TGIF (Week is Over)

*with apologies to those who don't work Monday-Friday

And so this is Friday
And what have we done?
Another week over
The weekend just begun
And so this is Friday
Let's go out tonight!
Or we could stay in
That'd still be alright

SO THANK GOD IT'S FRIDAY
And a happy weekend!
Let's make it a good one
With all of our friends!

And so this is Friday
It's been a long week
With working and worry
Let's put up our feet
And so happy weekend
To the high and the low
To bosses and workers
Both the fast and the slow

SO THANK GOD IT'S FRIDAY
And a happy weekend!
Let's make it a good one
With all of our friends!

The Week is Over
If you worked it

Afterglow

I have ideas - brilliant, sparkly, glowing ideas. And then I forget them and all I'm left with is an afterglow, and the knowledge that something bright and shiny passed briefly through my mind, but now is gone.

Picture from Flickr

Late night letter

Hey. How's it going? It's late and I can't sleep (due to a tremendously long weekend during which I might've allowed myself to sleep in a little too much) so I'm writing a letter. Who to? Who knows?! Whoever will read this, whoever you may be. Yes, that's right - to you. So how are you? I'm pretty good, just trying not to think too much. Writing seems to put things in order, line things up in a sequence of cause and effect, of given and new, of chronology or merely sets of three. When you write something down, you think about it differently, you externalise issues, you adopt a new perspective. Of course when I write 'you' I mean 'me'. Writing in the second person is probably part of that externalising process, and less pretentious in English than the third person. You may be wondering what's the point to this (and this time I mean you the reader, not you-who-is-actually-me). I've written many letters like this over the years: in journals for a future self to read over and be reassured that life is better than it was, to usually distant friends prepared to put up with my rambling emails and perhaps respond in kind. And now the blog, the modern open diary that may still be just as hidden for
none but the invited few to see as the symbolically padlocked diary of younger years. Why write where others may read? For validation, inevitably. That others may either praise what we* suspect is unique in ourselves or reassure that we are normal for they too feel the
same. Ideally, both, without it being at all problematic in its opposition. And here we come to the inevitable conclusion of such writings: an abstracted generalisation followed by a self-conscious and self-deprecating coda. And do I feel better for this?

I reached the limit of my character count for email on my phone before I was able to decide.

*Note the use of 'we' at this point, assuming you are like me, and we experience this together.

Riverside

Sitting by the river. Technically an autumn day but I can see nothing to suggest that except for two grey clouds. When the sun escapes them, it's warm enough you can almost forget that winter's coming. Two swans
sail past, and a pelican, and numerous ducks which which occasionally guffaw as if one of them has made a huge social gaffe. Then there's the birds I don't know the name of but which occasionally sound like a small child who has just discovered that a short burst of high-pitched screaming gets a funny response from their parents. In the sun something glistens on my black jeans and I see a tiny white spider inexplicably building a web on my knee before I'm obliged to brush it off. Uni students lounge between classes, reluctant to leave their friends, or cross the foot bridge to their cars. Up river a man is fishing, which is unusual on a river in the middle of the city. The pelican stands on the bank between the fisherman and a group of international students.

It feels still, but the birds are noisy, and the students are talking and laughing. I can hear cars passing and a plane decending for landing at the airport. And just once, when it was a little more still, or the now non-existant wind was in the right direction, I heard monkeys whooping in the zoo. The sun goes away and a young man climbs into the struts under the footbridge, undoubtedly to impress one of the girls in a group nearby, but he seems to quickly realise he can't go far and stands poised above them. Half a dozen skateboarders glide over the footbridge, each making a loud clatter over one loose plank. Now the highschool kids are out, and joggers and cyclists.

I'm reluctant to leave, but such is life.

I don't think I'm destined for greatness

I don't think I'm destined for greatness unless that greatness is accidental.

I have no ambition only a headache

uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Speak to me not

Oh speak to me not!
For your words are sour
And the taste of the world is sweet
And I would not put
Within your power
My love for what I see

So call me slow!
So call me blind!
For rejecting the view you choose
But til you've seen
What I have seen
This argument you'll lose

Think me not naive
(Though I know you will
Nomatter what I say)
For though I love
It's not as if
I was born yesterday

This choice is mine
And it is done
And far happier I will be
Than you with rancour
And bitterness
And eternal sophistry

I have no ambition only competency

I have no ambition to recommend me to power, no desire for conquest, no megalomania. Nothing in common with those many mighty leaders we remember in the course of our history. I have only competency. Simple, plain proficiency for the task at hand. Though I do not dream of personal glory, I will make good choices, grow this country and benefit it, for that is in the job description, and that is what I do and what I have always done. I do what is right and I do my job well. And if that is enough for you to choose me as Dictator-in-Supreme for our nation, then I will humbly accept your choice. And if not, then I will continue in whatever task you or the new Dictator-in-Supreme will give me.

Your servant.