My mother was moved to rehab last week. Everything's fine. Her memory is decreasing, though. She keeps telling me that she can't remember where she lives (which may or may not be entirely true, you'd have to know her to understand this). I tell her where she lives. She says she can't picture it. She's been living in her condo for 28 years. We had her checked a year or so back, and it's not Alzheimers, but dementia, what Margaret Thatcher has. Her recollection of the past has never been better and we're hearing lots of stories we hadn't heard before, including finding out recently (actually when one of my brothers was checking her email) that she had two brothers who moved to Australia that she'd never mentioned before. I think they are both deceased now, but their progeny know my mother, apparently she's visited them in Australia in past years. We knew about the sister who was 6 foot tall and died of cancer of the throat (because she smoked my mother admonishes again and again) who had a daughter who has a son (now in his 20s or 30s or something) she won't leave even to come to Canada for a vacation, and a brother who'd entirely disappeared - no-one's heard from him or of him in at least 30 years and he's presumed dead - in South Africa, where she's from. It's all somewhat odd, to discover we had two more uncles we didn't know about on yet another continent, but then that's my mother.

Anyway, she's tiny and frail and holding her own and doing her physio apparently (she had been refusing in hospital), which she has to do if she hopes to be released. My brother who's considering moving in with her may have his hands far too full, though, and we are considering the possibility of a nursing home, though she continues to threaten suicide -"I'll die if I go into one of those, I won't live!- as the spectre looms.

She's an extrovert and has always been very social and as she is already finding rehab much more fun than hospital with so many similarly recovering patients (she's on a hip floor), so she may find a nursing home more congenial to her gossipy nature.

I hope so, because I can't imagine as her memory slips away how my dear and sweet brother, a brother who has been more kind to me throughout my life than can be expressed, will be able to cope.

It's one step at a time, however. She's in rehab. She's in fairly good spirits. She's doing her physio without complaint. She wants to come to my place for a barbeque before the Summer's finished, and she may just do so.


So this is the line, and we laugh:

Granny's in Rehab on a hip floor.

Laurelled Petals

Browsing old sketchbooks when I was making navigation buttons for my new Art & Writings website, I found this poem. It fits quite well with the Botticelli Suite of Poems, and I'll probably add it as a 'page' to that manuscript. You can see I've been into ways to combine words and image for a long time! I must have written this piece around 1976 perhaps... I think the poem was published in a university mag too.



(click on image for readable version)

Bramble Rose

Petal edges
butterfly wings
blue powder.

Blossoming
from the hips.

Singing
hip-hop shaking
strutting
struggle with closed bud
of a cocoon.

Here to blossom.

A whole life
to unfurl.

Unexpected, that.

It never gets boring.

The unflown flying.

Petals in the wind, pink,
blue dusting to indigo.

This sun, this rain
never felt before.

Be the valley of women dancing.
Be the flowers, and the earth,
and the wind, and the moon.

Tattoo me on your skin.
Ink me in colours of the meadow,
a blossoming bramble
rose

As I dance the opulent
blossoming
of you.

__
a little ditty written at Erica's recent "Blossoming" workshop.



Image of gorgeous dancing women - a stylized version of a photograph at Erica's Dance Our Way Home website.

My 86 year old mother who broke her hip on the weekend is doing fine after her operation. The fractured bone only required a pin, which was good. Thank you all for your kindnesses and support.

Paraphernalia of daily living

This has been one of the strangest weeks of my life, and there's not much more to say than that.

Psychic energies are strange things. You never know what people are thinking, that was made clear this week. I think I'm through the worst of it though.

In general, my lesson this week is that the net holds, even when you fall. That's been the most amazing experience. I'm still not used to it.

The hot water tap developed a terminal leak last night at 1 am, when my daughter was using it. I turned it off under the sink. Haven't called the landlord about it yet. Soon, maybe late tomorrow, or the next day.

Tonight my key wouldn't turn in the front door lock. After I finally got in, I sprayed it with WD-40, which will help for a bit. I've had locks go before, I know the signs.

