Voices in the dark

At physio yesterday I was enjoying the heat treatment on my shoulder--didn't have my usual book to read during the quarter-hour treatment, so I was just listening to what I could hear in the treatment spaces on either side of me. I couldn't see the other patients, or their therapists, I don't know any other patients at this clinic, so it was all very anonymous, even disembodied. but I kept thinking about the hospital sequence in Margaret Laurence's The Stone Angel, where Hagar hears the other women crying out at night, and the ward becomes a symbol for all of suffering humanity. All the people in the clinic with me had come and put themselves and their pain and their weakness into someone else's hands. We had all come in order that someone might do us good and make us stronger, make us "good to go." The scraps of conversation I could hear through the curtains were most moving: people being candid about what hurts and where and how--not whiny; the therapists' calm instructions and encouragement; the little murmurs and snorts of effort. And I thought... "this would preach..."

Friday again

Awake very early this morning. For once I ROSE UP instead of lying awake "pondering" -- made a latte, lit some candles, and tackled the Great Unopened Pile on my desk, emptied the handbag, emptied the book-tote, made heavy contributions to both waste-basket and shredder-basket, most gratifying.
Then a quick trip to the far corner of Prairie Metropolis to the physiotherapist: ultrasound and heat and some more Creative Activities with rubber tubing. The shoulder still hurts; but now it hurts like, "mmmm, exercised yesterday, didn't I" and not so much like, "Oh help, I've been injured."
Off to the bank later this morning to put the finances in order ("Owe no one anything -- including VISA")... some Very Important Pieces of Paper to convey to their final resting place, and then a couple of cheerful pastoral notes to write...
Meantime The First-Born has borrowed Harriet-the-Chariot for a run to the airport to collect his supervisor, in town for a week or so.
Daughter Unit is home safe from her week in LatterDayLand, much to the joy of her mother -- and her husband of four months.
Back to the to-do list; this is my Official Day Off, and I have wild hopes that I may get home before dark for once.