As many of my friends know, I am a big U2 fan. They were orginally supposed to play Australia in December 2005 before we left Australia. But it was delayed until November this year. So in many ways I have long reconciled not being able to see them in concert.
A friend back in Australia recently went to see them twice in Sydney. He rang me for half an hour after the first show in Sydney and we discussed the show. The second night he rang me during the concert and I listened to "Where the Streets have no name" on the phone. It wasn't being there. It was very special to me that my friend *understood* how much I wanted to be there and that he cared about this. This became a special gift to me in a way that I never expected. God always gives good gifts to those he loves.
Melody and I often talk about life in Russia compared to our lives back in Canada or Australia. We got tired of saying "Canada or Australia" all the time. So we made up a new word: Canalia (which sounds better than Austranada).
My father in law took the poem to write a poem about "Canalia". The land where red and white are merged into one. This was also very special to me that he took the time to *understand* where we are at in our lives.
CANALIA
The vast red Down Under... the Great White North
Here's an Ode to the Land of Perpetual Pink.
Where cute little koalas sit there and freeze,
While the beavers eat bark off all the gum trees
Where the kangaroo shivers and the caribou sweat;
A chinook in July ain't a safe bet!
Where the temperature soars to forty below,
Wee fairy penguins frolic, on the ice and the snow
Where the great polar bear goes surfing for Christmas,
All bundled up in his toque and his mittens
Where Santa returns from his annual run
Cursing his burns from the infernal sun
Oh, to be back in the land of my birth
Counting the blessings of faraway mirth
Where my family is usually faintly amused
But my friends are generally always confused
By my serious silliness, sometimes I think
There in the Land of Perpetual Pink
Thank you to all of you who have taken the time to understand. I love you and value your friendship very much.
2 comments:
I love the poem! At first I thought it would be great set to music. But then I saw in my imagination vivid pictures of the koalas, penguins and polar bears and decided it would make a wonderful children's book. Alol you need is the right illustrator!! I know that your inlaws know quite a few authors - I wonder how many illustrators they know?
Well, the word Canalia sounds well in English, but it has long been used in Russian as a swear word of French or Italian (I am not too sure, which) descent - каналья - meaning a bad/ unpleasant/ deceiptful person. It is not used now, unless someone wants to sound a bit old-fashioned, but the meaning is still there. Beware of using it with Russians - you will be misunderstood. To let you have the feel of how it sounds to me, imagine calling your joined country Castralia (not sure if it does sound strange or offensive in English, but definitely it sounds dubiously). I am being pedantic about Russian language, as always.
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