Month of Roses

The perfume of roses drifts through the air,

Invites passers-by to stop and rest.

People on benches devour the sun,

The roses around shine in bright colours.

It's the month of June!

Well... just for a few more hours.

© LaGraziana 2013 

Red Rose, White Rose

“Marry a red rose and eventually she'll be a mosquito-blood streak smeared on the wall, while the white one is ‘moonlight in front of my bed’. Marry a white rose, and before long she'll be a grain of sticky rice that's gotten stuck to your clothes; the red one, by then, is a scarlet beauty mark over your heart.”

from Red Rose, White Rose by Eileen Chang

June

Sun rays from the East.

A pink rose in the garden

Opens with the warmth.

© LaGraziana 2013

The Cycle of Nature

Loose flower petals

Beneath the magnolia.

Beginning and end.

© LaGraziana 2013 

Messengers of Spring

Hoar-frost on the grass.
In a spot by the stone wall
Yellow primroses.


 ©  LaGraziana 2013

Valentine's Day

by LaGraziana

Grey clouds in the sky.
White flakes drifting in the air.
Puddles in the street.

 
A hyacinth bulb

With a green shoot in a pot.

Life reappearing!

Letter for You

Dear reader,

how are you? I hope that you're in good health and in a good mood. Both are almost as important for the reader as they are for the writer because they have a share in whether you’re in the right or in the wrong frame of mind for a conversation. If you don't feel well, it might influence your opinion on the letter you just received or on the person who took the effort to put pen to paper to join you in words. Being swamped with work waiting to be done or being absorbed in the cycle of your daily worries can be just as harmful because you won’t be able to appreciate or even enjoy the letter. You’d better give me and my likes your full attention. So please take your time, empty your mind… and then read this. 

Don’t get me wrong. Writing snail mail letters isn't about sharing only good news and pleasant feelings with someone who is living far away. If you ask me, a good pen-friendship actually has a lot in common with a marriage. It means sharing your life in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health. Of course, someone who never wrote postal letters will find it hard to believe how close you can feel to a person who you might not even have met face to face. Despite all I can assure you that a good pen-friend can help you through hard times with nothing but words of understanding and support or sometimes even without words when there’s nothing to be done except being there for the other. I speak from experience!

The fact that snail mail correspondence isn’t an immediate means of communication even is an advantage. In an e-mail or in a facebook post you often write down anything that crosses your mind at the very moment, even if it’s something that you wouldn’t think of anymore a short while later. When you handwrite a letter, you do it with more care. You decide whether an information or comment deserves being recorded or if it would just bore your pen-friend because taken out of its time context it’s of no importance nor interest. Maybe that’s just another reason why postal correspondence is looked at with something like disdain today. You can’t just kill your time with it, but you need to put a lot of thought into your choice of topics and words. 

At this, dear reader, I leave you and allow you some time to think. I hope that you had a good time in my company. 

With kind regards,
Edith LaGraziana

Snail Mail Correspondence

It’s characteristic of our modern society that both in English and in German we speak of snail mail (Schneckenpost) when we refer to letters sent or received via postal services. It’s true that transporting an envelope from one point to another takes time, but does such an exchange really deserve being named after a snail? Is it so slow? In fact a letter sent from Graz uses to be delivered to any place in Austria the next day or the day after. Within Europe you can be somewhat sure that your letter will reach the recipient in two to five days. Letters leaving the continent can take longer, even much longer depending on the reliability of the postal service concerned. My only negative experience in this respect regards the USA: whenever I tried to establish a pen-friendship with a person there, one out of two letters got lost. Maybe the Bermuda Triangle swallowed them? In any case my letters never turned up again.

However, today’s postal services in general are quick and reliable compared to those of former times. Yet, modern written communication is digital and typed. E-mail, sms, instant messaging, social networks, chat. Everything less immediate is called outdated and a waste of time. Literature is keeping up pace. While Lizzy Bennet penned dozens of long epistles to her family, friends and even Mr. Darcy, Bridget Jones spent much time on the phone and in front of the computer typing short messages. Of course, it’s futile to compare the nineteenth century’s means of communication with those of the last years of the twentieth century. Jane Austen was a woman of her era and so is Helen Fielding. Times have changed a lot. Life is faster-moving than ever. We are more hurried, more superficial and more careless than ever. Who do you think knew more about the character of the person with whom she was exchanging letters, Lizzy Bennet or Bridget Jones? I reckon that the answer is quite clear.

Is it a big surprise to know that there are still some people like me on this planet who indulge in handwriting letters to their friends? We are few and ever less, but we are keeping alive an old tradition and an art. We do this with pleasure and against all obstacles like rising prices for stamps, letter-boxes being removed over night and post-offices being closed at virtually every corner. It doesn’t even matter to us that some people look at us as if we were aliens from another planet or time. We enjoy sitting down to take a sheet of nice letter-paper (if we can still find one that matches our character, one that is neither ugly nor dreadfully infantile) and a pen for writing to a friend. For a little while we step aside from the usual hustle of life and leave ourselves to the flow of words. What could be better?

On a Winter's Day

It’s snowing! A cyclone over the Adriatic Sea is blessing us with lots of tiny flakes gliding down from a deep grey sky. In Graz we often get snow from the South, above all when humid air from the Mediterranean mixes with cold air from the continent. Since yesterday noon, above all during the night, the city has been covered with estimated 10 to 15 cm of crystallized frozen water. That’s not much compared to the snow blanket in the Alpine regions of Austria, but it’s more than enough for a city like Graz to sink into chaos. In January snowfalls aren’t much of a surprise really because we’re right in the middle of winter, and yet… I had hoped… 

Frankly, to my taste this season is too unfriendly and too wet and too cold. Grrr. Nothing but looking outside I’m getting goose bumps and a depression! Is it a surprise that I prefer dark clothes during winter although this can be very dangerous after nightfall? The low clouds, the often dim light and the cold temperatures seem to call for it. Maybe I’m driven by an old instinct to camouflage. At any rate vivid colours don’t feel right when the world is painted in black and white. In fact, a look out of the window is like watching a photo printed long ago when colour films were rare and cameras working without film at best a crazy idea of science-fiction writers.

I’d prefer to be tucked in my bed and fast asleep now until spring, but I’m not a marmot, nor a turtle, nor a hedgehog. As a matter of fact, I’m human and I am awake. Every morning I have to go to work and bear the freezing monochrome surroundings. At the moment the snow is fresh, clean and shining white – a beautiful sight! I admit –, but it will mix with the dirt and the dust all around in no time. Then the white splendour will turn into a disgusting brownish grey mass everywhere close to streets and pavements. It’s inevitable. Graz will remind me once more of the ugly industrial town of Coketown that Charles Dickens invented back in 1854 for his novel Hard Times 

The only practicable solution for me is to stay at home as much as I can while the conditions outside are such that I despise. It goes without saying that I don’t mind at all! I can hold on in silence, too. At least for a while provided that I get a chance to express myself in writing.

The First Day of the Year

by LaGraziana

Graz,

1^st January 2013, 7:30 a.m.

On New Year's morning:

No sun piercing through the fog,

No colourful world.

Graz,
1^st January 2013, 8:00 a.m. 

The fog is thinning.

Around the sun the clouds gleam

In pink-golden light.