01 August 2025

so this is August

Here is an amazement - once I was twenty years old and in every motion of my body there was a delicious ease, and in every motion of the green earth there was a hint of paradise, and now I am sixty years old, and it is the same.

         Mary Oliver

But wait until you're 67 and had surgery . . . 

Accepting 

  1. limitations of age 
  2. chronic illness treated with immune supressives 
  3. after effects of surgery due to 3
  4. massive lack of get up and go 

 All of it a work in progress. Isn't this the life.

Due to a massive lack of energy and brain power, all I can do is dig up my seemingly endless list of drafted blog posts, mostly first sentences, half finished posts, a selection of what I saved ten years ago:

 

  • There’s being dogged in pursuit of a goal and there’s the pointlessness of being bitchy.
    A hen is a hen and a cock is a cock, but a chick is always female.
    An Old Master is one thing, but an old mistress is something else entirely (note those capitals). 
  • I spent the last two hours editing papers on oxytocin and its effects on hunger craving in women. Yes, it is just as you imagine only now male scientists have found a way to prove it using big machinery and extensive tests which include healthy women staring at images of sweets and desserts while inside MRI tunnels. 
  • I am whistling in the dark - praying, hoping, that fraying edge between worry, misery, loneliness and actual illness, that blurred line.

 Recent social media finds:

 
 
 
A fitting addendum to my bicycle post: Norman Quentin Cook (aka Fatboy Slim) shows off his new one.

 

 

Also, the last post was censored by my family. And they come first. 

 


 

5 comments:

  1. Interesting thoughts started here, could certainly read more when you feel like it!

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  2. Codex: You've had maaaaaajor surgery. Give yourself a break. I'll be back to decipher the rest and fatboy slim on a bike with birkenstocks is funny for some reason.

    Which post was it again?

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  3. I'm impressed you even have a backlog of half-completed blog posts. I shoot from the hip, every day! Which is why your posts always seem more thoughtful, I suppose. :)

    Seriously, take your time and allow yourself to heal. That's the most important thing.

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  4. I'm glad you posted something. I always start to worry a little when you haven't "said/written" something in awhile. Nothing wrong with a lack of get up and go. Mines hiding this morning. My son came back into my life last week and I can already feel him sucking the life out of me. I had a cry while I walked and now I'm going to visit a friend and cry some more.
    FYI, I suck at accepting the limitations of my age either. Almost fell off a ladder the other day when I was pruning my pear tree. Will I learn from this near miss? Doubtful:)

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  5. The other day when I was at the river, a little boy and a little girl waded into the cold water where I was standing, just being happy. The little girl almost assuredly had Down Syndrome. She said to me, "What are you doing?" "Cooling off," I said. And then she asked again, "What are you doing?" "Just standing in the water, getting cool."
    The little boy looked pained. And then he said, "She has a disability."
    "I know," I said. "That's okay. We're all different." He relaxed.
    Now why is it so hard for us to accept our differences whether we are born with them or develop them as we grow older due to a myriad of circumstances? Some are transient, some more permanent.
    I'm not sure I'm making sense. I guess what I'm saying is- you're doing what you should be doing, what your body is telling you to do which is to rest, to heal. Give yourself grace.
    That Stephen Flynn meme made it all the way over here.

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