Lungwort

 noun

1a bristly herbaceous European plant of the borage family, typically having white-spotted leaves and pink flowers which turn blue as they age.

[so named because the leaves were said to have the appearance of a diseased lung]

Oxford Dictionary

 

In the garden the lungwort is flowering under stress. It has been ambushed by the weather, having been lulled into a false sense of optimism by the few relatively warm days we experienced earlier in the month.  I'm fond of it. I was given a couple of plants about five years ago and they've spread like wildfire.  With its mottled leaves and small, delicate heads of two-tone flowers it makes for great ground cover, plus it's hardy and resilient with a long flowering season.

I've some fellow feeling with the lungwort. It's been a rough couple of days spent folded up in the armchair with gut and back pain, wrapped in a duvet and drinking lots of water and hot ginger tea.  According to the naturopath the root cause of all this is dybiosis (the GP simply doled out repeat prescriptions for industrial strength antacids).  It will take time and persistence to crack.   I was in a bad way - worse than I realised at the time - in January when I started the treatment.  There has been improvement but flare-ups happen, and may well always do so to a degree.  Persistence is all.

****

At almost a month in I'm glad to be blogging again. I'm doing it almost entirely for myself, which for me is the only genuine motivation, though I'm always delighted and appreciative when old and new commenters drop by. But if one person reads what I have written, that's enough; in the real world I'm not one for crowds.   It's becoming a lifeline, the writing and the photography, that I'm grabbing onto to haul myself back to what passes for a more normal existence. No, I don't have exciting or deep things to write about but that's not the point.  The point is that I'm doing it.  Practice.  Like the Buddhists. The way I was put to the piano as a child morning and evening to practise my scales. 

Most importantly of all, it's a way of stepping into the current of life, of sticking two fingers up to pain and weakness and all that goes with it.   Each post, each photograph taken, builds momentum. 

Stretching

The shoulder and neck are better, though not cured. Too much time on the computer, using the mouse and the dull throbbing starts. Moderation, that most elusive of qualities, is my holy grail.

The immediate goal to work on the cow face pose, which with my hypermobile joints I used to find so easy in yoga class. One arm reaching backwards over the shoulder, the other behind the back reaching up. The hands clasp. Once I was proud of my prowess, glowed when the teacher praised my flexibility. Yes, I know, self-congratulation is at variance with the non-competitive spirit of yoga, but that didn't stop me. The karmic comeuppance is that these days I can just about manage the pose on one side only. Impossible to move the right arm upwards behind my back.

The difference between a year ago and now is still dispiriting. A lesson is humility. Also in self-forgiveness: nobody made me sit at the laptop for hours at a time without taking a break

I'm supposed to do exercises three times a day. Some days it's only twice but Sheila the physio is pleased with progress and the gap between our appointments has lengthened from weekly to fortnightly to monthly. At my request - she knows I do massage and is supportive - we name the muscles, bones and joints beneath her fingers as she works, massaging and stretching contracted muscles, neck then arm then shoulder, me on the couch, her standing alongside. A litany, a recitative: Pecs minor, scalenes, subscapularis, levator scapulae, coracoid process, C4 and C5 ....

When we tire of A&P we talk about cats, hers and mine. Or gardening.

I turn onto my back. She places both hands, one over the other, on the injured shoulder, leans her weight forward onto her arms. Clavicle and sternum are pushed towards the spine and my lung capacity is reduced by what feels like 90%. She's a large woman in her early forties, as tall as I am and a former shot putter, solid and muscular. The effect is not dissimilar (I imagine) to being run over. I close my eyes, wonder if my skeleton can take it, imagine the pistol-shot crack of fracturing bone.

At the end of the session the muscles in the right shoulder and arm feel blessedly looser. Silent prayers of thanks for the NHS. And for Sheila. We've almost, in a way, become friends. Not quite, the professional relationship takes precedence, as it should.

But I like her, and I'm grateful.

****

A visit to a National Trust garden last week. I couldn't tear myself away from the spiralling, unfurling ferns. Uncurling. Releasing. Stretching out of themselves.

Abeyance

Writing The End seems far too final. Impossible not to leave the door slightly open.

Nonetheless, after two plus years and three blogs the time has come to stop, at least for a while. A combination of the RSI (which is serious and painful and which I need to take seriously and blogging really doesn't help) and the awareness that, physical injury apart, I have been spending more time than is beneficial in front of the computer screen.

So, in abeyance until further notice. At least until the summer.

Three months of minimal computer work, the physio says.

