I could add edges to this photo and make a more definite heart shape, but I like it as it is. Late summer fluffy clouds drift in a sky that turned cloudy and grey an hour later. Laurel, Russian vine and Wisteria frame the blue. The vine has been cut back and the flowers are turning brown. The Wisteria needs pruning and the laurel is blocking out most of the light in our sunny patch.
Most of the rest if the garden is covered over with trees. The leaves gather light from every gap. It’s amazing how they space themselves so they fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.
You look up and try and see dragons or puppies in the sky. Dancing horses, faces, hands, ufo’s, giraffes, teddy bears. It’s all there, up in that heart of sky.
We had a Thai meal tonight. Look away if you don’t like prawns. Very tasty, low carbohydrates. With mussels, squid and scallops.
Sometimes it’s good to try something new, rather than having the same food every day. But then I am lucky to have that opportunity. Its difficult to know how the first world can do so much when so many other people in the world have nothing or next to nothing….
Holding hands? After forty years we still do. But sometimes I just need to let go. When I’m typing, it’s impossible to type left handed. Impossible to chose the picture I want to use. Impossible to add tabs, categories. Sometimes you need a bit of freedom. The chance to do your own thing. Not tied together, feeling like you have to support the other one. It’s not just typing, it’s all the other things I would like to do, but I’m sure he feels the same way. Life, together, sometimes it’s hard to know when to let go (but stay together).
You can’t see the past or the future. You might be able to remember the past but it no longer exists as a physical thing. The future might be predicted, but it doesn’t exist yet.
I tried to imagine how it works. Like walking through a door or a window. The present would be a thin flat plain of glass with your body perhaps caught in it, and the past and the future would be ghostly after images of a leg or the impression of an arm projecting into the future….
Clearly it isn’t really like that. Our limbs don’t dissolve into a misty future or fall into a darkening landscape behind us. But it’s interesting to think about. We are ‘present’ in our present. We need to realise how strange the universe is. We need to care for our environment. We cannot see the future but we can try and make it safe for our future selves and generations.
Fushias in the garden, like little ballerinas, skirts whirling, pale pink over dark pink petals. Stamens hanging down, like little legs pirouetting in a dance on thin air…
The colours thrill. Pinks, browns greens and purples. The background blurs into fluid texture, waiting for your quiet death as cool ice freezes you in withered majesty.
He was stern, bearded, he was a patriarch and knew it. He had always been strict with the women and girls in the village. They could come and go, but were not allowed to go to lessons, while the boys had schooling, and of course the best food and clothes.
Nothing would change his mind, that was how things were and that was how it would always be.
His daughter, turning ten years old, looked up to him. But she was clever. Too bright for washing clothes till her hands went red, too clever for feeding the chickens or wringing their necks and plucking them when the time came. She could do everything girls five years older than her were capable of. She stitched and sewed, she span wool. She was useful and her father knew it.
‘father’ she would ask. ‘Why is the sky blue? How old is the world?’ Or ‘why are the clouds that shape?’ One day she even asked why the moon waxed and wained. Her father would just say ‘none of your nonsense my girl’ or ‘get back to your laundering’. The daughter turned round sadly and carried on with her chores.
For two years this carried on, until one day the father became ill, he took to his bed, and despite his wife’s care he only grew worse. His eyes were closed when his daughter bought his supper to him one evening. She spooned some broth into his mouth, he retched, but she persevered. Little by little he supped the food. Later she came to check on him and he seemed a little better.
A week later he was sitting up in bed. His daughter came into the room and he held her hand as she gave him more broth. ‘what’s in this food’ he asked ‘it tastes strange, bitter’ ‘just herbs’ she said.
When he had fully recovered the father asked his wife what she had used to make the broth, ‘it wasn’t me’ she said. ‘Daughter talked to the old women, she made the broth after speaking to them’.
Later he talked to his daughter ‘how did you know how to cure me?’ ‘I asked questions like I always do’ she said.
Finally his mind changed. ‘you will go to school my girl, if you can learn such things off old women, I want to know what you can learn in class’.
The daughter started school and after four years she was taken into college. Finally she was trained as an apothecary. From then on the father insisted all the children, girls as well as boys, should be taught.
It’s been about six weeks now since I think I hurt my shoulder. The doctors agreed I needed physios they sent me a letter to book an appointment. But there are no appointments. I’m still in pain and no further forward. I wonder if things will ever get back to normal (shoulder and life). I think it’s partly to do with tension. I haven’t got depressed but I seem to always be hunching my shoulders up. I might try and get to yoga again if it starts up again.
When I think about it though I can manage, I have been managing. What about all the people who never get treatment. Who live in poverty in rich and poor countries where health treatment is based on expensive insurance that doesn’t cover existing health issues. I know how lucky I am.
Have to say I’m still irritated with WordPress, everything seems so slow. Pages take ages to load, but I’m going through the same process over and over again to find a path through the new editor. I keep taking wrong turns, looking for tags that don’t seem to exist once I’ve posted them. How are you all doing? Am I getting on your nerves?
Mallaband-Brown 