Sabbatical

I may have gone overboard with photos today, coupled with lots of random observations. 

I wrote 250 fifty words of a new chapter. (And, you know--did lots of other things.) Anyways, it's begun--I can't turn around now. 

But before I worked this afternoon, I biked to the foreshore and poked around. It is just unbelievable weather, and I'm so happy. Also--I saw someone leading a group, I guess of people exploring the foreshore, and, I kid you not, he was reading T.S. Eliot to them from a lovely vintage edition. I just wanted to join up with that group and listen to him read poetry about the river beside the river. I think it was this: 

I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river
Is a strong brown god—sullen, untamed and intractable,
Patient to some degree, at first recognised as a frontier;
Useful, untrustworthy, as a conveyor of commerce;
Then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges.
The problem once solved, the brown god is almost forgotten
By the dwellers in cities—ever, however, implacable.
Keeping his seasons and rages, destroyer, reminder
Of what men choose to forget. Unhonoured, unpropitiated
By worshippers of the machine, but waiting, watching and waiting.
His rhythm was present in the nursery bedroom,
In the rank ailanthus of the April dooryard,
In the smell of grapes on the autumn table,
And the evening circle in the winter gaslight.

A sheep's tooth? 

What is this?!

I think that the roof tiles with the square hold are really old ones

This afternoon, I worked from the shaded patio of a coffee shop on our green, dizzy from the smell of jasmine. I picked up the kids and took them to the park. 

Some cabinet handles in the coffee shop!

Francisco took a train today to the seaside and back to Great Dixter.

Some metaphors from Graham Greene that I've been appreciating in The Heart of the Matter:

--mosquitos as a sewing machine

--a woman's hair arranged in ridges like wind erosion

From mass last night--we sang, "Crown Him with Many Crowns," and called God "the potentate of time." I like it.

I learn so much from all the stuff my kids' schools teach them about emotional regulation.

Last night I was happy to chat with Stearns and think about seeing all of them again. We sympathized together, though, about small-town coffee shops--ours doesn't use real cups--and just hands you a paper cup to pump the coffee yourself out of a carafe. Hers doesn't have drip coffee, nor cream because there's not enough interest! Just espressos mixed with sugar syrups!