us to apply its ointment one of us stuck up a picture of an eye over the kitchen doorway. Visitors used to ask in hushed voices what it was. We would say: "Oh. It's to do with our grandmother's religion. Don't talk about it." We would snigger and kick each other like children. (Well, we were children, LOL.)

The taste of madeleine cakes provokes
vivid memories of childhood for Proust.
Image from French Embassy site.

I don't paint well (does that matter? not to Buddhists) and since tearing up my knee at rugby I don't do much sport (other than high speed Piglet pursuit). I do have Piglet, so I do fun things with her, pretending that it's part of being a mum as opposed to just fun. I also blog, so I decided to make an Autumn Collection, like the Spring Collections fashion houses put together; a sort of Proustian set of ephemeral moments captured in picture, sound and text.  

Pots of herbs at Dyffryn Gardens

O Wild West wind, thou breath of autumn’s being ... 

Autumn is my favourite time of year. Colours are soft and warm. I start fetching out woolen garments.

I collect things from the hedgerows.

Taking it out on the socks

It's been a stressful time, necessitating measures beyond the hanging out of laundry.  

Zen and the art of crossing the road (saving chldren's lives)

Since becoming a mother, I've become a bit of a zealot about crossing the road only when the 'green walker', as my even more politically correct friend calls it, is flashing.

Lawn meditation

From Asterix in Britain

Cream Slice of Life

 

Bad news.  My local Tescos has started stocking cream slices. This means that I can go and get a box of two and have one for elevenses and one for tea every day!!!  I'm not sure my jeans will stand the pressure.  

Zen and the art of hanging out the laundry

Putting Out the Smalls by Alison Moger
(I bought this picture in installments from Craft in the Bay)