a travelogue in the time of the information superhighway
1994
My story starts in drizzly, dreary, grey England. I worked as a nurse in a specialist cancer hospital in Manchester. One day, I suddenly entered her world, there she was. At once beautiful, but decaying visibly. Eyes that melt you, fumbled for reasons. High on morphine, she slumped on the chair. Her legs, previously long and graceful, were now fat and full of fluid. She was loosing her hair, something that upset her most. We all witnessed her struggling with the remains of her dignity and modesty, but she carried on fighting. Her mother applied facial cream like a corner man at ringside, her father just looked lost. She was a twenty seven year old woman, right before us, dying in her prime. She seemed to hold up a mirror to the thoughts sailing across my mind, a metaphor for what we've all become and what will become of us. So much potential, so much waste. It is at moments like this that we can take the looking glass to our own fragile existence, and ask questions of it. Cancer had infiltrated her womb, the very giver of life. I became aware of a feeling that her death had released something else, a thirst for living itself. She haunted me. Four months later, I set out on an adventure to view the world that she would no longer see.
Posted by don quixote
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4 comments:
Well Alex - I knew those riding lessons you reluctantly had when we lived at Bignor would come in useful one day!!! Wasn't that bomb-proof horse we had called Star, or something similar?
Hello! How exciting but sad and poignant to be in Peru at the time of the earthquake! The photo of Cat on the horse made me feel quite envious. Do you still think you'll be back here by May?!?
By the way, I didn't know you were a bit of a 'pony club' boy in the past...how funny!! Did you get any rosettes?
HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALEX
We hope you and Kat will be curling up in a hammock with an ice cold beer today, not climbing up any bandit infested mountains.
Loads of love
Bob the Builder and Bob's Bride
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