You know how a sentence can stick in the mind and hang around like a lovestruck teenager - well, I came across one in Reader's Digest that is doing just that. "Simplicity taken to an extreme is elegance." To take simplicity to extreme. What a delicious mind morsel to savour. Extreme simplicity. Oxymoronish! And then to have the image of elegance superimposed - whew and wow.

Now don't tell anyone this or I'm likely to have some Board down on my head (hmm, what an interesting seesaw meaning) but I LIKE it when people write in library books. Many of the books on my own bookshelves are previously owned and I prize the ones with notes.

I can certainly understand why it is discouraged (did I not once myself work in a library and frown in tsk-tsk agreement when the librarian would exhibit a besmirched book; the adjective is likely not correct but isn't besmirched a nice word). Nonetheless I feel it is a bonus to come across words that someone was moved to add to the text. I don't mean the corrections: I mean the comments. (But, by the way, are you noticing more and more typos in articles and books these days: what has happened to the quality of proofreading?)

Once I came across a single word pencilled on the last page of a book. "Rubbish!" I heartily agreed and wanted to add, "More fools we who have finished it!" But I didn't. If the library police had found out and taken away my card, my key to adventure, amusement, enchantment, enlightenment, solace, romance, suspense, magic.....well, it does not bear thinking about.

I had an interesting dream last night. I was walking up a ladder-like staircase - you know what I mean, it was that steep - and was almost at the top. I started to reach for something, happily, knowing it was what I wanted. But there was a large black cat on the step in front of me, in the way. I looked around and called down for someone to come and help me, remove the cat. No one came. Then I picked up the cat and threw it off into the air. This felt so terrible and not right that I immediately cancelled it, like you can in a dream and so, of course, the cat was once again in front of me. Then I tried to go around it, but every time I did I seemed to step on its tail and it yowled horridly so I stopped that.

Well, the proper solution came next - have you already guessed it? I simply picked the cat up and carried it with me to the top! Aren't we clever in dreams. Aren't they often telling us what we need to know in our awake state. I really like my nighttime adventures.

Here is the poem as promised. MONARCH I have no fear of losing touch with earth, For I was born of human, wasn't I. It's upward vision that I need, So I revere the butterfly. Encourage access to my garden, Entice it with supposed delights, Sing its praise and beg its pardon, An earth-bound creature craving flight. But while I stand with eyes and heart gone misty, Drawn to painful yearnings in that sky, Something gives, as indeed something is taken, And soul greets soul in raptured compromise!

Bye for now.
Karen