Aches, Pains and Worries

"Aches, Pains and Worries"... When I created my blog in January, it was really as a kind of escape from these three words. But this last week they caught up with me again.



Since it seems my blog has somehow managed to gather a handful of followers over the past few months, it is perhaps time I at least mention that the APW:s are there. The Aches and Pains are concentrated to my neck, shoulder and arm; and they very much limit my ability to do things I like to do (including reading, writing and blogging), as well as all the things I don't particulary enjoy but that one has to do anyway... (It was a seemingly minor accident at work that started it, and I've now been in early retirement with disability insurance pension for five years.)

Right now, there are additonal Worries connected to suddenly having to take on sort of parental duties towards my own ageing parents. The W:s increase the A:s and P:s, and then in turn the A:s and P:s increase the W:s, and it quickly becomes a vicious circle... If I'm not able to spend as much time in the blog-world over the next few weeks as I have been doing lately, this is why.

Quotation of the Week (17/09)

Another quotation from Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine, which I'm reading slowly...

"War's never a winning thing. You lose all the time, and the one who loses last asks for the terms."

(said by an old colonel, when the boys ask him to tell them about "a battle won")

Old Friends & Lyrics

Simon & Garfunkel - Old Friends concert, 2003

My favourite songwriter since nearly 40 years is Paul Simon. I "discovered" him (Simon & Garfunkel) when I was 15, and I still listen to his/their records. The old LP:s I had, I now have on CD. (I still have the LP:s as well, but no record player to play them on...)


My previous post - "The Age Thing" - made me think of the lyrics to

Old Friends, from the album Bookends (1968)

(Paul, born in October 1941, was then 26)

Old friends,
Old friends,
Sat on their parkbench
Like bookends.

A newspaper blown through the grass
Falls on the round toes
Of the high shoes
Of the old friends.

Old friends,
Winter companions,
The old men
Lost in their overcoats,
Waiting for the sun.

The sounds of the city,
Sifting through trees
Settle like dust
On the shoulders
Of the old friends.

Can you imagine us
Years from today,
Sharing a parkbench quietly?
How terribly strange
To be seventy.

Old friends,
Memory brushes the same years,
Silently sharing the same fears.

Time it was
and what a time it was.

A time of innocence,
A time of confidences.

Long ago... it must be...
I have a photograph,
Preserve your memories,
They're all that's left you...

I loved Paul's music when I was 15 and I still do - so that part of myself remains pretty well "preserved"! Some of the early songs also bring back lots of memories; for example of old friends with whom I used to listen to the records and interpret the lyrics back in the 70's.

But I also love that he has kept moving on as a musician. Come to think of it, isn't this really a great illustration of what I was discussing in the previous post: a musician still playing the old music, but also continuing to write new songs and trying out different kinds of music and rhythms...

On his 2006 album, Surprise, 65-year-old Paul also discusses the problems of growing old:

It's a blessing to wash your face in the summer solstice rain.

It's outrageous a man like me stand here and complain.

But I'm tired. Nine hundred sit-ups a day.

I'm painting my hair the colour of mud, mud okay?

I'm tired, tired. Anybody care what I say?

No! I'm painting my hair the colour of mud.

---

Who's gonna love you when your looks are gone? God will.

Like he waters the flowers on your windowsill.

(from the song "Outrageous")

Raven's Wordzzle #59

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Wordzzle #59 at Raven's Nest

Ten Word Challenge: prefix, art festival, income tax, chicken noodle soup, jump rope, Dutch Treat, flowering plum tree, bats in the belfry, diamond earrings, tigers

Mini Challenge: book club, organic tea, the cow jumped over the moon, paragon of virtue, wench

This week I'm mixing all 15 words into one new chapter of my ongoing story.

Previous episodes:

Chapters 1 and 2 (Wordzzle 57) , Chapters 3 and 4 (Wordzzle 58)

The Slumber Party Mystery
Chapter 5 - More about Diana

Back in his office, it began to dawn on Dr Adam Challenge how utterly stupid his panic reaction up at the Brigadier General's house had been. He also suddenly remembered the General having mentioned in passing recently, that his granddaughter Diana would be coming home for a weekend soon, to help him sort out some income tax problems. He looked at the invitation card again. Of course! While an invitation to a "slumber party" was quite out of character for the General, it would be Diana's idea of a joke…

Diana had been around 10 years old when she first came to live with the Brigadier General and his wife, after the tragic death of her own parents. She was as wild as her grandparents were strict. Adam remembered the shock he had had on his very first visit to the general's house, seeing what he thought was a dead body hanging from the flowering plum tree on the front lawn. It turned out to be a scarecrow that Diana had hanged there using her jump rope. Another time he had found her chasing the cats around the garden, pretending to be hunting tigers in the jungle – using a real bow and arrow from her grandfather's collection of various weapons. But the little wench's most renowned prank was probably the time when she managed to convince some of the elders down at the church, that they had bats in the belfry, and they took it very literally. A group of male church members had climbed up into the belfry to investigate, but of course found nothing. When they came down again, Diana had said, giggling: "Sorry, my mistake! Seems all the old bats are still down here…"

Among the "old bats" she probably included her own grandmother. This grand old lady, always wearing big diamond earrings, had been considered by the whole town to be a paragon of virtue, always organizing art festivals for charity and chicken noodle soup lunches for the homeless, and serving organic tea at the book club meetings held at her own house.

