behindtheax

ouch

I stopped writing morning pages three days ago. I can’t believe I am setting that book aside once again. I’m such a dork.

Yesterday was fun although I had a difficult time reaching that point where I had left off last winter. I have better control of the board if I gain a certain speed but in order to do that I need to reach a certain comfort level, trusting myself and the board, I guess? But I couldn’t get there and I ended up taking a few big spills. By the end of the day I was so fustrated and Greg who had finished his last run was watching me come down the hill and although he witnessed me fall four times in a row, I don’t think he knew how mad I was becoming because by the time I reached him, he said, “I think you need another lesson.” It was just the wrong thing to say to me at that point. I mean it was true but I wasn’t ready to hear it with my head still ringing from the last fall. I snapped a little at him.

Earlier that day we shared the lift with two teenage boys and one guy turned to the other and said, “Man, I can’t imagine my parents on snowboards.” That remark and a few falls later, I started wondering if I was too old for this?

And then afterwards before heading back to the city we stopped in for a drink at a pub at the base of the hill. Greg and his brother ordered pints and I, who am trying desperately to stick to my resolution this year not to drink, ordered a coffee. I now have a month in and what do they say? It takes 12 weeks to break any habit? So I am a third of the way there. It’s tough though and summer will be really tough. I can’t imagine a camping trip or a game of golf without a few beer or sitting under the grapes at night without a glass of wine. I’ll just have to cross that hill when I get to it.

Greg is reading How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill and he is really enjoying it. He was reading to me about the scribes in about the seventh to the ninth century and how they would write their own bits of poetry and scribblings in the margins of the books they were copying –

One wrote

All are keen
To know who’ll sleep with blond Aideen.
All Aideen herself will own
Is that she will not sleep alone.



And I really liked this one

I and Pangur Ban my cat,
“Tis a like task we are at:
Hunting mice is his delight,
Hunting words I sit all night.

‘Tis a merry thing to see
At our task how glad are we,
When at home we sit and find
Entertainment to our mind.


‘Gainst the wall he sets his eye,
Full and fierce and sharp and sly;
‘Gainst the wall of knowledge I
All my little wisdom try.

So in peace our task we ply,
Pangur Ban my cat and I;
In our arts we find our bliss,
I have mine and he has his.

posted by mary j. @ 11:41 AM