GIFFING OFF ON HIS LAST DAY AT AUSTLIT

2 Tough and Crazy people get together and consider life through the Oracle of the Animated Gif. They contemplate the clouded tropical Brisbane day and the Shuggle emptying out. They take thought for the two footie games on in Brizzy tonight and Clay coming early in the morning to help load the van.
And SHE giffs off for an hour or so as the day draws to a close. Boxes packed. Sinks scrubbed. Louvres washed. Birds losing it in Beryl Mortimer’s lovely garden.

Heavy Rain drops start to fall. A tear or two for the ENDINGS. SHE will miss the people from the streets. Who knows what else they will miss ? One leaves for one reason and finds they have left for another reason entirely.

I am the voyage you will make alone
in a small, unstable, open boat
for the rest of your life…

The afternoon darkens and thunder rumbles. The floor is swept and washed. Only been here 3 months and it seems a still unknown floor to her.

THANKS AGAIN TO THE MOST HONOURABLE SITE OF THE ZEN FROG FOR THIS QUOTE

You’ve got to practice meditation when you walk, stand, lie down, sit, and work,
while washing your hands, washing the dishes, sweeping the floor, drinking tea,
talking to friends, or whatever you are doing. When you are washing the dishes,
washing the dishes must be the most important thing on your life. Just as when
you are drinking tea, drinking tea must be the most important thing in your life.

- Thich Nat Hahn

Animals give me more pleasure through the viewfinder of a camera than they ever did in the crosshairs of a gunsight. And after I’ve finished “shooting,” my unharmed victims are still around for others to enjoy. I have developed a deep respect for animals. I consider them fellow living creatures with certain rights that should not be violated any more than those of humans. ~Jimmy Stewart

Then again there is a site which actually has instructions on how to sweep a floor. Here it is should you feel the need. http://housekeeping.about.com/od/surfacefloors/ht/howtosweep.htm

RETIRING FROM THE DAY GIG

2 Tough and Crazy people get together and consider life through the Oracle of the Animated Gif. They contemplate His leaving the day Gig. RETIRING in a manner. From 4.30 am and 5.30 knock offs. From time sheets and Office lifts. They wonder about the time before them without the INCOME. They contemplate days spent together and no BOSS at all. She is well accustomed to it. Dropped out long ago – but HE is daring the MUSIC and the LITERATURE. and the Cottage on the Hill.

 

 

Come, my friends,
‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved the earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
— From Ulysses by Alfred Tennyson

Retirement without the love of letters is a living burial.
— Seneca

for good advice on the JOY OF NOT WORKING try this honourable site.

Retirement means doing whatever you want to do. It means choice.

 

FOR TWO OXYMORONS OF 1949 – ACTIVE RETIREMENT

In green old gardens, hidden away
From sight of revel and sound of strife,
Here I have leisure to breathe and move,
And to do my work in a nobler way;
To sing my songs, and to say my say;
To Dream my dreams, and to love my love;
To hold my faith, and to live my life.
Making the most of its shadowy day.
- Violet Fane, 1843 – 1905, In Green Old Gardens

Henry Addington (1801-04) “In youth, the absence of pleasure is pain, in old age the absence of pain is pleasure.

Eden is that old-fashioned House
We dwell in every day
Without suspecting our abode
Until we drive away.
– Emily Dickinson

We consider that any man who can fiddle all through one of those Virginia Reels without losing his grip, may be depended upon in any kind of musical emergency.
MARK TWAIN

ANCESTORS

2 Tough and Crazy people get together and consider life through the Oracle of the Animated Gif. They contemplate the ancestors. They are tracking back through the life of Melinda Kendall and that’s leading them into Happy Valleys and under the Gallow Gate in Glasgow. Its taking them back – to the Sydney Herald and Convict Ships, to Johannah and Hannah . To lagoons and waterfalls and Highland Scots. The French in Canada and the Polish Jews. Right to 100 acres on the Tweed River. Who are these ancestors ?

