Pod.

To close this spate of grumps on an up note, I saw a pod of dolphins yesterday. Not playing, so not jumping, the sea too cold and grey and wild for fun pehaps, they just humped up above the waves briefly, then were down again, all business, moving from one part of the coast to the next.

The Volunteer.

A young man of my acquaintance (he’s only 40) determined to pull his life around;, quit drinking and so forth, decided the best remedy was to do some volunteer work and experience another part of the globe.  After consulting on skills (he has many handy skills, carpentry, plumbing, car maintenance, ) he was sent to Honduras, to a ‘conservation project.’ Sounded good.  An Iguana Rescue Centre. Quaint, but promising. Two weeks after he achieved the long trek out he was texting back about lack of occupation and the bar culture of the workers already there.   Cr@p.

Winter wearing.

It’s difficult staying cheerful when I’ve just had to drag out my huge black charity shop coat again for the fourth winter. Each year as I put it away I swear I’ll never wear it again, have it cleaned, take it back to the Red Cross,  but fail to find the cash for a replacement so out it has to come. 

Winter clothes - same story.  Dreary sludgy colours and fabrics that, (luckily for me) don’t fall apart. But, oh for some new adventures!

Shoes and boots - don’t get me started..... well, I am so on I go. I cannot understand people who have a things for shoes. I hate them. Ugly, sensible, clump-along-like-that shoes are all I can safely wear, given as I am to turning ankles and vertigo. I don’t like the look of the come-f*ck-me alternatives anyhow.

What else? 

Nightwear.  The options? Wincyette with pink roses. T-shirts. Pyjamas - I don’t like pyjamas. They get all twisted up and smelly. For years I swanned around in Indian cotton but the sources for that have either dried up or become expensive. The garment I wear now, washing and wearing the same day, has holes in. I pray for no hospitalisation to occur.

Emotional times.

I’m missing summer. The first cold/virus of the season struck a couple of weeks back, didn’t go away, was gaining ground even after generous applications of Glenfiddich nightly, and yesterday I was forced to go to the ‘Health Centre‘  (please imagine agitated fingers doing sarcastic quotation marks here) to have my annual battle with a new-to-the-practice doctor about the state of my lungs and their need for assistance in the form of antibiotics which once wasn’t a problem (‘here, take a bucketful’) but now the party line is to say ‘no’ unless the patient kicks up a fuss, or cries, or looks as if they might need an ambulance to get them away from the place. This year it was a female doctor. SO much worse. I had to employ the first two techniques and then was almost outdone, and undone, by her own reddening eyes and heaving bosom. 

‘I feel you don’t TRUST me.We become doctors to HELP people you know. People don’t realise how HARD it is for us. We work really HARD for our patients. We don’t do it for the money.’ (Excuse me? I believe that is your new 4x4 out there next to my 12 year old VW Polo.) 

We parted sworn enemies, but I was clutching my prescription so I don’t really care. I’ll just avoid her in future.

In Our Own Image

In Our Own Image.

The old gods

were the lifeblood of our land,

the arteries.

The synapses that fired first consciousness.

They hunted, gathered, and turned the soil, 

walked with us through life,

received us into death.

They had their moods,

their jealousies,

needed understanding,

needed wisdom, wiles, and sympathetic magic.

Then they needed to be thanked. 

Like us.

We heard their voices in the waves 

ululating

from cavern to deep cavern 

reverberant.

Symphonies of wind and rain and silence. 

Bird song.

Our gods spoke to us 

as the world breathed 

© carol argyris 2013  

Published in Dawntreader 023 Indigo Dreams Publishing.

       

Bag Lady

Bag Lady

Belief is all that separates me from the old bag lady

As together we rake through rubbish bins,

Shuffle,

Stockings crumpled,

To a shelter for the homeless

Peeing in our pants.

I think I am better than her. 

I am educated and live in a house.

I have sat at the foot of a rimpoche

And read lots of books about God.

Belief

Is all that separates us from knowing

Because -

Now listen -

Belief that we Know is death of knowledge.

The bag lady has the advantage here.

She knows she knows nothing

And is thus wise

But I....

 Sometimes I believe I might know something.

And it gets in the way of me.

© carol argyris 2013

Published: Weyfarers 113  Guildford Poets Press

Vampire.

The internet is a terrible sucker of souls.

I open it to briefly do a bit of research and three hours later stagger away from it because the lap-top needs energy and I've forgotten to drink my coffee.