Dear Anonymous

Dear Anonymous,

(I know who you are! :)

I am all right, truly, I am. In myself. Or, at least as all right as I have always been or seemed, at least to myself, if not to others!

Mayhap, I am being over-melodramatic (not for the first time! And not for the last, surely!:) but it's difficult not to consider one's fate, one's past, one's future when you have have been through what I have been through.

It's not the enormity of it, it's not the seriousness of it; on a sliding scale of 1-10 it does not even merit a '3'. It, statistically speaking, does not even rate '1' on the 'potentially lethal scale'. It's not lung cancer! In truth, let's be honest, it is a minor inconvenience. However, strokes are enormously variable; and there is no way to predict how variable. That is the frightening thing about something; its unpredictablity.

Just what brain cells might be affected? Maybe, less important ones; no more than a very minor inconvenience; maybe important ones, brain cells that define your existence, at least in your own mind. And who's to tell, before it happens? Maybe God, the supreme deity. Maybe Krishna, Zarathustra, Allah? Unless one is omnipotent, no-one can know! Each cerebral blockage, each blood vessel(s) that block(s), becomes congested, cause(s) something different! Same name, same physical phenomena, different result! Always.

And yes, people suffer more (in their own mind, in the collective conscience) but that is where it becomes frightening. What might have been lost? What might I have spent years trying to achieve, only to have it taken away, denied me, for a chance occurance; not some divine intervention. Perhaps, less booze, less nicotine, perhaps less stress, perhaps eating more, more healthy eating? Might I have avoided all this?

Perhaps!

Maybe this might not ever have happended. But, if it nonetheless did?

What might have been taken away? If fate had not decreed otherwise?

My right arm, hand; paralysed, beyond recall? Never being able to paint again? Without relearning how to paint with my left hand? Or my feet? At my age? Never being able to argue again, for word blindness. Not being able to articulate that which was always so easy? In debate. Not being able to to articulate 'continually' without, in Wilfred Owen's words, 'an ectasy of fumbling'. Is that all I can look forward to?

To such as I, to be so inarticulate, in speech, in words. To be so inept at painting a 'Harpy Eagle'; this is a loss of life, a loss of the meaning of life! And I don't want to find a new one! A new meaning! I was perfectly 'happy' with the old one!

I want my old one back!

So if I am maudlin (or magdelaine), it is but a transitory phase. I will get my old purpose back, by hook or by crook; or I will find a new one (or three). Just takes time! That's all!

Allow to me the grace, at least, to wallow in such self-pity as I can glean; in the meantime. In 'the alone of my time' :)

Just for a short time! :)

For 'I know what I'll do in the alone of my time......cos I'll still have a taker for the leftover wine....')

Melanie Safka might have thought it was the audience, but we, oh we, know better!

Regards
Malcolm Goodson

April 2010

PS It never fails to amaze me just how many takers for the leftover wine there are; for which I thank you all!




Dear Anonymous

What I am I going to do with you?

'Murder,' she cried.

'Thank you!' he replied sofly.

MG