Portrait

Now that Lilacs are in bloom
He has a bowl ( or vase ) of lilacs in his room...

with apologies to T S Eliot.

The Limp, a Blip and a Bit of Believing

We're still alive, Zara and I. And getting around a bit. Times like these you really appreciate flowers ( or leaves, in this case ) 'round the house; and not just because you have an obsession with flowers or leaves or making bowers.

"Faisal, you've been awfully slow sometimes, lately - almost catatonic." Zara has stood by me, as doggies are wont to do, as have several friends, as have you, perhaps, who is reading this...anaesthesia is like a boxing match, to me, in from out of which you've been knocked.  

Today, two weeks' later, our spring wildly unpredictable - gales blowing every which way, rainstorms, skies brimming with sun - most of my pain has dispersed and I'm feeling glad to have undergone my crunch, for it's made me slow down and respect the body I'm blessed with. And I'm somehow feeling that whatever might be wrong, there really is a light that slips in to meet us when we bend down.
This quote I carry in my wallet:
"In the world you have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world."
John 16:38

 

Windborne 

The winds that blew me off my feet 

( Where now is the Paraclete? ) 

and blew my head around a bit 

blew my context - that was it. 

Now I'm sort of getting by 

( Who's that person I call "I"? ) 

and picking up the parts that fell - 

and what was whole - to get me well. 

The winds are gusting round me still 

( Whyever do they gust so shrill? ),

but I am quiet and equipped 

to mend, if slightly chipped.  

Faisal Grant, 09/10/2013.

Gardener Re-jigged

It was lifting heavy stones into a wheelbarrow and heaving that wheelbarrow some hundreds of metres that did it. The first and last time I get a hernia.
Here I was thinking only old and reckless people got them. Humph!
As you can see though, post-op, I've made it intact to my own room-with-a-view at The Alfred Hospital...

...where, I have to admit, it's kind of nice to be dandling about, reading Granta # 102, 'The New Nature Writing' and allowing myself to let events transpire, sometimes drowsing. It helps me to be surrounded by courteous and smiling staff, when I have felt like being neither courteous nor smiling myself, but have a middle part that groans and winces.

They forget, of course, that patients may like a glass of champagne after surgery, but I guess having a fine surgeon makes up for the omission. Besides, I did at least get a few cigarettes out on the windswept street, clad in my hospital-wear, no-one battering an eyelid...

I was writing this as part of  my self-devised therapy before I'd got home, longing as I was to see my Very Patient Curly-Tailed Woofer. I'm delighting now to be sliding into low gear - no more hard labour for this old and reckless man! 

 Is this the beginning of a new lightness and nimbleness?