Of the two thousand or so species in the bulging genus Solanum, about 170 are
tuber-bearers. Of the tuber-bearers, only eight are routinely cultivated and eaten
by people, and most of these have stuck pretty close to home in the Andes of Peru.
Only one has reached international stardom: S. tuberosum, commonly known as
the potato. The potato probably originated in Peru, where indications are that it
was domesticated over six thousand years ago by high-altitude-dwelling
ancestors of the Incas.”
- Blue Corn and Square Tomatoes: Unusual Facts about Common Garden Vegetables.

By Rebecca Rupp. Garden Way Publishing 1987

Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents,
it was loaned to you by your children.
We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors,
we borrow it from our Children.
- Ancient Indian Proverb

 

 

 

Thomas Jefferson:

I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and Constitutions. But laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.

“People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors.”
-Edmund Burke

 

 

 

from the site of MICHAEL GAROFALO

A person is never himself but always a mask; a person never owns his own person, but always represents another, by whom he is possessed.
And the other that one is, is always ancestors…”
- Norman O. Brown

Also from Garofalo’s pages.

“Our remote ancestors said to their Mother Earth, “We are ours.”
Modern humanity has said to Nature, “You are mine.”
The Green Man has returned as the living face of the whole earth
So that through his mouth we may say to the Universe, “We are one.”
- Terri Windling

” what is worth the human life unless it is woven into the lives of our ancestors by the records of history”. Author unknown

LEAVING

2 Tough and Crazy people get together and consider life through the Oracle of the Animated Gif. They contemplate leaving Brisbane and the changes that any Leaving brings.

Tomorrow they leave Brisbane and today He leaves AustLit. LEAVING.

Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art
of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the
elimination of non-essentials.
- Lin Yutang

Leaving the weeds, entering the weeds;
Who knows how to seek them out?
White clouds, layer upon layer;
Red sun, clear and bright.
Looking to the left, there are no flaws;
Looking to the right, already old.
Have you not seen the man of Cold Mountain?
He traveled so swiftly;
Ten years he couldn’t return,
And forgot the road by which he came.

- Hsueh-tou (980-1052), Roaring Stream

THAT’S ANOTHER GREAT QUOTE FROM ZEN FROG

This one I don’t think quite says what George said before he killed himself.

” Good-bye. I am leaving because I am bored.” George Sanders

but I shall find the exact words sometime.

Au Revoir, Adios, Arrive Dercii, Auf Wiedersehen
Cherio, goodbye, ta-ra wack
If you really, really must leave
Please return, reappear, resurface, come back

Jon Bratton c 2004

Happiness is something that comes into our lives through a door we don’t remember leaving open.

Above all, a horse should never be chastised out of foul mood or anger, but always with complete dispassion.
~Francois Robichon de la Gueriniere

Neither should, for the same reason, the lessons be for too long a period; they fatigue and bore a horse,
and it should be returned to the stable with the same good spirits it had upon leaving it.
~Francois Robichon de la Gueriniere

You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition.  What you’ll discover will be wonderful.  What you’ll discover is yourself.  ~Alan Alda

FARE THEE WELL AUSTLIT AND ALL WHO DWELL WITHIN

2 Tough and Crazy people get together and consider life through the Oracle of the Animated Gif. They contemplate the Farewell to AUSTLIT and Uinversity of Queensland, to Brisbane and Auchenshuggle. They fare well to Milton Road and high fortnighly pay. They say Goodbye to – well what are they saying goodbye to ? The First Year. The Second Year. Farewell Wordsmiths and 1. Fare thee wekk cheap public transport with pension concessions. Farewell. Adieu.

“When the bold branches
Bid farewell to rainbow leaves -
Welcome wool sweaters.”
- B. Cybrill

Through frosted windows glow the hearth’s warm light,
As fading day casts shadows ‘cross the lawn,
And grey meets grey as winter gathers might,
Undaunted as the chimney starts to yawn.
Farewell brave day as twilight draweth nigh.
Perchance on morrow sun will gather high.
- The End of a Winter Day by Dan Young

Farewell, my sister, fare thee well.
The elements be kind to thee, and make
Thy spirits all of comfort: fare thee well.
~William Shakespeare

Farewell, thy destiny is done,
Thy ebbing sands we tell,
Blended and set with centuries gone -
Thou dying year, farewell.