After that, we'll see.

Gargoyles and a Vertical Mouse

Last Monday the new physio diagnosed chronic RSI in the right shoulder. A consequence of a couple of decades of computer work and faulty posture and seating. The latest chapter in an ongoing saga. Remedial exercises three times a day and a course of ultrasound (thank god for the NHS) are prescribed. Most important of all, a limit - a drastic one - on computer time, certainly until the vertical mouse, now on order, arrives. Never heard of a vertical mouse? Neither had I.

Just as well you've stopped full time office work, she said. Lucky too that the injury doesn't much affect the range of movements needed for massage.

I'll be blogging and reading what I can, when I can. Ditto commenting. Want to do more and frustrated that it isn't possible. Face to face with my own limitations yet again - something I resist and resist - and a reminder that no-one (including, especially, me) can do everything and be everywhere.

Strange, I find, how driven behaviour patterns crop up everywhere, including in cyberspace. Laugh at them and they dissolve. But only for a while. They return and sit on your shoulder, whispering in your ear until you laugh and shrug them off. Again. Grotesque, comical gargoyles.

But I will catch up with the blogreading. In due course. Promise.

Record

2008. The ones that got away.

Many photographs never made it to the blog at the time they were taken. I am drawn to those taken in the colder half of this year. The clean lines. The light.



December. Christmas decorations. Taken in a local cafe.



December. London dawn. Awake early in a strange bed.



December. A commuter on the Tube leaning against a glass partition immediately to my right. If I were a palmist, he would have been offering up his life up for my inspection.



October. The neighbour's cat and the aloe plant.



November. Winter beans. Now sprouting.



October. Reflections, Durham.



February. Local park. Fog. Emptiness. Silence.



February. Detail. Water of Life Fountain by Stephen Broadbent, Chester Cathedral.


****

When we met, Relatively Retiring and I spoke about our respective travels. Did you keep a journal, she asked. No. And that is sad. In those days I relied on an excellent memory and an unreliable camera. Twenty five years on I understand that the former is neither trustworthy nor time-proof and that uncared for physical photographs eventually fade, are mislaid or you spill coffee on them.

And now I have a blog. It is a record, of a kind. Blogging has shown me the extraordinariness of the ordinary and the value of naming what is there. And that the quest for perfection is pointless if it leads to paralysis. There are times when you just have to shrug and press Publish and move on. It's still worth doing.

It is.

Happy New Year!

Real Life

I’d been looking forward to Saturday.

Relatively Retiring invited me to lunch. She had introduced herself a few weeks ago in the comments and it turns out we live just three train stops from each other. We had to meet of course and it was like resuming a conversation with an old friend. Maybe meeting at first in the blogosphere oils the wheels, but there was a real connection.

The day flowed. Good food and talk, a drive into the hills before the daylight faded and a delightful dog. Balm for body and mind. And if you haven’t yet visited RR’s engaging, thoughtful blog, you’re missing something. It must run in the family as she is aunt to the esteemed Pohangina Pete.

A gift to discover a congenial fellow blogger in the real-life neighbourhood. Much as I love having a cyber life and far-flung blogfriends, you can on occasion feel isolated with just the computer screen for company.

So pleased we did this.

Change of season

I know. It isnt October. I just needed to blog.

This early autumn, with its golden afternoons and cold, clear nights is proving to be a gorgeous one. I stare at the flowers - autumn daisies, fuchsias, dahlias - and the changing leaves, trying to commit those vibrant reds and yellows and oranges to memory, to soak them up. Grey days lie ahead, and these have their own beauty, but I will miss the colours.

I ignore dire warnings about corrupted files, cross my fingers and, once again, switch on the ailing laptop ....

Expiry

The last post for the laptop.

It is expiring. No longer can I type apostrophes and there are other even more worrying symptoms. A computer techie friend tut-tuts and shakes his head as I describe them. Time to give it a decent burial, he says. He advised against using it at all any more but I wanted to write this post.

The laptop has proved an able and willing servant in its five years of life, fitting discreetly into the compact and bijou London flat (anyone remember that Fry and Laurie ad?) and introducing me to blogging and the fascinating and sublimely addictive world of cyberspace. It played havoc though with my trapezius and rhomboids, and I will be replacing it with a "proper" computer. Adjustable screen. Separate keyboard. Two different computer-oriented friends have recommended Dell which surprises me as I seem to remember reading less than wonderful reviews a few years ago.

If anyone has any recommendations, believe me, they will be gratefully received. Just leave a note in the comments.

