small pleasures

Meeting today was cancelled due to overly busy team leader who's off on holiday next week and who had a lot of things to sort out. She was prepared to accept our assurances that all was under control.

I was very good and didn't do any little dances in public.

(Do you get the impression that I don't like meetings? I don't like meetings.)

Still, very tired when I got home from work. I suspect that I may have some sort of ongoing bug, as I have been feeling off and mildly clogged up for several days now. Not clogged up enough to stop me going shopping in Manchester tomorrow, however. As for next week -- we shall see.

---

Shinto

When sorrow lays us low
for a second we are saved
by humble windfalls
of the mindfulness or memory:
the taste of a fruit, the taste of water,
that face given back to us by a dream,
the first jasmine of November,
the endless yearning of the compass,
a book we thought was lost,
the throb of a hexameter,
the slight key that opens a house to us,
the smell of a library, or of sandalwood,
the former name of a street,
the colors of a map,
an unforeseen etymology,
the smoothness of a filed fingernail,
the date we were looking for,
the twelve dark bell-strokes, tolling as we count,
a sudden physical pain.

Eight million Shinto deities
travel secretly throughout the earth.
Those modest gods touch us --
touch us and move on.

-- Jorge Luis Borges