Tag: patience

How much I enjoy air travel…

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chart, ilovecharts, fun, funny, humor, travel, flying, planes

I was returning home from Chicago today.  Ominous skies were threatening our return.  Weather reports from home are gloomy – thunderstorms and heavy rains are pounding the NYC region.  The flight is full.  The mood among the passengers is surly…no one is up for an extended delay, or worse, a cancelation heading into the weekend.  Yet, the flight is off, and on time and largely uneventful.  We circle for 15 minutes over NYC as air traffic is backed up.  We land.  A few minutes late but the relief in the cabin is palpable.

We’re on the tarmac.  An elderly lady three rows back is on her cell phone calling a family member.  In a voice that is heard 8-10 rows in each direction, she let them know “THAT I’LL BE A BIT LATE AND THERE IS NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT.” She carries on her phone conversation on her stay in Chicago and her plans for the weekend.  Then, there’s a moment of silence.  And, she’s back on the phone.  This time with her car service.  Her piercing voice is echoing up and down the tube.  “GIVE ME YOUR NUMBER!  I’LL NEED TO CALL YOU FROM BAGGAGE CLAIM.  NO I NEED YOUR NUMBER. 212-656-.  WHAT WAS THAT AGAIN? 212-65X?  SPEAK LOUDER.”  This goes back and forth several times until she manages to get the number.  Then, there’s another moment of silence and she’s back on the phone with another family member.  “I SHOULDN’T BE TOO LATE.”  The conversation continues for several minutes at a raised decibel level.  There’s another moment of silence and she’s back on the phone again. Continue reading “How much I enjoy air travel…” →

Real poetry is to lead a beautiful life…

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The Gentlest and Greatest Friend of Moon and Winds.  Basho, 1644 – 1694

artemisdreamingMany years ago there went wandering through Japan, sometimes on the back of a horse, sometimes afoot, in poor pilgrim’s clothes, the kindest, most simple hearted of men…Basho, friend of moon and winds. Though Basho was born of one of the noblest classes in Japan, and might have been welcome in palaces, he chose to wander, and to be comrade and teacher of men and women, boys and girls in all different stations of life, from the lowest to the highest.  Basho bathed in the running brooks, rested in shady valleys, sought shelter from sudden rains under some tree on the moor, and sighed with the country folk as he watched the cherry blossoms in their last pink shower, fluttering down from the trees.  Now he slept at some country inn, landscape in the moonlightstumbling in at its door at nightfall, wearied from long hours of travelling, yet never too tired to note the lovely wisteria vine, drooping its delicate lavender blossoms over the veranda.  Sometimes he slept in the poor hut of a peasant, but most often his bed was out-of-doors, and his pillow a stone.

When Basho came upon a little violet hiding shyly in the grass on a mountain pathway, it whispered its secret to him.  “Modesty, gentleness, and simplicity!” it said.  “These are the truly beautiful things.”

Glistening drops of dew on the petal of a flower had  voice and a song for him likewise. “Purity,” they sang, “is the loveliest thing in life.

The pine tree, fresh and ever green amid winter’s harshest storms, spoke staunchly of hardy manhood;  the mountains had their message of patience, the moon its song of glory!  Rivers, forests, waterfalls, all told their secrets to Basho, and these secrets that Nature revealed to him, he loved to show to others, for the whole of living of life was to him one great poem, as of some holy service in the shadow of a temple.

“Real poetry,” said Basho, “is to lead a beautiful life.  To live poetry is better than to write it.”  And whenever he saw one of his young students being rude, in a fit of anger, or otherwise acting unworthily, he would gently lay his hand on the arm of the youth and say; “But this is not poetry! This is not poetry.”

~ Olive Beaupré Miller, A children’s book titled Little Pictures of Japan originally published in 1925

 

 

Source: artemisdreaming via madamescherzo