****

An involuntary hiatus, then, since blogging at work isnt a possibility. Probably till mid-October, given my diary and the schedule of my techie adviser. No bad thing. Life sometimes knows better than I do what I need and it will be salutary perhaps to live for a spell without rating the events of the day, consciously or unconsciously, on their blog potential.

*****

At last a golden September morning:

- Warm sun but the hint of a chill in the air. Hanging out the washing early. The bus into town to get my contribution for the party tonight, listening to two elderly ladies on the seat in front discuss mutual friends. A browse around PC World then a cappucino on the verandah of the arts centre.

- A busker with his guitar, nobly taking up the most insalubrious pitch in town, a dirty, littered underpass smelling of urine, which nonetheless probably has the best accoustics, and belting out a cracking version of After the Gold Rush that would have made Mr Young proud. His voice soared through the filth and tiles and concrete and part of me floated upwards with it. I tossed him a coin, slightly embarrassed, as I tend to be on such occasions.


Well I dreamed I saw the silver
space ships flying
in the yellow haze of the sun.
There were children crying
and colours flying
all around the chosen ones.
All in a dream, all in a dream
the loading had begun.
They were flying Mother Natures
silver seed to a new home
in the sun.


See you here again sometime in October.

Connecting

Well now. I'm gratified. This blog has received an award from Kate at Dating God, who was one of the instigators of my life in cyberspace. I found her blog way before I started mine and remember spending several rainy afternoons reading through the archives, hooked. She writes with courage and honesty about beginings and endings, about waking up and trying to live out her purpose, telling it like it is through the highs and lows. I've followed her progress from New York to North Carolina. I can't imagine not keeping up with her - and the cats of course.

The idea is that recipients in turn nominate seven blogs. Rules are made to be broken, I know, but I haven't linked much recently and it seems a good thing to do at this point, for all sorts of reasons.

I'm not going for any of the blogs on my blogroll. It would be impossible to choose some and leave out others. So here are seven excellent sites that I visit regularly mainly, but not exclusively, as a lurker rather than a commenter:

Life on Earth and other Accidents: LJ used to blog regularly but then life happened in a big, painful, way and she stopped. Happily, she's started again. She has a big heart, a keen eye and a nice line in irony. She lives in Nova Scotia. And, heaven knows, she writes so well.

The Sudanese Thinker: By Drima, an expatriate Sudanese whose blog is a mixture of African and international cultural and political comment, interspersed with videos of his favourite music. He tackles controversial subjects with civility and acceptance, and nearly all the commenters seem to follow his lead, more or less. Besides, any blogger with the phrase "Warning: I'm very sarcastic." in the About section has already won me over.

Patteran Pages: Dick Jones's blog. Dick is a terrific poet, with wide interests that are reflected in his writing, both poetry and prose. I love his work.

The Paris Project: Can't remember how I found Jenell. An American Christian anthropology professor in her thirties with a feminist outlook and three young sons, we seem to have little in common, but she's a fixture on my Bloglines subscription. She questions and celebrates life and her faith with a sharp, open mind and a light touch.

Astrotabletalk: One of the best astrology blogs around, taking the subject far deeper than many. Dharmaruci has strong Buddhist leanings and is an excellent and thoughtful writer.

Nothing Special: Never was a blog so inaccurately named! Janice's beautiful artwork makes this a calm and reflective place to visit. Companion blogs are her Zen Diary and the Reading Diary. She doesn't post often but it's worth the wait when she does.

Tasting Rhubarb: I've read Jean's blog on and off ever since the start of its first incarnation, when we were almost-neighbours in South London. Like Kate, her example was one of the reasons I started this blogging business. She combines words with beautiful, subtle photography to create an art form out of the raw material of her daily life.

No pressure on any of the recipients to take this forward if you're not in the mood or it's just not your thing. But if you are mentioned (or even if you're not) and you feel like doing a spot of awarding, then pick up the badge and go for it.

Household gods

The ritual:

5.30am. Our neighbours are still asleep. We climb the stairs together, but as we near the landing he scampers ahead. He has eaten. I have my mug of hot black coffee. The study faces east and on June mornings like this it is flooded with sunlight.Still in my dressing gown I switch on the laptop and scan emails, blogs. He stretches out in his usual position on the window ledge, next to the brass figure of the Lord Shiva as Nataraja, the dancer.

Four-armed Shiva dances the world into enlightenment. The cat, felis catus, relaxes in the sun. He is, lest I forget, a creature of the goddess Bast, patron of the sun, women and secrets. He watches me intently. Now and again I return the favour, entranced as always by the way he folds his front paws inwards. Neat and tidy.

