Idleboot

[smokingboot]

The calendar is a thing of alarm; we are already running out of weekends. This feels great, but as I spend all my time whittering in the presence of good friends, my writing never gets done. I have to get this sorted, I have to reorganise my working week. Tomorrow.

There are royalties to be chased, commissions to pursue, work and holidays and *groan* admin to be sorted. Next week.

I have created a cute little herb patch and a rockery which has everything it needs except rocks. I will think about improving it. Sometime.

Out Of Our Brilliant Minds spent the weekend here. We roleplayed and got wrecked and had great conversations and ate too much and drank too much. We may well do the same today.

I found some of Ezra Pound's poetry tucked away in my library. I remember being captivated by this stuff when I was a kid, especially his Cathay poems, translated from the Chinese. It doesn't delight me now as much as it did then. I could say I have matured in taste and cite preference for Basho's haiku as proof - unfortunately I prefer Kerouac's too, so there's probably no hope for me.

Still, out of love for the past, I copy one of Pound's translations here, lest I incur the wrath of more dead poets:



Blue, blue is the grass about the river,
And the willows have overfilled the close garden.
And within, the mistress, in the midmost of her youth,
White, white of face, hesitates, passing the door.
Slender, she puts forth a slender hand;

And she was a courtesan in the old days,
And she has married a sot,
Who now goes drunkenly out
And leaves her too much alone.

- Attributed to Mei Sheng, 140 b.c.



The sun is shining. Time to go do nothing.