low tide

Another fancy pic from the clever doctor. One-handed granny is grateful for this. She realises exactly why -apart from necessities of symmetry and balance - human beings are blessed with two arms, two hands, and full of admiration for those forced to manage permanently with less. Teeth, she too discovers, have their uses - for pulling dressing-gown cords up tight, for instance. Still, things improve somewhat. No painkiller today. Tomorrow she can - will - discard the sling.

The calima is now quite with us. No sea or islands, just veiled volcanoes, weak sun and a parky, tho' diminished wind. Granny woke this morning, sinuses hurting from the dust. Last night the lady with the big and little dog brought dinner in for granny and her beloved; home-made sushi, grilled fennel and asparagus, a huge sea-food soup. How good she isn't out of Chekov. Much better to have another good cook next door rather than in Yalta; even if the playfulness of her VERY big dog does look like an elephant attempting to gambol. (A school of whales has been seenlately down off the coast where the Attic woman lives. Really. They are said to gambol too.)

Granny has spent her enforced idleness re-reading her M/S. Meaning she still has a lot to do on it. With books and poems alike it's as if a bell keeps ringing in your head until the thing is right. And then it stops, leaving you trying to work out what to do next to fill the empty -writing- space. (This is worse..)

Two images sit in Granny's head. One of a long lost city (only reported in myth) revealed by the tsunami on the coast of South India. The other from a programme on telly about the English Civil War. A young girl is made to watch the massacre of her community by the royal forces; sent to warn other rebels what to expect she goes mad en route.

And no, we are not more civilised now, just not, anywhere in Europe, in extremis. Yet. 18 dead in Iraq yesterday. Our terrible world. But also beautiful - see pic, above.


low tide