After swimming

Dancing in the dark

wind near the banks

of the Santiam

a simple black dress

hanging tentatively

upon a limb

reminded me of desire

that can not be tamed.

© "Neon Veil" (All rights reserved) 

Black dress © Jennifer Phillips

Test to find out if you are ready to have kids...

Originally posted on UK parenting website Mamami, the 14-part test will have you holding your sides with laughter.

Test 1: Preparation

Women: To prepare for pregnancy

1. Put on a dressing gown and stick a beanbag down the front.
2. Leave it there.
3. After 9 months remove 5% of the beans.

Men: To prepare for children

1. Go to a local chemist, tip the contents of your wallet onto the counter and tell the pharmacist to help himself
2. Go to the supermarket. Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office.
3. Go home. Pick up the newspaper and read it for the last time.

Test 2: Knowledge

1. Find a couple who are already parents and berate them about their methods of discipline, lack of patience, appallingly low tolerance levels and how they have allowed their children to run wild.
2. Suggest ways in which they might improve their child's sleeping habits, toilet training, table manners and overall behaviour.
3. Enjoy it. It will be the last time in your life that you will have all the answers.

Test 3: Nights

To discover how the nights will feel:

1. Walk around the living room from 5pm to 10pm carrying a wet bag weighing approximately 4 - 6kg, with a radio turned to static (or some other obnoxious sound) playing loudly.
2. At 10pm, put the bag down, set the alarm for midnight and go to sleep.
3. Get up at 11pm and walk the bag around the living room until 1am.
4. Set the alarm for 3am.
5. As you can't get back to sleep, get up at 2am and make a cup of tea.
6. Go to bed at 2.45am.
7. Get up again at 3am when the alarm goes off.
8. Sing songs in the dark until 4am.
9. Put the alarm on for 5am. Get up when it goes off.
10. Make breakfast.

Keep this up for 5 years. LOOK CHEERFUL.

Test 4: Dressing Small Children

1. Buy a live octopus and a string bag.
2. Attempt to put the octopus into the string bag so that no arms hangout.

Time Allowed: 5 minutes.

Test 5: Cars

1. Forget the BMW. Buy a practical 5-door wagon.
2. Buy a chocolate ice cream cone and put it in the glove compartment. Leave it there.
3. Get a coin. Insert it into the CD player.
4. Take a box of chocolate biscuits; mash them into the back seat.
5. Run a garden rake along both sides of the car.

Test 6: Going for a walk

1. Wait.
2. Go out the front door.
3. Come back in again.
4. Go out.
5. Come back in again.
6. Go out again.
7. Walk down the front path.
8. Walk back up it.
9. Walk down it again.
10. Walk very slowly down the road for five minutes.
11. Stop, inspect minutely and ask at least 6 questions about every piece of used chewing gum, dirty tissue and dead insect along the way.
12. Retrace your steps.
13. Scream that you have had as much as you can stand until the neighbours come out and stare at you.
14. Give up and go back into the house.

You are now just about ready to try taking a small child for a walk.

Test 7: Conversations with children

Repeat everything you say at least 5 times.

Test 8: Grocery Shopping

1. Go to the local supermarket. Take with you the nearest thing you can find to a pre-school child - a fully grown goat is excellent. If you intend to have more than one child, take more than one goat.
2. Buy your weekly groceries without letting the goat(s) out of your sight.
3. Pay for everything the goat eats or destroys.

Until you can easily accomplish this, do not even contemplate having children.

Test 9: Feeding a 1 year-old

1. Hollow out a melon
2. Make a small hole in the side
3. Suspend the melon from the ceiling and swing it side to side
4. Now get a bowl of soggy cornflakes and attempt to spoon them into the swaying melon while pretending to be an aeroplane.
5. Continue until half the cornflakes are gone.
6. Tip the rest into your lap, making sure that a lot of it falls on the floor.

Test 10: TV

1. Learn the names of every character from the Wiggles, Barney, Teletubbies and Disney.
2. Watch nothing else on television for at least 5 years.

