Author: Penelope

  • Ert or inert?

    Whatever she is doing or not doing, a cat is a cat is a cat (and we call this one Biddy). I wonder if the same can be said of a person. If you stopped thinking for a few minutes, and laid aside every habit, tic, job, expectation, should or ought — each veil or…

  • Messengers

    Beautiful feet. They’re to be found in the work place, on the radio, among your friends and family, via the internet, on your street and, if you’re blessed, in your own home. They might be buffed and trim, cracked and calloused, or hidden away in shoes and socks. They belong to people who are glad…

  • Time in the intertidal zone

    My challenge today: to make this dead fish marry the idea of time accelerating. Is it merely an idea, or are the days, weeks and months racing by at rates previously reserved for seconds, minutes and hours? Of course the explanation might be a purely mechanical: a month in 2009 is roughly 1/600 of my…

  • Herbal Heaven?

    I collected this stupefied fellow off a magic mushroom. The fly agarics, or amanita muscaria, have proliferated in the recent wet spell, daubing enough insanity around the fringes of the local park for the whole city to take leave of their senses. (Some already have, but the Stadium is another matter.) Anyway, Cicada was ready…

  • Afloat

    It’s strange how happiness comes along and catches you up. Sometimes you can make it happen (swim out of your shoes; here I am at Lake Alexandrina; the ducks moved aside) and other times it comes all by itself and lifts you into the heart of your work or play; it makes your son laugh…

  • Creeping forward …

    Okay, here we go again. I see I have one comment (yippee! and thank you). I just haven’t figured out how to respond to it yet, except here. This tidal J, seen at Purukanui Beach in the Catlins, reminds me that interesting things happen, inch by inch, shell by shell, if we simply do what…

  • Penelope checks out blogland

    What’s down here? Plenty of fellow bloggers, screenfuls of instructions, a whole new html language, and glimmers and flashes of … what the? … I’ll let you know if I catch one. My new blogsite name will hint at what I’m about, but I have to figure out a nifty way to put it on…