Stepping Out into the Blue

Sky Blue

This is how the sky was when I went to the beach this afternoon ~ blue, blue, blue.

I feel I should nearly be apologising for posting such a plain photograph. Wouldn’t a bird, a cloud, a kite, tree tops, a steeple ~ almost anything have added to the picture?

Maybe they would but why do we need contrast all the time?  In ways there is a contrast here because this is January blue at a time when all the talk is about ‘January blues.’

Also, I have to say that ever since I read Oscar Wilde’s poem, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, I have never, ever taken a blue sky for granted:

I never saw a man who looked

With such a wistful eye

Upon that little tent of blue

Which prisoners call the sky …

Perhaps we are all prisoners of complexity in a world that offers so much in the way of simplicity?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Imperfection ~ Gatherings from Ireland # 123

I have a strange streak of perfectionism that has stalked me all my life and over the last week or so I’ve been doing battle with it, even in my dreams,  as I’ve been struggling with the ‘flu and feeling pretty lousy.

The situation is this: I’ve been doing a course since last September, working hard and reaping the rewards with decent marks. Now I’ve come face to face with the second last assignment ~ a ‘biggy’ ~ due in next week and I know that I just have to lower my standards or drop out.  Up to yesterday, I was more on the drop-out road than any other. But, I forced myself to take a look at what people have written about perfectionism and my old friend Leonard Cohen first jumped out at me:

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything,
That’s how the light gets in.
~Leonard Cohen

Then came Margaret Atwood:

If I waited for perfection … I would never write a word. 

Kilkenny Castle

As if this wasn’t enough, I suddenly remembered being in Kilkenny Castle, looking at a marvelous tapestry.  (I’m the person who never got passed trying to sew a buttonhole in Domestic Science Class when everyone else had made flowery aprons and sexy blouses.) Anyway, the Tour Guide pointed to a ‘flaw’ in the tapestry which she said had been deliberately put there to symbolise the fact that that ‘humans aren’t perfect.’ 

So, best get off and start cobbling the assignment together. I think I’ll leave Leonard Cohen playing in the background!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-vSfwIJkjY