Gifts from thy hand – Spring’s joyous leaves,
And Summer’s breathing flowers,
Autumn’s bright fruit and bursting sheaves -
These blessings have been ours.

They pass with thee and now they seem
Like gifts from fairy spells
Or like some sweet remembered dream -
We bid those gifts farewell.

- Mrs. Jones, Thou Dying Year, Farewell
Montreal Vindicator, January 6, 1829

 

 

 

WORDSMITHS FOR BREAKFAST

2 Tough and Crazy people get together and consider life through the Oracle of the Animated Gif. They contemplate THE poetry reading at Wordsmiths for Peter’s farewell to AUSTLIT – the australian literature online database.

They reflect upon the carved sandstone and the University of Queensland gathered to read Australian Poetry. On the ODE TO BEER and Irmtraud’s Lake Constance in Germany, on Jim’s Richmond River poem which he didn’t read aloud but which spoke volumes for the things we know about Ballina. They think upon the early morning in Brisbane and the office on the 7th floor of the tower. Of Kathy gone to Italy and Clay hitchhiking in the Northern Territory.

Take a two-mile walk every morning before breakfast.
- Harry Truman (Advice on how to live to be 80.)

Poem by Gary Snyder:
“They Drink Tea”
There are those who love to get dirty
and fix things.
They drink coffee at dawn,
beer after work.
And those who stay clean,
just appreciate things,
At breakfast they have milk
and juice at night. There are those who do both,
they drink tea.

Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper.
Adelle Davis

It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast. It keeps him young.
Konrad Lorenz

A simple enough pleasure, surely, to have breakfast alone with one’s husband, but how seldom married people in the midst of life achieve it.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

The brave flea dares to eat his breakfast on the lip of a lion.

Willa Cather:

Writing ought either to be the manufacture of stories for which there is a market demand — a business as safe and commendable as making soap or breakfast foods — or it should be an art, which is always a search for something for which there is no market demand, something new and untried, where the values are intrinsic and have nothing to do with standardized values.

SKIFFLING WHILE WAITING FOR THE STAR WAGON

GIFFING OFF ON A WEDNESDAY WHEN IZZY IS COMING HOME

2 Tough and Crazy people get together and consider life through the Oracle of the Animated Gif. They contemplate coming together after 2 weeks apart. They contemplate almost one year together. Then they GIF OFF. It don’t really need much considering. The Grass is growing. The Hammock is slung. There is an unexpected bonus coming and they is GIFFING OFF with an EQUINOX , a FULL MOON and EASTER.

Check the DMOZ PAGE OF QUOTES

Lizzy is 1949 material which puts them in the 196os and 1970s for their youth.

Common sense and a sense of humour are the same
thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of
humor is just common sense, dancing.- Clive James

The cat is a good friend but she scratches.

Try this page. Esp if you are a CAT LOVER or – like me – a cat virgin . Whoever put this page together knows their cats.

To me, clowns aren’t funny. In fact, they’re kind of scary. I’ve wondered where this started and I think it goes back to the time I went to the circus, and a clown killed my dad.
Jack Handey

Izzy loves CLOWNS. Mad O’Brian is terrified of them and I might have found the reason in the above passage. I don’t know what I think about clowns anymore than I know what I think about CATS. Thinking about things I never think about keeps me from thinking about the things I usually think about. That’s a good thing when I am WAITING.

This one I do Know. It was read at the funeral of my mother by my niece Josefine. For Nan and Pa. Then Eris Fleming painted the series and we showed them at the Graydon gallery in New Farm,Brisbane , November 2007. Same day my girl lost her baby.

The Owl and the Pussycat

The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea-green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money.
Wrapped up in a five-pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
‘O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are,
You are
You are!
What a beautiful Pussy you are!’

This is what happens when you start thinking about CATS and other things you dont usually think about. Tears come.