Test 11:  Mess

1. Smear peanut butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains
2. Hide a fish behind the stereo and leave it there all summer.
3. Stick your fingers in the flowerbeds and then rub them on clean walls. Cover the stains with crayon. How does that look?
4. Empty every drawer/cupboard/storage box in your house onto the floor and proceed with step 5.
5. Drag random items from one room to another room and leave them there.

Test 12: Long Trips with Toddlers

1. Make a recording of someone shouting 'Mummy' repeatedly. Important Notes: No more than a 4 second delay between each Mummy. Include occasional crescendo to the level of a supersonic jet.
2. Play this tape in your car, everywhere you go for the next 4 years.

You are now ready to take a long trip with a toddler.

Test 13: Conversations

1. Start talking to an adult of your choice.
2. Have someone else continually tug on your shirt hem or shirt sleeve while playing the Mummy tape listed above.

You are now ready to have a conversation with an adult while there is a child in the room.

Test 14: Getting ready for work

1. Pick a day on which you have an important meeting.
2. Put on your finest work attire.
3. Take a cup of cream and put 1 cup of lemon juice in it
4. Stir
5. Dump half of it on your nice silk shirt
6. Saturate a towel with the other half of the mixture
7. Attempt to clean your shirt with the same saturated towel
8. Do not change (you have no time).
9. Go directly to work

I will not die an unlived life

I will not die an unlived life.

I will not live in fear

of falling or catching fire.

I choose to inhabit my days,

to allow my living to open me,

to make me less afraid,

more accessible;

to loosen my heart

until it becomes a wing,

a torch, a promise.

I choose to risk my significance,

to live so that which came to me as seed

goes to the next as blossom,

and that which came to me as blossom,

goes on as fruit.

by Dawna Markova

Olympic torch by my 6 year old son © Jennifer Phillips

Ars Poetica

A poem should be palpable and mute   
As a globed fruit,

Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown—

A poem should be wordless   
As the flight of birds.         


A poem should be motionless in time   
As the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,   
Memory by memory the mind—

A poem should be motionless in time   
As the moon climbs.       


A poem should be equal to:
Not true.

For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf.

For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea—

A poem should not mean   
But be.

By Archibald MacLeish

Anenome's heart

Inside a purple anenome © Jennifer Phillips

Fireflies

You would not believe your eyes

If ten million fireflies

Lit up the world as I fell asleep

'Cause they'd fill the open air

And leave teardrops everywhere

You'd think me rude

But I would just stand and stare

I'd like to make myself believe

That planet Earth turns slowly

It's hard to say that I'd rather stay

Awake when I'm asleep

'Cause everything is never as it seems

'Cause I'd get a thousand hugs

From ten thousand lightning bugs

As they tried to teach me how to dance

A foxtrot above my head

A sock hop beneath my bed

A disco ball is just hanging by a thread

I'd like to make myself believe

That planet Earth turns slowly

It's hard to say that I'd rather stay

Awake when I'm asleep

'Cause everything is never as it seems

When I fall asleep

Leave my door open just a crack

(Please take me away from here)

'Cause I feel like such an insomniac

(Please take me away from here)

Why do I tire of counting sheep

(Please take me away from here)

When I'm far too tired to fall asleep

To ten million fireflies

I'm weird 'cause I hate goodbyes

I got misty eyes as they said farewell

But I'll know where several are

If my dreams get real bizarre

'Cause I saved a few and I keep them in a jar

I'd like to make myself believe

That planet Earth turns slowly

It's hard to say that I'd rather stay

Awake when I'm asleep

'Cause everything is never as it seems

When I fall asleep

I'd like to make myself believe

That planet Earth turns slowly

It's hard to say that I'd rather stay

Awake when I'm asleep

'Cause everything is never as it seems

When I fall asleep

I'd like to make myself believe

That planet Earth turns slowly

It's hard to say that I'd rather stay

Awake when I'm asleep

Because my dreams are bursting at the seams

by Owl City

Adam Young

Desert rain

Your kisses 

fall like rain

over the parched terrain 

of my body - 

I part blushed 

like a desert bloom.

My lake fills -

cleft ravine

becomes a torrent, 

a storm under your flow.

You dive blue sky breathless

into the depths -

come up gasping, yet replete - 

a fish between your jaws.

© Jennifer Phillips (All rights reserved)

Rain on parched terrain © Jennifer Phillips