A Handful of Poetry

I just thought I would share some of my poems which I wrote earlier this year.

The way of the world

Thinking in our reasoned light
No answer blocks our say.
Running from towards the night,
We carry on our way.

In our gloried human right
We worship sun and day,
Spurning thoughts revealing light
And carry on our way.

Heedless in our hopeless height,
The heretics we flay.
Running downwards in the night,
Our golden glory gray.

Through cold fog and blighted sight
We barely see the ray.
Truthful and forgiving light;
We tarry on our way.

I Stopped To Watch the Shadows Dance

I stopped to watch the shadows dance
  One silent autumn day,
The light embraced the sighing boughs,
  Scattering golds of may.

The breeze was soft upon my cheeks
   As feathers to the touch;
It took my scarf in playful grasp
  Unmindful of my clutch.

And now, alive and yet so silent,
  To earth the colours float,
Now empty though with life so full--
  The sea without a boat.

I must move on, don't trust my heart,
  Must go before I break.
Life is just a shadow passing--
  Reflections on a lake.

I'll come tomorrow in the dawn;
  I must not stay tonight.
The sun has gone and so must I,
  I'll come back with the light.

A Piece of me...

   My latest good drawing. It is the biggest I have ever done (A1) and is called A Portrait of a Horse.
You can get a feel of it's size in the photo below of me working on it. I did it for Kate and Tim from Kate's Riding Center where I learned to ride.

Wait on the Lord

   It is so amazing how God works in our lives, the everyday lives of each individual. I sometimes wonder about it and think 'how?' But we can not compare God to anything or anybody because he is all and all and everything. I feel so thankful that he cares for me. There have been so many little instances of him guiding and teaching me in my life. Times when what I wanted to happen or what I wanted did not come about though I had prayed 'ever so hard', and what God had planned all along for me was so much better than anything I had imagined. Even if it was not good from the worlds point of view, in every way it tuns out better for me and I end up happier than if I had got what I had wanted when I wanted it.

   That's another thing--waiting.

  'Commit thy way unto the LORD; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass.' those words from Psalms I have often repeated to myself. They are so beautiful. Everything in God's time in beautiful, and full of joy, when the same thing in my time would have brought pleasure and something of satisfaction for a time but it is not lasting.

   There is me and horses for example: I had always wanted a horse of my own since I was about nine, I longed and dreamed and prayed for a horse of my own. My mother always understood my longing and taught me to wait, she often repeated that scripture that says all good things come to those who wait.

   And I waited--and I have a horse.

   Though for many years I was impatient at times with God for not giving me what I wanted, I waited and hoped and prayed, for I felt it meant allot to me. And as I look back on those years I am glad I never did get a horse until a year or two ago. For when I was younger I was less experienced with horses, and all the while I was waiting I worked one day a week at the riding center where I learnt everything I know of horses just about. Since I have had a horse I don't go there so often, and if I had got a horse many more years ago than I did, I would perhaps have stopped working at the riding center and consequently not know so well how to ride and look after my Tigger.

   And then, if not then why now, if not then why not later? Should it have been better for me not to have been so impatient to have a horse? Would things have tuned out better if I had not even not got a horse? If I hadn't I would still be going to work at the horse farm, and would be allot better rider than I am now. Indeed my whole life would be different! And when I think about it I am glad it turned out as it did. For by association I would have become like any other teenager at the riding center, I would have become a person that I feel thankful I have escaped being.

  My brother works at the riding center I learnt to ride at and when I look at him not I am so thankful I escaped the influence of the people. Oh, they are very nice people, very. But they are of the world while I strive only to be in it. They have all the worldly views that seem so vulgar to me because I am so sheltered; views like being 'in it to win it', and looking out for yourself, and where no one is liked for themselves but for how they make you feel and what they bring you. All those things which arise from natural human feelings but which are these days glorified and made right. They, the world, turn everything around so that good is bad and bad is good, or, in other words, so that there is no such thing as good or bad for they all mean the same thing.

   I makes me feel sick, it repulses me, so that I struggle with prejudice against people I think are just typical of the world and I don't give them personally a fair chance.