My iPod is jammed and won't turn off, or play and my computer doesn't recognize it.

Bits and pieces of the paraphernalia of daily living. How we keep our worlds operating.

The air is humid and therefore warm tonight and I had an unexpected walk with a fellow dog owner. Usually I prefer walking alone, but his dog ran out into the street to meet my dog, though they don't know each other, and once together in the park, ignored each other. We started talking, though, and he told me about animal rescue guys, guys who crawl in little spaces with miner's lights on to move racoon families who've moved into the eaves. We spoke of Vancouver, where he's from, and Kafue National Park, my childhood home in the African bush, and then compared responses to the Brazilian film, City of God, and Slum Dog Millionaire. I had been speaking of the depravity of the shantytowns in old apartheid South Africa, and so the conversation turned to movies about slums, and now I have to watch City of God again. The violence was bad, but it was such a brilliantly directed and edited film. Remember that strobe light scene...

I want to join the 20 hour a week challenge. An artist on Twitter has started a challenge where we try to spend 20 hours, in any kind of configuration, and no pressure, only if it helps, working on our painting or writing. While I do manage to accomplish lots, I haven't started on this one yet. Hoping Saturday to have some time to work on a painting. That'll contribute some hours to that group's weekly tally.

My brother comes every Thursday and does hypnotherapy sessions with my son and I, separately, since he now is fully certified and offering free sessions for a year before he starts a practice. It is helping much more slowly than I thought it would, though I do feel closer to my youngest brother and that's almost the best part.

Tonight he wanted me to remember a time of joy, and I couldn't. It's not that I'm unhappy. I just couldn't connect to what the immediate feeling of joy feels like, the full sensation of it.
Working feels like joy these days.
One day it will return.

In the meantime...

My daughter has finally finished a course, a night course and yes she is very bright and did very well, tied for first place at 87%. I want to celebrate her. I want to buy her a dress and see her smile with joy. She's worked hard and deserves it.

I've been exploring piano on Jamendo, looking for music to pair with my longer poem, White Fire. I read it on the radio once, on a poetry show, and the host of the show asked me out afterwards (no, I didn't) and phoned me for months after that but I always made excuses. Don't ask why. Wasn't attracted I guess. White Fire takes about 20 minutes to read, so it'll be a half an hour recording with music. I've found some beautiful, impromtu piano that is really quite incredible because it seems to 'fit.' White Fire should have dramatic flaring music with long stretches of smooth tones composed for it, I know what I'd like, but my envisioning far beyond my musical skills.

I like to scoot posts through to Facebook, but an image really helps, which is why I've taken to posting so many postage-sized images. :Grinning:

Every night I listen to a 'paraliminal' hypnotherapy recording as I fall asleep. It helps with sleeping, and I often don't wake for 6 hours, almost unheard of before this recording.

But not tonight. My iPod's jammed. It has a lot of juice. Maybe in a few days when the battery's dead and I recharge it, it'll come back to playable life.

Sure hope so.

xo

Podcast Banner that's Not-To-Be

Silly, and I don't mean to be *so* silly, but I quickly made a silly banner to upload to a podcast site (trying a new hosting site, podbean, yes - prefer their embeddable player), only after making it I discovered you've to upgrade to a premium basic account if you'd like to add your *own* banner, so I'm posting it here. *Ra*

"Go Away Blues," by Jazz Street Trio added to "Light Catches Diamonds"

Light Catches Diamonds

I wrote this prose poem in June 2007, and a year later, in June 2008, recorded it. And, as seems to be a yearly tradition, now that it is almost June 2009, I have paired it with a beautiful Jazz recording, "Go Away Blues," from the album, Because, by Buz Hendricks of Jazz Street Trio, who has licensed this album with a Creative Commons license on Jamendo.

Hope you like it!

___
Links (that open a pop-up player):
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Dial-up


(click on image to read
poem-about ½ way down,
gosh didn't notice that was
the image I created for my
website, anyhow, I've linked
it to Celestial Dancers page)