A few hundred yards away an early train clatters past. After a while I close the computer and head for the shower.

The cat stays where he is.

****

Summer solstice. In the abundance of such clear, generous light, everything seems possible, all barriers surmountable. Of course life isn't like that. Darkness has its own time. Dreams are shattered fairly regularly. Physical and emotional blockages imprison as deep as any dungeon.

Persistent delusion then? I don't think so. For good or ill, this is what light does.

Risk

I've been mulling over Tarakuanyin's recent post
which eloquently puts into words much of my own thoughts and feelings about blogs and blogging.

My favourite bloggers have a common thread: a degree of self-revelation. They are personal bloggers. They communicate in prose and poetry and pictures. They write about places they have visited. They write about their passions, their loves, their children and their childhood, their interests, their joys, and a connection is forged. They sometimes post pictures of the intricate and beautiful things they have made. Perhaps they write about their politics. It doesn't matter to me whether they are "good" writers. What is a good writer anyway? From heart and mind to heart and mind and my online world becomes a larger yet more intimate place. They may write about more general topics as well, and I'm glad to read these posts, but I'm not sure I'd be visiting the blogs regularly without the personal.

Having said that, although I would class myself as a personal blogger I'm finding it difficult currently to blog about myself in any great depth. At one time I was far more open in cyberspace but now there are draft posts galore where I've opened my heart and where I hold back from pressing the Publish button. Some of it is a desire to remain anonymous. I can't resist posting about the area I live in - so much is new (to me) and fills me with joy and pleasure to the point that I want to share it in words and pictures - but I shy away from self-revealing in case an acquaintance hereabouts homes in on a give-away detail. I think about boundaries and this gives me more reason to pause.

So. I don't tell you about the therapy that is helping unclog the metaphorical passages nor the man I am attracted to (but I'm not sure how much he's attracted to me. Watch this space.) I don't write about loneliness or fear. I don't write about about my concern over what we are doing to the planet to the point where I blank out a lot of the news that I read. I don't tell you about the bad habits and compulsions. I don't tell you how badly I missed my father, even when he was alive and present. I pride myself on seeking harmony and beauty so I won't write about my dark side nor about my laziness. I don't tell you about my spiritual life and the unreasonable conviction that in spite of everything the future holds love, the daily new beginnings that I make, how my life is a series of moment by moment new beginings. I don't write about the mystery of the early mornings, and today's early morning in particular, and how privileged I can feel at times to be alive in the here and now.

Except I just have. This is the best I can do.

Change of Pace

My right shoulder and upper back are in a bad way. Muscle spasm and it's getting worse. Pain has started to spread down the right arm as well.

"Not more than 20 minutes at the computer without a correspondingly long break", said the nice young man who is my new remedial massage therapist yesterday.

Which means that habits will have to change. It's not work that's doing the damage. I have frequent breaks from the computer and am more than happy to take them. It's blogging, blog reading and generally surfing the net at home.

When I'm writing a blogpost I go at the first and second draft for an hour, maybe more, without moving. Then maybe a few hours, maybe a day later I might revise for another hour. If I posted the first draft you wouldn't understand a word. Neither would I. I'm not a naturally fast or ordered thinker or writer and the drafting and editing become part of the thinking process. I lose myself, my sense of awareness. in the whole deeply enjoyable, compulsive exercise. Only on closing the lid of the laptop after a marathon session do I realise that my body has been suffering. And I haven't even mentioned the lengthy delights of a wet afternoon's blog reading.

Not good. The rules of health aren't any different for me than for the rest of humanity.

At least for a while until things improve physically I'm going to experiment with shorter posts, so that I'm not fretting to get back to the computer and finish the project. I've started to investigate blogs that make a feature of brevity and it will be an interesting change of pace. More stand-alone photographs. Maybe some link posts. Blog reading for limited times only.

I'm alarmed that I've allowed things to get to this stage, in spite of regular yoga classes. I know this stuff, for heaven's sake. There's nothing new in what the massage therapist said. And yet I enjoy my online life and don't want to give it up. I need a special back chair. I need to set gentle limits. I need to get well and to treat my body kindly.

Welcome

Welcome to the new blog. It's a work in the progess as far as the decor goes but watch this space. I've chosen A Suivre for the name, partly as a nod to my love of most things French but mainly because the phrase neatly sums up life and blogging.

A suivre. To be continued.