   But, to return to the original subject, I just feel so thankful that I am who I am. Why God made me who I am, why he is making me turn out so different from my brothers and sisters I do not know, but I know he has a path and a purpose for all of us, and mine is before me.

Quick late update: Earthquake

   There has been an earthquake (7.1 in magnitude) down here in little NZ. It struck Christchurch on Saturday morning early when everyone was at home in bed. The city was damaged badly and many of the older buildings were ruined. But we are so thankful it struck when it did at about 4am because allot of the damage was done to the city center where thousands of people would have been during the day. The prime minister, John Key described it as miraculous that no one was killed.

 

Martin Chuzzlewit

   I am reading Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens at the moment. It is very humerous and the characters are so colourfully disagreeable and selfish! Dickens writes so humorously; the first chapter is devoted to the history of the Chuzzlewit family. He goes on and on insisting on how great the family is and all the while you are becoming convinced that the family must be the most disagreeable in all of England! The first paragraph begins:

      "As no lady or gentleman, with any claims to polite breeding, can possibly sympathise with the Chuzzlewit Family without being first assured of the extreme antiquity of the race, it is a great satisfaction to know that it undoubtedly descended in a direct line from Adam and Eve..." 

    He writes sarcastically and pokes fun at the faults of mankind in general. To me each character seems to represent a whole kind of people rather than just an individual. There's Mr. Pecksniff who is "A moral man.....Some people likened him to a direction-post, which is always telling the way to a place, and never goes there: but those were his enemies; the shadows cast by his brightness..."  He is the schemer in the book (not the same as the two others of that name in the book, Jonas and his father who are openly cunning and commend a scheming man), he plots and plans while merely doing his "moral duty". Those kind of characters seem most threatening to the hero/heroine in a book because unknown is more foreboding.

   There seems to be three groups of characters in Charles Dickens' books generally speaking. The hero or heroine is good or has good intentions even if he is a little silly. And this includes the other good people in the book who don't seem to see any bad in anyone except themselves like Mr.Pinch and his sister. They are often a little boring. 

   The villains are always more colourful. there characters are well explored and are geniuses of scheming, but often in the end there very scheming catches them out. Even when there intentions towards the hero is not clear you know that they are not good ones and include getting there own gain at that persons expense. They are quite frightening really! The worst I think are Mr. Carker (the man with the teeth) in Dombey and Son and Mr. Murdstone in David Copperfield.

   But the most interesting characters and the funniest are the other people who are not the main people but very necessary all the same. Like Captain Cuttle, Mr. Micawber and his family, and the tootles and Mark Tapley, and many more who all have good intentions even if they aren't always helpful and very understanding.

    I love all the Dickens books that I have read and will go as far as to think that I will equally love the rest when I get a chance to read them. His books are so delicious, you can savor them and get something new out of them in each re-reading!

            

Beginings...

Last night I had so many ideas to start of my new blog with but now my mind is quite blank....
   Nobody knows of this blogs existence yet, so I guess I will just treat it as a diary. I love dairys. I have keept one for several years now and I find it is a great help, something like a councelor when you have no one to talk to. If you think you have a big problem and all the reasons in the world to be unhappy and you try to write about it, it diminishes in size so much that you are left wondering what the problem really is. Unfortunately the opposite also is true. If you have a wonderful idea or thought it dosen't seem so glamerous down on paper.
   Here in New Zealand it is winter, but, although it is raining and windy outside, I can smell spring in the air! The rain is soft and misty, the spring flowers are beginning to bloom, and even the light seems different with the growing length of the days. We don't really have much of a winter here as much as we complain of rain and mud. Some years we have spring flowers blooming while the dying leaves have not yet gone from the trees. This year, and after a very dry summer it has been quite mild as far as rain goes, but it has been very cold, especially in our old house with high ceilings and no insulation in roof or floor.
   Now to explain the name of my blog. First of all I love the poem it is named after, and one of the few I know by heart. My mother used to recite it to me when I was young and so the words have become familiar and so, dear to me. Another reason I chose the title is because I intended my blog to be like the lonesome wanderings of myself. I am rather an introvert, though I can be loud and talkative but only when being funny or talking nonsense. I tend to subconsciously protect my true self from being found out. As mum once said, you loose something of yourself by telling the truth.