Busy Busy Busy - Pandemic Edition

Barosaurus, Royal Ontario Museum

After months uncluttered by things to do other than sleep, eat and consume streamed media, I'm now up to my neck in busy-ness.

I've got a client who specializes in engaging me at the last minute, multiple things happening on my condo board, birthdays to think about (almost everyone I know was born between July 1 and September 30), and, after multiple cancellations, young relations who are going to get married this time, dammit - one this weekend and another the next.

All of which is to say I've got lots on my mind, but none of it is fun to share. 

So here's a poem by Philip Larkin. Bruce recited most of it while we were out with a friend last week. He's full of surprises that one.

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This Be The Verse

BY PHILIP LARKIN

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.   

    They may not mean to, but they do.   

They fill you with the faults they had

    And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn

    By fools in old-style hats and coats,   

Who half the time were soppy-stern

    And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.

    It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,

    And don’t have any kids yourself.

Philip Larkin, "This Be the Verse" from Collected Poems. Copyright © Estate of Philip Larkin.  Reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber, Ltd.

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Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Haven't seen one of these in a while:
sightseeing bus by Dundas Square.

After I took this photo one morning while I was waiting for 

the Eaton Centre to open, a young woman standing nearby asked me if I was a tourist. I said "no." She explained that she thought I was because of my camera and what I'd just taken a picture of. I had nothing to add to that. And, as soon as she learned I was a local, I ceased to interest her.