new words, new worlds

a few years ago when i was moving house a lamp base dropped from a van to the hard concrete surface below. It broke into many pieces and I gathered up those pieces and put them carefully into a box. Later that year I found the box and following the japanese art of kintsugi i mixed glue with gold paint and started putting the lamp base back together. It ended up looking remarkable. Not the same lamp base but something else that carried its own beauty. this week I was reminded of kintsugi. i have felt broken. we all have but what has made a difference are the lines of connection that jake built with his friends and family. these lines are moving, changing but we need to hold on to them. i have spoken to people this month that i haven't spoken to for too long. Broken connections have been mended because well it just makes sense to reach out to people i love and who i should have stayed connected to. jake is no longer here to help keep those lines of connection open but i would like now to just say if you ever need to call, email or message not just me but each other then do!. we all have this massive love that feels broken so we need to practise some kintsugi .... an old friend, rowena, gave me a new word. it is a word to use when there are no words left, it sort of means strength. strength to go on when everything feels impossibly tough. i give you all that word too, to share and to feel strength in tough times. the word is sterk! so i wish you all much love and thank you for joining us today and ........STERK

wisps of you

There was always

A fragility

As if you were made

Of silk

That you could

just fade

At any time

And now you have

And the wisps of you

Float

In the air

I could try to catch them

But that would 

just confirm

Your absence

I prefer to stay

With the wisps

Of you

Just a little 

Longer.......

watching loved ones disappear

There's a big issue these days with drugs. Its an insidious creeping up of the awareness of what various 'recreational' drugs do to a person. Since being back in the fens i have given up alcohol and i like the consistency of me that non drinking has provided. But in others i now watch in horror as what was an occasional pastime has become more of a daily need. The drugs start to mask the real person and the mask gets harder and thicker and more inpenetrable. Glimpses of the loved one are still there but this selfish striving little monster emerges. Life decisions made are based  not on a quest for improvement or betterment but on fèeding that little monster. Watching a loved one disappear is agonising and seeing the repurcussions of their life choices unbearable and shocking. 

a need to reassess

Am sitting at the Mill Pond in Cambridge. It is March the daffodils are out and it is finally warm enough to be outside without a coat! And so I am sitting on the grass sans coat. Waiting for jake and the Deacon to join me and then we can head off for food and company. I think I need company.

Discovered a lump. A golfball sized thing emerged below my ear. It has gone down slightly but I am waiting for tests. Once the tests are done I can then deal with it. Until then its limbo. Put perversely I have been in limbo for about 2 years. Way too long for anything remotely limboish. 

1- long covid remains steadfast 

2- cant sell the house

So now I can add this short little interlude of  limbo waiting for medical tests to reveal my future. But the future is soooo elastic! Might not be too much of it if my worst fears are realised. Or I might have a good 30 more years to toddle this earth. But what that reality might bring is almost as scary as my first possibility. The world has gone .....

 hideous! 

Russia has attacked Ukraine and unlike when we attacked Iran or they attacked the Syrian population this one is creating global tension and discord. Talk of nuclear weapons is more than whispered. Ww3 has become a common hashtag. Somehow this seems bigger. Whilst of course our imperfect PM who has been jolly good friends with putin and his mob in the last 15 years is now trying to position himself to weather the storm and suffer the least possible damage to his very dodgy position. 

The Labour party's  incompetent leader is rather remarkably given the pms failures is going down in the polls. The green party are trying to say this is a good thing as we can stop using fossil fuels although no-one is listening to them! And all the while the Corona virus pandemic trundles along infecting people and just not going away as all of us now want. 

And so my limbo of lump/long covid/unsaleable house mixes in with a general global melee of war and destruction. Fun for us all hey! 

the fens

A return no less. Despite the gorgeous ness of penzance I made a post pandemic decision to return to the family home, which I did in sept 2020. It has taken the winter and spring to start to feel a sort of recovery from long covid. Still not completely back to the me I knew and liked but getting there. 

The plan is to sell the house and maybe buy a houseboat and get a mooring somewhere in cambs to remain close to family. Maybe it took a pandemic to make me realise that proximity is important! 

I am restructuring my lifelong dreams and plan to stay in the east!! Gosh that's a sentence I never expected to see me write. I think maybe being a permanent resident in cornwall will never quite be when I have people I love living here in the fens. I always feel dislocated when I am living so far away. Never completely at home  in one place. I have longed to live in the west for most of my life and yet when I am there I am pulled back every time. So I am giving up thoughts of cornwall  and seeingif I can settle. 

happy new year

Well it turns out that Penzance is a lovely place to live. Lots going on, friendly people, gorgeous swimming spots, great walks oh yes it is a little gem of a place! 

Everyday the sea is different and always delightful

Back in Cornwall

Sitting in an MIU. I have been here before. This time a broken rib. Painful indeed.

So I am back in the west recently moved to Penzance and have my usual east west conflict going on!!

Feel that I am perhaps becoming a little agoraphobic.. obviously not a bad case as I threw myself into the melee that is Glastonbury festival last week. That's where I got the injury. And after the injury I didnt do much as crowds seemed scary and I was tired of it all. Just wanted to be home. Trouble was home is an unfurnished flat in penzance with no furniture and I dont know anyone. So the return was not remotely comforting.

Hmmm making my usual crappy choices I guess. And now I am getting the rib checked out and I dont know why I have chosen to sit in a stuffy waiting room waiting and waiting to be told there is nothing they can do. That I am ok really and to just go home and wait out the 6 weeks until the rib is mended. Oh yes and get back to work too. Feel like a shirker... but am full of tiredness and ennui...