a recent poem ex 'Mal's Factory'

Restless Night


frantic and static
collude
to break the spirit -


the chorussed scream
of roll and stretch
weaves counterpoint


against the searing ache
of stasis -
the chinese burn


of movement
resists
the planned escape



                         Malcolm Evison
                      30/01/11 – 01/02/11

Mal's drifting murmurs

Today's blog post from yours truly, drifting with the flow, can be found on 'Mal's Murmurings'

wonderment and guilt - spontaneous jottings

A strange combination of wonderment and guilt are today's companions. Having allowed myself time to just sit, in the silence of the living room, looking out onto the garden, my mind is once again filled with the question, why is there something rather than nothing? Because there is something, imagining nothing (or a non/state of nothingness) seems impossible - I find myself watching the clouds slowly drift by and, I'm lost in wonder.

To be honest, most of my life these days is spent in some kind of wonderment and, it is because of (rather than in spite of) this appreciation of the wondrous awesomeness of life that I cannot avoid being committed to issues of social justice and hence politics. There must be an alternative to people being bogged down in the vicious cycle of wage slavery and debt; the world has a sufficiency of resources for everyone to be able to enjoy leisure time without being wearied and overburdened about how to acheive even a subsistence lifestyle.

But, you may well ask, where does the guilt enter the equation? It's that old protestant work ethic no doubt - how can I justify stting doing nothing rather than taking some positive action? The straight answer is that I don't need to justify it but, the guilt remains anyway, ignoring the logic of my answer.

Mal's Restless Night

A poem in progress (or perhaps in its final draft), Restless Night, can be found on 'Mal's factory'!

Shattered of a Sudden

That head-floating, gut-wrenching, muscle-nagging shatteredness wraps me of a sudden in its embrace. Yesterday the deeply gnawing muscle spasms, in limbs and torso, felt like a rebuke for having deigned to commit myself to Friday's minor exertions. At times it seems like a game of damned if ... (damned if you do, damned if you don't); accepting one's limitations is an important step towards avoiding a nightmare roller-coaster experience but, in that acceptance one also risks accepting a pretty colourless plateau of existence.

I've always been fortunate in having a rich life of the imagination, and a naggingly active spirituality; this has meant that the health imposed curtailing of my socializing activities didn't lead me into an immediate state of desolation. I have to admit though that the loss of contact with many people, especially those who I'd considered to be my friends, is something that I still find difficult, when I allow my mind to go there, more than seven years on from succumbing to this wretched illness.

At least I understand this early evening's sudden yielding to shatteredness; a connection with last night's discomfortingly disturbed sleep pattern seems pretty obvious! Expressing my dis-ease in words, in some way, alleviates its claustrophobic grip

Testing The Limits

Sometimes the stamina, or at least a small portion of it, seems to have returned along with a lurking fear that it's only a mirage. At first one treats it with caution, only too well aware of the consequence of any over exertion but, one is always tempted to test the limits. I've already suffered a moderate setback, in terms of feeling discomfortedly knocked out (rather more dis-eased than my familiar norm) on Thursday as a result of attending the meeting on Tuesday, even though the actual attendance there proved a great morale booster.

Wednesday found my beloved back at the dentist, her earlier trials and tribulations not yet at an end.

After Thursday mornings painfully aching shatteredness, a fresh influx of stamina seemed to come my way by Friday afternoon and, I actually managed to transfer some of the compost from the bottom of our (compost) bin across to one of the garden borders. The garden always seems to reward us well, in terms of floral display; a disproportionate gratitude for our puny endeavours.



Thursday and Friday both saw an abundance of avian visitors to our garden, nothing new, but a fair cross selection of our familiar visitors, goldfinches, blue tits, dunnocks, sparrows, blackbirds, robin, wood pigeon, collared doves, chaffinch etc but then, today saw only a very sparse sprinkling of any variety. Until this evening I'd forgotten all about the Big Garden Birdwatch so, I'll have to set an hour aside tomorrow, regardless of how representative it turns out to be!

Much Ado about Something

I still wait, in vain, for a stamina infusion but, I'm simultaneously resigned to such a miracle witholding its appearance. At least I managed to attend the Labour Party branch AGM last evening but, didn't have the physical or emotional reserves to hang around for the potentially more interesting ordinary meeting which followed it. It was good to meet some of the other party members and, get a feel for the prevalent mood and spectrum of its activists.



Although physically fairly shattered from this outing, the mental stimulus prevented me from getting a truly restful nights sleep. Actually, having just made that remark, I have to acknowledge that 'refreshing' sleep is, in my case, honoured more by its absence.


My beloved had an appointment with her dentist this morning, to have the majorly offending tooth extracted but, once more the visit took a disproportionate toll. On this occasion part of the problem was that the gum beneath the extracted tooth was still infected, despite the best efforts of a double course of antibiotics and, her dentist was left wondering why the maxillo-facial / dental consultant she saw at the hospital hadn't done more!

Where I Stand

 Last night brought me a better amount of sleep, retiring at 9.30pm and emerging at around 10.30am this morning (with one or two earlier intermittent  interludes of "wakefulness") but, my whole psychosomatic being still feels rather unrefreshed. I've just recently popped out into the garden to replenish the bird feeders and, subsequently witnessed a modest increase in the number of avian visitors to our estate! 

 

As I don't seem to have sufficient emotional stamina, at present, to do a proper post, I thought I'd share a comment I left last evening on one of the blog sites (The Socialist Way) that I frequently visit, as I think it reasonably summarizes where I stand politically.

 

 

Malcolm said...

It's a truism that Parliament will never be the means by which socialism, or any kind of equitable society, can be established - indeed the whole capitalist apparatus is antipathetic to fairness. This purportedly democratic system seems destined to control us, via the dictatorship of business and media moguls, as well as the armed and police forces, for a considerable time yet. Having said that, I did rejoin the Labour Party last year, not under an illusion that they will bring about any kind of anti-capitalist change but, in the vain hope that they may be restored to a party prepared to proclaim the aims of clause 4 part 4, and move (albeit only marginally) towards its enactment. One can but dream! What I've always found even more upsetting than the Labour Party's betrayal of the very people who established the original Labour Representation Committee, is the constant factional bickering between cadres of sundry revolutionary socialist groupings. (I have to admit that I wasted a fair amount of my younger years inadvertently entangled in the resulting schismatics).

 

19 January 2011 21:04

In A Spin

These sudden plunges still prove alarming, no matter how many times one experiences them; it's almost as if I could feel the colour draining from my face. In  an instant an overwhelming maelstrom of gut churning, muscle spasming, head spinning, washed-out giddiness, yields a fearful disorienting discomfort. A pulse racing, nauseating, vertigo veils every semblance of familiarity from one's immediate environment.

Perhaps, this time, it's a belated response to last night's extreme restlessness which was accompanied by randomised stabbing pains in the lower abdomen. My beloved arranged a GP appointment for me this morning; I was about due for a review, in any case, to check whether my current increased ppi dosage was proving beneficial. Today I saw a different doctor from the practice and, she has decided to try me on a different ppi, and has set up a further appointment for three weeks time to check on progress etc.

At the moment, my gastro-oesophageal problems seem to be in competition with other muscular aches, pains and spasms, in an attempt to grab my full attention.

EMERGING

EMERGING

and this morning

still abed  

my legs

are mercury laden

knitted lead

the arms

folded or stretched  

scream out

for postures new

Malcolm Evison

15/01/11