Archive for September, 2013

Hats off to Roy Harper

Sunday, September 29th, 2013

It’s taken me *this* long to get the hint:

Forever

We’re just spinning leaves
In the flight of dawn
Little girl
Falling through an eternal horizon of time
But I’d like to think as we lie
That all we’ve got will be ours forever
Don’t you think we’re forever
I can hear a voice
On the wings of my dream
Little girl
Melting me into love as it touches my heart
But sheltered in the distance of your sleep
Is all that I could love in a lifetime
Don’t you think we’re forever

Open your eyes
To the call of the winds
Little girl
Can’t you here them all saying I’ll always be yours
Lying in the misty morning sun
The pillow of the night still beneath you
Don’t you think we’re forever

September last: Start small

Saturday, September 28th, 2013

Yesterday morning hurting from the inside out, poisoned, dog tired, worn see-through by the endless cycles.

Yesterday I missed out some of the offending.

Today I woke up after a long night putting the world to rights, tired but not feeling the usual sludge of the toxic tide running through my veins.

Then a friend spent a long time with clever, probbing fingers patiently removing the rusted up, badly put together exo-skeleton nailed through to my bones by the disease and the drugs.  Two hours later I clambered dazed, unsteady and slow to my feet but moving freely not creaking like old trees in high winds, ribs no longer sticking through my lungs at right angles.

And I took a long hard look at the bike languishing in the shed and then rummaged through drawers for unfamiliar clothes before finally being ready to slowly pedal off into the sunset.  No lights in the glooming, birds announcing the end of the day. The smell of September, the breeze hinting all too heavily at the end of Summer and the start of the new season.  The smell of horse sh*t and wet grass.  It still hurt, a missed dose of drugs and a massage aren’t quite a miracle cure but the memories stirred ran clear, blue, rivers through my mind…

Not now, but then and probably again..

Friday, September 6th, 2013

Not consciously awake.  The first sensation is just  existence but it’s swiftly followed in a two second time zone into the reality of hurt. Legs flayling under the duvet in a futile attempt to escape the pain flooding through my muscles like the rush of an incoming tide. The pain monkeys prod and poke with stiff, insistent, jabbing, little fingers until my brain joins in and wakes up to the full realization of what’s going on.  Ribs sewn together again with cat gut and rusty wire, spine just a mass of hurt hammered to bits by the hind legs of the midnight mules. The bad news presented impassively on the clock face. 3.30am again.  Always the same no matter what I’ve done in the day, no matter what time the curtains pulled tight across my mind.  The only relief I get from those numbers is when I fail to fall asleep before they arrive, doggedly trudging on through the night because that is somehow better than 3am awakenings.

And a rush of thoughts come tumbling, unbidden into my mind like the debris carried by flood waters.

This isn’t going well is it?

Stop.

No. It’s not getting any better,  it’s actually getting worse. Any elation from a slight step forward is punctured by the reality of several steps back.

There’s no where to go from here. Well there’s always the end of the track, we know that.  Tempting and obvious just difficult to execute.

Coward. Cowardice. Cowardly.

Am I taking too much or not enough?  Do I need a different stet of pills?  F**K knows.

F**k knows.  Whoever he is. And he’s a he that’s for sure. No woman would do this.

Three months in and one day of relief. One day of three steps forward, heart-singing on the bike.  It wasn’t easy.  Force fed sugar (gels) by patient partner in crime and pushed up the climbs whether I liked it or not whilst trying not to hear my limbs tearing themselves to shreds.  But, still. Fifty-six glorious miles under the belt. And my mind let go, expanded, inhaled and wrapped it’s arms round the possibility of the moment.

And then it’s gone and that’s it. And it’s now 4.30 am (again) my arms are heavy, fingers stiff and swollen.  Legs and back stubbornly refusing to embrace the 50mg of Tramadol thrown down the hatch. I suspect the full dose is needed to make any difference but at this time, that would write off the morning before it’d even begun, stuff the lining of my mind with chloroform and cotton wool. No win.

So shoot me, nice and clean between the eyes or better still the heart for all the trouble that’s caused.