 

Seems to me I am safer thinking about coyotes while I wait for the Star Wagon to come down the Drive. I really do not know of anything I know about coyotes being as how I am Australian and have never left these shores.

I remember a hundred lovely lakes, and recall the fragrant breath of pine
and fir and cedar and poplar trees. The trail has strung upon it, as upon
a thread of silk, opalescent dawns and saffron sunsets. It has given me
blessed release from care and worry and the troubled thinking of our
modern day. It has been a return to the primitive and the peaceful.
Whenever the pressure of our complex city life thins my blood and
benumbs my brain, I seek relief in the trail; and when I hear the
coyote wailing to the yellow dawn, my cares fall
from me – I am happy.
- Hamlin Garland, McClure’s, February 1899

When it comes to dinosaurs I am back in the same situation as with CATS and CLOWNS. Not on my list of THINGS I THINK ABOUT. Used to have to teach primary children about them but they BORE ME. They don’t bore Kati B. She loves them. Wants to be a paleontologist . When she came to visit in Brisbane , the DINOSAUR GARDEN at the QUEENSLAND MUSEUM was one of her priorities . We took a good range of fotos there. Don’t mind WALKING MEDITATION however and here is one good quote

WALKING MEDITATION

“The ability to walk upright is one of the key characteristics which separates us from our nearest evolutionary
cousins. Looking at those charts which show how humans evolved from a chain of hunched and swarthy hominids -
Australopithecus, Pithecanthropus, Neanderthal man and so on – our path follows a line of increasing uprightness,
as if seeking out the posture of the walker. In the last frame, where Homo sapiens has finally emerged, naked,
tall, unhairy, recognizable as us, it’s as if we had stood up straight and walked away from hunched, uncertain
beginnings, a long hatching from some unimaginable egg, slow progress from a string of crawling, crouching,
scampering metamorphoses. What a weight of history has been carried forward on our steps! We may be
clumsy beside the grace of a gazelle, slow when compared to the speed of a sabre-toothed tiger’s spring,
feeble if measured against the massive tread of dinosaurs or mammoths (or of elephants and rhinos), but
our walking has outpaced them all. We have walked our way across the world and beyond it; our steps
have led to civilisations, commerce, art, science, warfare.”
- Chris Arthur, Walking Meditation

    DOGS I DO LIKE !

“Show a dog a finger, and he wants the whole hand.” – Yiddish Proverb

 

COMING HOME

2 Tough and Crazy people get together and consider life through the Oracle of the Animated Gif. They contemplate COMING HOME. That means many things that does. HE is coming HOME today. She is already there. SHE is wondering about what and where HOME is now. HE is part of HOME and there is more to it than that.

“Winter came down to our home one night
Quietly pirouetting in on silvery-toed slippers of snow,
And we, we were children once again.”
- Bill Morgan, Jr.

It’s when you are safe at home that you’re having an adventure.
When you’re having an adventure you wish you were safe at home.
- Thorton Wilder

There be delights that will fetch the day about from sun to sun
and rock the tedious year as in a delightful dream … For a
garden is Arcady brought home. It is man’s bit of gaudy
make-believe – his well-disguised fiction of an unvexed Paradise…
a world where gayety knows no eclipse and winter and rough
weather are held at bay.
- John D. Sedding, Garden-Craft, 1893

 

 

“All good virtues and goodness itself will gradually find their true home in the heart in which love dwells, and all other qualities will wither and die.” – Stranger By The River, pg. 132

SKIFFLING AS IT GETS LATE

2 Tough and Crazy people SKIFFLE through their last night apart. He knows what skiffling is. She ain’t sure but figures its something to do with Music – Words and Magic. She does know that SKIFFLING Makes you feel better.

