RENEE'S WREASONS

Humans have gotten a lot wrong, but sometimes we get it right; I mean REALLY right. These are just a few gestures both large and small that make me cheerful:

WREADING BENJAMIN

Everything Walter Benjamin has ever written amazes me. He looks at the world in such fascinating detail. Sometimes, I wonder if history had not conspired against him, what other works he may have created.

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WATERING MAILMEN

When my grandmother was alive, she always left a glass of water on the front porch for the mailman. To be honest, I don't think he was that thirsty, but he drank it anyway to make her feel good. Kindness comes in an infinite multitude of tiny


exchanges.


LISTENING TO BOB

The other day, I was listening to Bob Dylan's Masters of War. What a powerfully lucid ballad against the powers that were, and still are, so dominant. Hearing that song reminds me of the potential of an individual's voice to speak the truth with such acuity.

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THROWING FISH BACK IN

Last week my four year old son cried when we ate fish. He said we should put them back in the sea. He's right. I have a lot to learn from him. Who knows, his generation might teach us how to deal with the environment in more responsible ways.



ADMIRING KURT

Sometimes I wonder what made Kurt Schwitters build the Merzbau three times. One bombed in Hanover, another one burned. It's amazing his spirit compelled him to keep on pursuing the project; in fact, it's absolutely logic defying. He reminds me that our breadth of imagination combined with determination might make us dream of other fantastical worlds.

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WATCHING FLIRTING

There is a bench at the corner of my house, just across the street. Every afternoon, a Moroccan boy meets with a Dutch girl. Although they sit without touching each other, the flirtation is incredible. Maybe their desire will do more to solve racial tensions in our city than any blue-suited politician with the best of rhetoric and intentions.


LOVING SOMEONE

For the past twelve years I've woken up next to the same person. I still enjoy seeing his face on the pillow. Together we are discovering that imperfection is pretty seductive stuff. It might be the very foundations of "getting it right".


I could go on and on... There is a lot to be both cheerful, and moreover, hopeful about.

- Renee Turner

SAILING MY BOAT

Hello,
my name is Tom Mucha. I am 10 years old. The best thing to be cheerful is sailing. I sail in my own boat on the atlantic ocean. I am in Spiddal sailing club and you can do your certificut in sailing and make friends and if you ahve a boat, then you are the captin of that boat. I am the captin of my boat in the photo. Now my boat is in the gardin till next spring.
Tom


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WALKING IN THE MIDST OF ANGELS

Oh, there are so many reasons to be cheerful.
I no longer drink.
I no longer smoke.
I have wonderful friends and ?
I always do what I wanna do. I always have, which can be delightfully dangerous,
As well as terribly selfish. C'est ca!

.

Long walks make me cheerful,
as does my brisk lunchtime stroll.
I love it when it's spring here,
when the cherry blossoms are in bloom;
when I feel like I am walking in the midst of angels.
But Autumn is my favourite season,
When the momiji maples are ablaze.
It is time then to join the throngs at Nikko,
to admire the foliage and visit Tokugawa?s shrine,
It makes me cheerful to sit quietly with a good friend and sip green tea.

Or better still, in autumn, I love to go way up north, up towards
The swift Mogami River,
Maybe I'm a bum, a pilgrim, a spy. Who cares what those drivers think?

I imagine I am Basho, or maybe Sora,
When I huff and puff my way up the sacred mountain of Haguro.

Mary King

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BEACHCOMBING GLASSWATCHING

If pushed for a reason to be cheerful, almost joyful, I would say that walking along the waterline at a beach, especially in Greece and searching for pieces of shiny worn edged glass.

I have a honey jar that I got in Greece that is full of these green and red, brown and opaque white pieces of glass.
What I like to do is get up early, before the sunbathers get to the beach and walk along the shore with my shoes in my hand and my head down, and where the water meets the sand in a frothy line, I look out for these little bits of glass.
Then I like to imagine where they come from.

Galleons probably.

On a good morning I will find maybe ten.
In the afternoon, when I'm bored with laying under my beach shelter that I have made out of broken umbrella poles and a shower curtain, I will go for another walk and look for more.

The day I leave to come back to England, I wash the pieces of glass and dry them and put them in the honey jar that I've kept for the purpose, roll them up in my beach towel and put them in my suitcase.

When I look at them in their jar back in England, they don’t shine as much, they’ve dried off and lost their gloss and I say to myself, "I should varnish them so they look just like the do when I find them on the beach."

But of course, I never get round to it.

Toni Le Busque

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DOODLING IN NOTEBOOKS

I have a little tin box of watercolour paints and a tiny collapsible brush. My real bliss is sitting at a cafe on holiday somewhere with palm trees (I can draw those!) sketching and colouring in, doodling cartoons and jotting down words.



My great grandmother went with her husband and daughter on a world cruise in 1914 and made a tiny watercolour per day, each one exquisite. I aspire to such artistry but actually part of the pleasure is feeling happily amateur.

M Seward


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PLAYING THE CONGAS

Now the therapeutic value of pummeling the skin of a drum is hard to beat, and great big wooden congas are the best hand drums of all, though it takes time to get the knack of the slaps and bass tones etcetera. Learning with my wonderful tutor Robin Jones was scarey and delightful - how amazing to be taught something as tricky and direct as this. Playing with the band is bliss too.

John Swann

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RIDING THROUGH THE CITY ON MY SCOOTER

..preferably on a hot, sunny day. Solo or with the one you love. It's perhaps the only truly satisfactory way to experience where I live. Instead of the hell of the tube, my journey to work can lead me to roar (gently) through Regents Park and cruise down the Kings Road, or wiggle through the streets of Soho and Covent Garden, whizz over Waterloo Bridge or putter past the Houses of Parliament... Every day there's something to see that makes me marvel at the splendour of the capital, and if I want to I can stop off and investigate further a shop or park or nice place to stand for a few minutes. Be careful though - it's dangerous and there's only one rule: don't get hit.

Christopher Overleaf

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