women at work and play

In my rough translation: "What's your opinion about the shortage of food in the rest of the world?"
Africa: What is food?
Europe: What is shortage?
U.S.: What is the rest of the world?
Arab states: What is opinion?

Nailed it. Unfortunately.

All quiet on the other side of town. Lucky Anna - our beloved Holly, professional nanny, who luckily for us has not yet formed her own familial bonds and so is more than happy to be part of ours, has come back from a work stint at a cottage with her prestigious bosses and is committed for the next while to helping her best friend and her godson. So though my daughter is hot and uncomfortable, she's not coping alone with a very energetic boy child.

Busy day on the home front. My piano tuner Anne Francis came - and what a difference after she left. Oh the golden tones. Too bad it's only me playing the same things over and over. But what joy nonetheless. Anne sold me a moisture system for the piano, to keep it hydrated. As well as my plants, now I have to water my piano.

She told me my old Heinzman was made in 1929 - a Toronto piano my mother bought at auction in Halifax in 1958. My childhood piano, once a device of suffering, now a source of great pleasure.

Before that, I went to the very end of the garden, where it's quietest, to get some work done.

The red cup is for the raspberries, which are still pouring forth in all their juicy redness. When friend Ken came for lunch the other day, we picked raspberries and had them for dessert over chocolate gelato. You notice there's just a notebook and pen - I did not bring my computer to the end of the garden. But I couldn't stand to be without it for more than half an hour. Addiction!

I gather that Federer has gone down in defeat at Wimbledon. Never liked Djovokic and neither did my mother. An emotionless tank. But do I really care? Not a whit.

This is did care about - sitting on the King streetcar home coming home from Anna's, at a red light, I heard beautiful music and  finally located it just as the car started - an old man with an autoharp, standing among the tall buildings as the crowds streamed past. I took this as quickly as I could as we pulled out of sight. If we hadn't started, I think I would have got off to listen and give him some money. He was creating such delicate beauty in the middle of concrete.

It is 8.45 p.m. The light is soft and fading, the sky blue-grey and frilled with cirrus clouds, air still, birds growing quiet. A small airplane, my neighbours muttering, a whiff of marijuana - or is it skunk? Nothing else. And all I can think is this:

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any–lifted from the no
of all nothing–human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

e.e. cummings
1894-1962