I’ve given it a name. I talk to it, to her first thing in the morning when she is at her height. I want to manage it. To live with it, even welcome it. Good morning, heartache, sang Billie Holiday. Good morning, pain. Let it be. Not surrender to self-pity but accept what it and the wisdom therein.
The world it seems is full of it, and it has probably been so always. As indeed is my wee body. It makes me cross and spiky. And I am sorry for it. I want to be a saint, an angel. I am not. Just a scratchy, self-pitying lesser mortal. Let today bring some healing. For all of us. Please.
I cricked it in the bath again. The warmth belies my back’s still fragility. I must bear it, try to relax it, exercise it, tend and massage it till it returns to its usual supple normality. It is nothing in comparison to R.’s trails. He had ten injections in his back yesterday. Poor poor love.
I’ve broken my fast. My mouth is uncertain about the explosion of tastes that I have inflicted on it this morning. Take it easy, he says at breakfast. And I am doing so, but I want to taste fruit again, and nuts and yoghurt. They are unfamiliar to my tongue, sharp at times and my stomach is threatened by the acidic-ness of them. I will adapt. Allow it. And begin to enjoy it, them, again. But I haven’t forgotten those who have nothing. He says that he will allow basic food to get through. Let it be now. Please.
How are they managing? Journalists write of no aid being allowed through. What is the world doing? Has it gone on so long that we no longer hear their cries for help? Let there be some breakthrough, not soon but now. Please.
Rice and more rice. It is food. And I am grateful for that, but the sameness of it soon begins to pall. My withdrawal symptoms from no tea yesterday have been mildly discomforting but not impossible to bear. And I am feeling better inside. Another two days to go. I think.
I told him about the man I saw in Boston airport. The man who I’d seen earlier working in the stationers in the concourse, and was then on his lunch break. A lunch, that is, which consisted of white rice, that he was eating out of a tupperware container. I took it as a symbol of poverty, that that was all there was. Perhaps I was wrong to that. Possibly he liked rice and was content. He appeared to eat it with gusto. I too am to eat rice for the meantime. I like it too. Though brown not white. But while I stay the fast? I don’t know. I will try.
I am not well. Not ill but not well. I haven’t been since our return from Yorkshire. I don’t know why. Is it stress? What is my body rejecting, not wanting? What am I supposed to learn from this? It is a mystery. I cannot find my wisdom about this.
I thought of them as I ate. I have food, too much sometimes, and they don’t. I fantasised about sending what I had in the post to them. But it would be a mere drop in an emptied out ocean of need. I can only think, wish and pray that succour, safety and peace will be theirs soon. Please.
He began to read a sentence of an article from The Guardian, saying that the writer hadn’t eaten for over 30 hours. There’s a blockade, nothing, no food, aid, medical supplies are being let in. They are being starved. Can nothing be done to prevent what amounts to genocide? We are all culpable. If nothing is done their blood is on our hands. Help us to act.