Physio

Back to the physio today, after ten days of not seeing him. I've improved and then gone backwards, and then improved and then gone backwards. Several times. A bit erratic, you might say.

I put my back out over a month ago, was in agony for a day, sort of came right, but my right leg played up as a result, and when I got an appointment with the osteopath on the Monday morning (friends in high places) he realigned me, but it didn't fix the leg. Sent me to the physio in the same clinic.

Apart from sticking several needles in me in an acupuncturist sort of way, and manipulating various muscles, the physio has given me different exercises which I've been doing quite a bit. They've helped, there's no doubt. But I think he's been taking it quietly, not wanting to overload me.

Dog in shades due to Dunedin sun

Today I went for a walk with the dog before heading down to town to see the physio. It turned out to be a disaster on one hand, because my leg, which has been behaving itself increasingly, decided to go on strike, and I struggled to get back home from the walk. The dog was very patient with my extraordinary slowness. On the other hand it meant I was able to pinpoint more readily exactly where it hurts when this walking problem occurs (it doesn't happen every time I walk, for some reason) and that was useful. For me, if not for the physio, who might have wondered if I wasn't conjuring a bunch of new pains up for him, to keep him happy.

I don't really think that's how he saw it. But he introduced a couple of new exercises, both of which involved staring at myself in the mirror while trying to do what he asked. The mirror made things doubly uninspiring: seeing some old bloke struggling to do something relatively simple is embarrassing. And I seemed to be at cross purposes with him on one of the exercises in particular - what he called forward seemed to me to be backward. Anyway, hopefully I've got the hang of it now.

Came home feeling somewhat better but worn out. Time for an afternoon kip, I think.

Grandparents

I once got into a little bit of trouble for writing a poem about grandparents - you can see the poem here and see why it might be misinterpreted.

On the other hand, one of the most popular articles I've ever published online was also about grandparents.  For a brief spell, it received dozens of comments (some entirely missing the point that it was tongue-in-cheek, as was the poem mentioned above) and earned me a bit of cash via Google Adsense.

I was reminded about these two pieces when I came across the phrase personalized grandparent gifts just now.   Hmm...personalized grandparent gifts; so like our dear friends in the US of A to find yet another marketing ploy.  Next we'll be celebrating Grandparents Day (or maybe it'll be split into Grandfather Day and Grandmother Day) - in fact, if it wasn't for the fact that the Internet is having one of its occasional down moments I could tell you whether any of these days already exist.  And I suspect they do!

Okay, an hour later...and the Internet is back again (in the meantime we've been out to see one of my aunts - for the first time in some years) and yes, there is a National Grandparents' Day, and it's been going since 1978, and, as I suspected, some places even separate out a Grandfather and Grandmother day.  Good grief.  Next it'll be National Auntie Day or Uncle Day...wait.  No need to wait - here's the gen on the Aunt and Uncle's Day.  Supposedly it's celebrated on July 26th.  I suspect it might be a bit of a have, along with Creative Ice Cream Day or Compliment Your Mirror Day or Amelia Earhart Day, and a bunch of others.

Oh, dear.

Whyte, Murray, Words, Poetry

David Whyte is a poet I'm unfamiliar with (it's not hard to be unfamiliar with poets - there are so many of them!), but he was quoted as saying the following in a blog post I read today: “A poet’s work is all about creating a language that is big enough to represent both the world you inhabit and the next, larger world that awaits you."

I'm currently revising the poem, Poetry and Religion, by Les Murray. Revising as in re-committing it to memory, something I have to do every so often in order to remind my brain that I've once learnt something and expect it still to be there somewhere. (I'm using a little digital dictaphone I bought for another purpose recently to re-learn the poems and Scripture I've memorised previously: it's a different kind of challenge to learning from a page of words.)

Murray's poem discusses a similar idea to Whyte's statement, though perhaps from a more theological perspective. Like many of Murray's poems, it takes a bit of unpacking to get to the gist of things, especially as he can make use of ordinary words and give them additional meanings: 'concert', 'attracted', for instance. And the section where he uses the 'mirror' imagery is quite dense until you work over it a number of times....for me, anyway.

Here it is in full.

Religions are poems. They concert
our daylight and dreaming mind, our
emotions, instinct, breath and native gesture

into the only whole thinking: poetry.
Nothing's said till it's dreamed out in words
and nothing's true that figures in words only.

A poem, compared with an arrayed religion,
may be like a soldier's one short marriage night
to die and live by. But that is a small religion.

Full religion is the large poem in loving repetition;
like any poem, it must be inexhaustible and complete
with turns where we ask Now why did the poet do that?

You can't pray a lie, said Huckleberry Finn;
you can't poe one either. It is the same mirror;
mobile, glancing, we call it poetry,

fixed centrally, we call it religion,
and God is the poetry caught in any religion,
caught, not imprisoned. Caught as in a mirror

that he attracted, being in the world as poetry
is in the poem, a law against its closure.
There'll always be religion around while there is poetry

or a lack of it. Both are given, and intermittent,
as the action of those birds - crested pigeon, rosella parrot -
who fly with wings shut, then beating, and again shut.

I love those two lines:
Nothing's said till it's dreamed out in words
and nothing's true that figures in words only.

It seems like a simple couple of statements, yet it has a hidden depth like a pool that you think is shallow - you step into it, lose your footing and suddenly find yourself floundering.