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I was walking alone (as recently I have done so often), to aquire lunch at the fabulous mall food court. As I walked under the shade of the well ordered urban planned trees, I thought hard about all the emotions, memories and dreams I had locked away in fireproof box, and of all the pain, regret and resentment I had thrown in afterwards.
I imagined the box to be a secret garden, and as I walked I let myself for once unlock the gate and step inside.
I sat down on the now rotting bench as I took in what had happened to the once beautifully manicured and ordered tribute to nature that I had once loved to visit. The beds of primroses and marigolds were now just beds of strangling weeds, the carp pond was stagnant and devoid of life, the delicate cherry blossoms had fallen early to the harsh madness of brambles. The birdbath that had once held playful finches, now stood starkly ironic, with it's mocking brass figures of birds bathing in the water. The water that was rust coloured, and which gave the impression in the smog coloured light that the figures of the birds were cheerfully dancing in blood. Order had fallen in the garden, all was now chaos.
Then I began to notice that birds still lived in the secret garden, I heard the happy songs of starlings as they ate berries off the brambles. There were frogs at the edge of the pond and I could see goldfish eating the algae on the surface of the water. Where once I saw weeds were now the complex and subtle shades of wildflowers, with deadly foxgloves standing high and proud.
I felt that this garden was now just as beautiful as the ordered one before it, but it had a much better chance of lasting and remaining resplendent now.
I bought The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett at the mall, a wonderful children's book full of adult meanings and metaphors.
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There are 15 messages for this day. |
| <Lauren> Lovely, Mort. I was glad to see it posted when I peeked in just before heading to Florida for the weekend. Lest you think I am off to have fun, I will tell you the purpose of this trip is to introduce my S.O. to my parents. If you still think this may sound like fun, I need to tell you that my dad is a Stephen King version of a radical right wing WASP. With a mean streak. I usually return from visiting the P's with severe lower back and neck spasms. |
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| <Carol> Omigosh... good luck, Lauren! (I'm at work now so I can't write much.) And I agree about Mort's writing, I hope it is a continuing feature! |
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| <???> Get that SO(B) Dad! |
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| <Jmofwiw> Have a good trip, Lauren, and remember that parental angst is usually rooted in a sincere desire for their children to have happy lives. While they can sometimes be cloying, their intentions are usually good. |
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| <yoyology> The whale offal is, quite literally, putting me off. I can't think of any good captions without the image of the moped awash in filth filling my mind and stopping all thought processes. Yecch! |
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| <guyPaulo> Run with it yoyo. You could get a good caption out of what you just said. |
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| <Jmofwiw> Kind of makes you wonder why a photo of whale guts would be the #1 most emailed photo. Who would you email it to? How would you feel about someone that emailed it to you? Strange things that people do. |
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| <infosponge> I e-mailed it to a few people. I said something to the effect of "hey, no matter how bad your day was, at least a whale didn't explode on your street, right?" |
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| <Jmofwiw> I guess when you put it that way, it does kind of brighten your day. |
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| <ajiav> I don't think I've ever e-mailed a picture to anyone... |
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<obtuse> I've IMed these photos to people when they start whining about the weather.
...www.edu.gov.nf.ca... |
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| <mypalmike> And I thought the snow in the Sierras was deep! |
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<3Suns> QOTD (from ...www.business2.com... ):
"U.K. energy company Powergen finds itself so often confused with a similarly named Italian battery maker that it issues a statement disavowing any connection between the two enterprises. It's not so much the Italian company that the Brits want to distance themselves from as its Web address: PowergenItalia.com." |
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| <JulieK> Mort I am sorry that I do not post 10 alternative captions. I am sorry that I lose. |
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| <Mort> Why would you ever lose Julie? I only post one caption. |
