Tuesday, December 8, 2009

wow... i really am small

It has been a month and a half since we last blogged. My how time flies.
What have we been doing? well.......
Learning to stitch, looking for stitchers, making money and looking for money, reading and writing, listening and looking. That has kept us pretty busy.
However, Dear Blog, we have not forgotten you and indeed may have missed our regular little tet-a-tet. the regular mental emtetic, the mind enema that you gratefully serve....

I am fircely aware of how small i am and how short my reach is. We have been scouring the globe for Atlases in various foreign languages... how hard can that be?
There is an awfully long way between here and China, more than a simple afternoon stroll! in fact it would take weeks of strolling. despite the long ang gangly nature of my legs.
Its not such a long way to Germany (where my better half's parents have been visiting the Christmas markets this past week) Even that is a fair walk for my pins!
it takes me around twenty mins to get into town, a further twenty to get to the other side (Wincheap, say). i wonder how far i could go in a day, a week, a month.
How long would i have to walk to get to a point where i have no relation to my surroundings? What would it be about my surroundings that means i have no relation?
Can you negotiate ebay in Mandarin? me neither! i cant even negotiate it in languages closer to home, French, German, Spanish... Thank goodness for Pablo!
So i have instead fixed my focus closer to home... right on my doorstep instead.
I can reach to there... just.
Its funny how much there is and can be out there when you go looking for it!
People with pep, get up and go.... organiser, performers, writers and artists of every hue. All so close to home!!! in the words of Balloo the bear... "if you look under the rocks and plants and take a glance at the fancy ants... and maybe try a few" (obviously not in the literal sense here).
i may be small ant but i am small along with the myriad of other ants on my doorstep and that makes me feel a little bit better about myself and a little lesss scared of the world at large!

Rick

1 comment:

snoo said...

I don't think that you can ever not relate to your surroundings. There is something that connects us to at least something, and it doesn't have to be people. To get the kids to realise that they are a part of a bigger picture, I tell them to look at where their clothes are from. T-shirt from China, jeans from India, Socks from Russia, Coat from Indonesia. It works with food too as most of our food is imported. Just have a look at the specific areas around the world and see that there are children, just like them or adults just like you that are working hard as you are and trying to understand their lives. Just because you don't know them, doesn't mean that you aren't wearing a pair of jeans made by their hands just for you.