Spices

Friday, 13 November 2009

Spice up your life! Isn't this amazing? That's where I'd love to be right now.Warm, sunny, the desert so close...a myriad of warm colours embracing ourselves. The wonderful food, the vividness of the markets, the mystery of the tiny streets of the medinas. Where am I?

Where are my students?

Here I am at home with an awful cold. My nose is always running and I'm coughing like hell. Anyway, I came to the blog to read the students comments and ...nothing. My students are really special! Why did I bother? Well, I'll wait a little longer and maybe at least a handful of them will leave a comment.

By the way, the lady on the right with the red hair...uhm..I think it is me.

A scottish joke

A Scots boy came home from school and told his mother he had been given a part in the school play. "Wonderful," says the mother, "What part is it?" The boy says "I play the part of the Scottish husband!" The mother scowls and says: "Go back and tell your teacher you want a speaking part."

How do you feel about this poem?

Friday, 16 October 2009

Thursday, 15 October 2009

I like ee cummings for the simplicity of his poetry and its lovely feeling of heart’s truth. Have a look through this poem– and see if you like it


I carry your heart with me(I carry it in
my heart) I am never without it (anywhere
I go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
I fear
no fate(for you are my fate, my sweet) I want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud
of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

I carry your heart (I carry it in my heart)

Horoscope- For those who believe in these things

Tuesday, 6 October 2009

LIBRASeptember 24 - October 23
HEAVENLY HINTS You’ll be blooming, healthy and energetic for the most part this month. You’ll try to alter all sorts of things around Full Moon time (the 7th) and are likely to be on the right track in this respect. Don’t rush too much at some things, though.Old-time records, old-fashioned honeycombs and new-fangled motorbikes and/or scooters may, for some reason, figure in your life now! You’ll eke out your money in an intelligent way at some stage this month. The cinema attracts you. You’ll probably want to get out and about more from around the 10th or 12th. Some sort of skating could be good fun...!HORRORSCOPES Around the 16th, if you’re trying to hold of someone and can’t, keep persevering and you’ll get there – don’t give up on this. Beware telling others what to do too much when you should be sorting out your own life. Don’t waste your pearls of wisdom on unready people, who probably won’t take any notice of you.
The suggested LIBRAN poet is LOUIS GINSBERG, born 1 October 1896:
‘A Quiet Street After Rain’
Glittering keen, all things appear
Clairvoyant, carved, and crystal clear.
Happy to watch the raindrops cease,
Houses are honeycombed with peace;
And dazzling with a blazing show,
Windows are pelting suns below.
Colours are ambushing the sense
With silent, flaming eloquence,
While every front-yard lawn is seen
Twinkling a myriad tongues of green.
Marvellous, too, it is to see
A rosebud dipped in deity!
Nearby a spider has begun
Upon a fence to thread the sun.
The street is hushed, though far off steals
The powdery, crumbling sound of wheels...
Till Time, who loiters by to scrawl
A warning on a garden wall,
Lingers to watch in strange amaze
How quiet loveliness can blaze -
How immortality can be
Familiar as a fence or tree!

RAIN (Don Paterson)

Monday, 5 October 2009

I love all films that start with rain:
rain, braiding a windowpane
or darkening a hung-out dress
or streaming down her upturned face;

one long thundering downpour
right through the empty script and score
before the act, before the blame,
before the lens pulls through the frame

to where the woman sits alone
beside a silent telephone
or the dress lies ruined on the grass
or the girl walks off the overpass,

and all things flow out from that source
along their fatal watercourse.
However bad or overlong
such a film can do no wrong,

so when his native twang shows through
or when the boom dips into view
or when her speech starts to betray
its adaptation from the play,

I think to when we opened cold
on a rain-dark gutter, running gold
with the neon of a drugstore sign,
and I’d read into its blazing line:

forget the ink, the milk, the blood—
all was washed clean with the flood
we rose up from the falling waters
the fallen rain’s own sons and daughters

and none of this, none of this matters.

“Words are flying out like endless rain into a paper cup...” (The Beatles)


Across the Universe came to life on Saturday, 3rd October with the help of my dearest friend Sofia and its aim is to motivate my students to participate, create, write and use their imagination as much as possible. It's really a challenge and I'm curious to see how they will respond to it.