Bloody Brilliant!

Mom, cool, look!! I have got a nosebleed. I can be a bloody ghost tonight!

Virtually Anywhere!!

Never before has the use of time been as much in our control as in this day and age. With the absence of wars and famines and the arrival of more and more time-saving contraptions over the last two centuries, people in industrialized nations are finally in the enviable position to be able to decide what to do with a good chunk of their time every day.

But choice has never come easy. What is the best way to spend the time, for instance, saved by shopping online instead of pushing one’s own cart through the ailes? Let’s say it amounts to about an hour a week that can be “gained” that way.

Suddenly, everything seems possible: a thirty-minute pilates workout, singing, yoga or maybe cranking out some home-made bread...

However, usually we simply end up doing more of what we’re doing already. In this case, we are most likely going to use that time to bounce around the virtual world a bit longer. We might check our mailbox, pay a quick visit to e-bay, or see what’s new at itunes. Or we may want to stop for a hand of poker, read the Financial Times, or watch a replay of last night’s game.

After all, it’s right there and most likely it won’t require a shower once we are finished with it. Virtual is quicker, cleaner and can be quite gratifying. That one hour has suddenly grown exponentially in it’s output. Instead of making one phone call to tell my friend that I am doing my groceries online now, I can post it on facebook and tell the whole world.

But just as the car brought everyone mobility and thereby the option to live farther away from work and extended family, what is happening today with every hour that we invest in a virtual environment, we are removed from the actual place that we inhabit.

We can be virtually anywhere and it’s up to us to make the best choice.

'Cause yo never know what'ya gonna get...

I stopped by the violin maker today. The bridge needed adjusting and I was in a good mood to spend a little time and money on a job that meant nothing to the world, but all the world to Lea, whose little fingers had been straining against the tough metal strings.

As I stepped through the wooden gate and walked along the mildewy roses over to the work shop, I felt slightly undeserving, given that all I was carrying was a Chinese-made 3/4 violin and no musical genius to claim my own.

This feeling was compounded when I opened the door to the cramped shop and found myself surrounded by dismembered wooden bodies, pins and a variety of glues. Everywhere around me were unvarnished curvy bits and pieces of a 3-D musical puzzle.

I was greeted with great delicacy as the violin case was taken from me and the fragile body extracted from its entrails and dexteriously inspected. And while the specialist’s eye hovered on it and the over-sized hands spun it adroitly back and forth, he explained the various approaches for the cure and also pointed to other musical patients in the shop who were in his expert care.

And for the next fifteen minutes I felt treated like a beggar in a ball dress. Seeing this much expertise and delicacy applied to wood in order to ensure its exquisite sound enhancing quality, the many steps from material to mastery was in all truth humbling.

I couldn't help but think that whoever decides to spend this much time and energy on a project with an often uncertain outcome must be a) a compulsive crack b) a visionary, or c) a parent.

Why else would they do it...?

I am a believer!!!

Last week I thought it was all over. Some joint in my hip other than the hip joint (do I care to investigate further??) got stuck and so did I. It hurt like Rush Limbo and I had very clear visions of life in hell. In my utter agony, I sought advise from a witch doctor in the village, also known as cranial osteopath because she was the only one who could see me that day. The promise of someone acknowledging the years of abuse to my skeletal frame through pumping out children, hauling them around on one hip and installing them in car seats at all kinds of odd angles, seemed good enough to me to at least try this option.

Well, forty GBP and a few swift strokes above my mysterious energy lines later, I am healed. And amazingly enough, relieved not only of the obvious pains that brought me into her lemon grass imbued practice on a gusty October morning, but also of an incessant fatigue that had plagued me for months. Therefore, I can only encourage you that if you ever were to consider holding a gun to your head as a benign way out of your misery, you may want to consider looking up a cranial osteopath first...