A moment that’s all. A moment in time captured by this photograph, the bare bones of the moment at best . Just two cute puppies in a plush dog bed is about all an uninvolved person would register on seeing this picture. For my wife and I though, this will live on in our memories as the moment in 2007 when we discovered something distinctive about the little light caramel puppy on the right to whom we had given the name Rosie. Continue reading “Little Miss Comfort”
My dear old Granpop often said “Ahhh getting old’s a bugger” and I can hear him saying it still after all these years. Please pardon the vulgarity but that is exactly what he said and to replace “bugger” with something more acceptable would be to lose the strength of feeling in his voice at the time. Of course what he meant by the expression was that getting old wasn’t something he was enjoying at all. As this baby boomer, a so-called New Age man, heads into Old Age I am starting to appreciate the depth of feeling and the essential truth in his words. Continue reading “New Age Old Age”
Routines, routines, we all have them don’t we and I can be attached to the very point of distraction with mine at times. Over the last few years, I have come to realise that I am not always best served by adhering so rigidly to the routines I have constructed. Constructed is the key that I have come to realise, that these routines I have created are just mine, my own creations, and not set in stone. There is a soaring sense of freedom at times when I decide to break away from a routine, either because I have other things I want to do, or that I notice that one or more aspects of the routine aren’t really useful, or simply just because. Just because a realignment can bring a whole new outlook, a freshness, to an aspect of my daily life. Continue reading “Sweet confusion”
It was just an old Sydney Swans cap, bought at a stand outside the SCG sometime in the 1990’s, when I was attending a Sydney Swans game. I liked it because it had a sort of vintage feel to it, a canvas fabric look rather than the bright red and white caps supplied by the Swans as part of the membership pack. It was also in the days when I was regularly buying Swans kit like shirts and jackets. My need to be identified by this paraphernalia has long gone, the attachment broken, in a process I have written about elsewhere.
I am always joined for meditation at home by our two cavoodle dogs, Daisy and Rosie. They seem to love it and are always keen to sit on the mat and then the zabuton and then the zafu as I put them down and I have to chide them out of the way so that I can get them all setup for my meditation practice. I sit and as soon as the gong goes on my timer to start, both dogs settle down on the smaller zabuton I set for them in front of me and mostly just go to sleep. Or what appears to be sleep. Their presence is not as you might think a distraction but provides me with a number of lessons. Continue reading “Daisy’s Kiss”
Hurrah! Hallelujah! I have started my daily walk again after a four-month layoff waiting for the wound on my foot to heal enough to allow it. And are my faithful walking companions, Daisy and Rosie our beautiful cavoodle dogs, ecstatic about it as well? You bet they are. The mere mention of the word “walk” accompanied by me putting my sneakers on is enough to drive Daisy into a high alert state and she follows me anywhere I might go as if connected by some string to my heels.
They both take to the walk quite differently. For Daisy I use an extending reel lead which allows her to bounce out in front as far as the lead will allow, then stop to sniff some important treasure that presents itself until the lead reaches its limit again behind us and then she bounces past us again to as far in front as she can go and the pattern repeats itself. I say “bounce” because that is the best way I can describe her “run” with two front feet together and her large cavalier ears flapping up and down. And the whole effect just exudes such pure joy that it brings a tear of deep pleasure to me when recalling it. Sometimes Daisy stops and looks back at me and I swear she has a look on her little face that can only be a big happy smile.
Weekly episodes on whatever catches my eye but with a keen interest in hearing the story behind blues musicians and craftsmen
Mike Stacey 2016
