One Hundred Cohen Words

Listening to good music makes me want to write.

Tonight we are staying with friends. After dinner while my wife showed Lucy round our new home. David played me Leonard Cohen – a concert recorded in 88. He often plays Cohen to me. And again he knocked me out.

One song I remember – an old one I’ve known for years - but touched me in a new way was ‘Who By Fire”. What struck me was the depth of his lyrics. Like his voice the words have the texture of seasoned wood. They are finely wrought worked over slowly and resonate.

One Hundred More Fragile Words

Once I wrote ‘ how fragile I stand upon the earth’. It was written at a time when I had leg ulcers that made walking difficult. When my legs were amputated last year I had thought that my fragility would be no more. But I am mistaken.

My artificial legs also have problems. On my left leg I have a sore. My skin is red along the scar line and there is a graze developing. One reason perhaps, I had a fall the other day and may have damaged my stump. Or my socket is new and needs some tweaking.

One Hundred Fragile Words

Sometimes I forget how fragile our life is at present. I build routines for us that help give an impression of stability and permanence. But then something happens like an earth tremor. The day before yesterday my wife wrapped our second car round a lamppost. She was not hurt – just a little shaken for a while. We are waiting for a response from our insurance company but it will probably be a write off. The crash reminded me again what a narrow path we tread. Thinking about it does not help. All the possible problems and disasters loom up close.

One Hundred Wet Words

Today it’s raining. The milk was off. My wife crashed our car. The builders didn’t turn up. We’ve lost our internet connection twice. My wife lost her work and my son lost a battle he was fighting.

Sometimes it’s like this. And I wonder if there is something bringing about these problems. Maybe our minds are tuned into disasters and block out the other possible narratives of the day. Like the flowers my daughter presented to my wife. Or the neighbour who came over from the bus stop to greet me, or the lunch my family shared on our laps.

One Hundred Post Move Words

The holiday stretches out before us. And we are not in our new home. We are camping out in a borrowed flat in Surbition. We’ve also been staying with friends at weekends. In mid August we will be house sitting for two weeks. After that we hope to move into our newly repaired and adapted home. It still feels like a long way off. We are fragile and feel vulnerable and stressed. We have reached a stable state though. We had lurched from crisis to crisis on a daily bases but we feel that we are reaching the home stretch.