 

 

Rock and roll. Rock ‘n’ roll. Rock. A more commercial form of skiffle generally using contrived themes instead of folk-music and with the emphasis on the rhythm or beat, which is magnified to frantic proportions. It does not employ the jazz inflection so completely as rhythm and blues and skiffle, but rather a number of tricks and affectations which emphasise the crude rhythms. The effect is also generally emphasised by suggestive body movements. … It would seem to have the characteristics of a temporary craze rather than the more lasting folk element of skiffle. • A Guide to Popular Music, 1960. Skiffle was a form of music that flourished in Britain for about three years from 1955.

from “The Lizard:”

The behavioral pattern of the lizard has inspired various beliefs, myths and legends associated with the Sun. In Egypt, it is said that in spring the lizards will climb an eastward facing wall and look to the east. When the Sun rises, the lizard’s sight and the sight of some blinded person, will is returned. Lizards have been associated with extreme heat in the Near East and in Australia, the aboriginal believed that the sky would fall if you killed one.

In ancient Egypt and Greek symbolism the lizard represented divine wisdom and good fortune. This was especially true of the reverence for Serapes and Hermes. In Roman mythology, lizards supposedly sleep through the winter and so symbolize both death and resurrection. Early Christianity associated the lizard with the devil and with evil. While on the Pacific islands of Polynesia and Maoris lizards are revered as a “heaven god.”

Britain was in the grip of skiffle fever, popularised by a Scottish jazzman with a banjo. Bands were sprouting in tribute to Lonnie Donegan. “Skiffle was very simple, amateurish music. You could learn one or two chords and somebody could beat out some sort of rhythm on a tea-chest bass, and you had a band,” says Hanton, 66.

ALTER DUDES ON 20th CENTURY SKIFFLE

It was an easy sound to imitate, spawning hundreds of new groups. The new sound was derided by the successful acts of the day. “Properly trained musicians never had a good word to say about skiffle,” recalls Rod Davis, who played banjo in Lennon’s original band. “Their view was that real musicians were being put out of work by fellows who couldn’t read music.”

There are no gardening mistakes, only experiments.” -Janet Kilburn Phillips

Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor on the Bedpost Overnight? by Lonnie Donegan & His Skiffle Group

3 November 2002
Death of Lonnie Donegan, Glasgow-born ‘King of Skiffle’. His recording of ‘Rock Island Line’ proved a hit in both the USA and UK and between 1956-1962 he achieved 26 Top Ten Hits.

FROM MEXICO

Skulls
(English Translation)

Here comes the water
Down the slope,
And my skull
Is getting wet.

Death, a skeleton,
Neither fat, nor skinny.
A homemade skeleton,
Stuck together with wax.*

*This probably refers to the skulls and skeletons that are made to decorate the altars for the dead.

Dirty Old Town: The Ian Campbell Folk Group

The Ian Campbell Folk group was one of the most significant groups to come out of the British folk explosion of the 60’s.

Ian Campbell formed the Clarion Skiffle Group in the mid 1950s along with his sister Lorna who was also the singer.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

III.
Man, the imperial shape, then multiplied
His generations under the pavilion
Of the Sun�s throne: palace and pyramid,
Temple and prison, to many a swarming million
Were, as to mountain-wolves their ragged caves.
This human living multitude
Was savage, cunning, blind, and rude,
For thou wert not; but o�er the populous solitude,
Like one fierce cloud over a waste of waves,
Hung Tyranny; beneath, sate deified
The sister-pest, congregator of slaves;
Into the shadow of her pinions wide
Anarchs and priests, who feed on gold and blood
Till with the stain their inmost souls are dyed,
Drove the astonished herds of men from every side.

AH! SKIFFLING MAKES ME FEEL GOOD.

She see the Moon outside coming into Full for Easter. The earliest Easter since early last century. HE is coming home tomorrow for some serious SKIFFLING all through EASTER.

LONG JOHN BALDRY'S TRIBUTE TO LEADBELLY
The veteran British bluesman Long John Baldry - who's lived in Canada for
almost two decades - will release his most unusual record for Stony Plain
to date in October.
	Remembering Leadbelly is a tribute to the legendary balladeer,
songwriter, 12-string guitarist, and blues singer - a "hard man" who was
twice jailed for murder, and whose remarkable recordings for the
Smithsonian, produced by Alan Lomax, in large part inspired the early
British folk, blues and skiffle scenes that changed the direction of
British pop music so drastically in the '50s and '60s.