Diana despised her grandparents' lifestyle, but at the same time remained a spoiled child, never really showing any consideration for other people's feelings. Pranks continued to be like a prefix with her, even as she grew older. For example, if she invited someone to have lunch with her at a fancy restaurant, and encouraged them to choose the most expensive course on the menu, she would suddenly spring it on her guest when it was time to pay the bill, that she had intended it all along to be a Dutch treat. It had nothing to do with money, she just enjoyed watching other people squirm.

Yes, Adam thought to himself, if Diana set her mind to it, she'd soon have you convinced that the cow jumped over the moon… And now it seemed he had fallen for one of her tricks again. Inviting him to a slumber party in the General's name, and then arrange it so that he would find his host asleep when he arrived – that would be Diana's sense of humour in a nutshell. He suddenly began to doubt himself. He had not been able to feel the General's pulse, and had thought him dead – but what if he wasn't? And either way – how could he, a doctor, have just run away from the scene the way he did, just because he suddenly felt haunted by ghosts from the past? At least the fire, and his reaction to that, could not have been staged by Diana – or could it?

The Age Thing

My "Quotation of the Week" for this week (16/09, see post below), from Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine, is from a chapter about a 72 year old woman, who is trying to convince some children, that she, too, was once a little girl their age. She shows them some things she has kept – a ring, a comb, a picture – but they refuse to believe her. There is no proof, in their eyes, that the picture is not of some other person. In the end, it is the old woman who has to give in, remembering a discussion she once had with her husband (it is his words in the quotation). The only way she can become friends with the children is to "let go of her past" and agree with them that she has always been seventy-two:

At last they were good friends.
"How old are you, Mrs. Bentley?"
"Seventy-two."
"How old were you fifty years ago?"
"Seventy-two."

This is of course a little extreme, but dealing with time is a major theme in this novel: both children and old people are looking for ways to preserve their memories as well as catching the moment. (Making dandelion wine is one symbol of it: "Every time you bottle it, you got a whole chunk of 1928 put away, safe." )

When I first entered those lines into my quotation notebook, about being forever "trapped in the present", I was in my mid-twenties. Now I'm approaching my mid-fifties, and I'm still trying to figure out whether I really agree with the quotation or not. I do agree with the first sentence: "No matter how hard you try to be what you once were, you can only be what you are here and now." And probably, when I was nine, I found it hard to quite imagine what it would be like to be old. I do remember my grandmother showing me pictures of herself as a little girl, and finding it hard to really make the connection. As one grows older, though, surely the present self must still include all of the past selves? But at the same time we cannot go back; we cannot skip over the experiences we have already gathered; all we can do is keep adding to them, in the present. "You're in the present, you're trapped in a young now or an old now, but there is no other now to be seen."

Click on the label Dandelion Wine below for more quotes from this book.

Quotation of the Week (16/09)

"No matter how hard you try to be what you once were, you can only be what you are here and now. Time hypnotizes. When you're nine, you think you've always been nine years old and will always be. When you're thirty, it seems you've always been balanced there on that bright rim of middle life. And then when you turn seventy, you are always and forever seveny. You're in the present, you're trapped in a young now or and old now, but there is no other now to be seen."
Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

Raven's Wordzzle Challenge #58

Wordzzle Challenge #58

Some readers last week wondered whether I was going to continue with the same story. I decided to make it an extra challenge for myself to try. The plot is thickening; I can only hope for some really helpful words to come along to help sort things out eventually...!

Link to my post for last week (#57): Chapters 1 and 2

The Slumber Party Mystery

Chapter 3 - Bumblebee
10 Words: acrobat; grocery store; ceiling fan; dandelion; bumble bee; alabaster; scissors; chartreuse; strenuously; cube

Bumblebee, the butler, watched the doctor's car disappearing down the driveway. Yes, he thought again, Dr Challenge really did need to get his car fixed. The sudden sound from the car driving off had startled Bumblebee so that he had dropped the scissors he had been using to cut the dandelion leaves for the salad. He bent down to pick the scissors up from the floor. Approaching retirement, he was certainly no longer the acrobat he had once been in his youth. He drew a deep sigh as he got up again. He hoped he would be spared any more such strenuously exhausting exercises today. It was really an extremely hot afternoon. But he shouldn't complain, at least he had recently got the brigadier general's permission to have a ceiling fan installed in the kitchen. He looked at his watch, and again out of the window. Still no sight of the delivery van from the grocery store. Well, the salad could wait; it was probably more important that he brought the brigadier his afternoon drink. He put a a bottle of Green Chartreuse, a jug of orange juice, three glasses and an alabaster bowl filled with ice cubes on a tray, and left the kitchen.

Chapter 4 - Diana

5 words: iPod; poison ivy; computer; interpreter; optometrist

From her room upstairs in the big house, the brigadier general's granddaugther Diana also watched Dr Challenge's car drive off. She made a wry smile to herself, put her iPod earphones back into her ears, and turned around to face the computer screen again. She had to screw up her eyes a bit to see properly, but she had an appointment booked with the optometrist next week. Diana was studying to become an interpreter, and today's assignment was to translate a text from a medical research conference from English into Swedish. Really, the facts one came across in these studies… On the screen she read:

If poison ivy is burned and the smoke then inhaled, this rash will appear on the lining of the lungs, causing extreme pain and possibly fatal respiratory difficulty.*

*quote borrowed from Wikipedia