Category: writing

  • This is it

    8. Day Twelve People look at me askance when I say how much I love Michael Jackson’s music. Except my husband who feels exactly the same. And now my son is in love with him too. He probably would never have bothered to listen to him had he not upped and died. We went to…

  • Infection

    7. Day Eleven Infection creates inflammation; inflammation is war: dangerous enemy pathogens invade the body and encounter a defence system that attack and fight them. War in the body. If the body conquers the pathogens then the infection is over. If the pathogens conquer the body, then you die. That is the analogy that Dethlefsen…

  • The Disease Path

    6. Day Nine There seems to be a major improvement in the neck. I’ll just ignore the fact that two new regions of pain – my hip and my coccyx – have taken over instead because I’m so glad to be able to move my head without being in agony. Small price to pay. So…

  • Clammy Lydia

    5. Day Seven It slipped my mind to tell you about the results of my blood test on Day Three, didn’t it? I probably needed time to digest it myself. Actually, I can hardly believe I walked out of there without getting them to make a copy that I could take home with me and…

  • Steamed Pudding

    4. Day Five Yesterday I tried out the sauna therapy. Well, to be exact, I went with a friend to a hamam in Kreuzberg where they also have a sauna. For those of you who are not “Lyme literate” (you are in good company with 99% of the universe), you can also detoxify through your…

  • A Pain in the Neck

    3. Day Four This is not like your run of the mill diary. I’m not going to just write down what I did today. That would be worse than Twitter. This is a therapeutic diary. Xanthe hanging out her bacterially dirtied emotional washing. Not even Ariel can get it clean – we need some really…

  • The Empathy Deficit

    Day Two Think positive. Heal yourself. “Today is the beginning of my new life”. Shot of butterfly being released from open hands. “Today my faith is restored”. Picture of beautiful sunset. I had to turn the music off, I couldn’t stand it. Now, I do know – because I watched her other videos on YouTube…

  • Tick tock – She cut off their tails with a carving knife

    Day One They say – though I have no idea who they are – that every story is supposed to have a beginning, a middle and an end. This story starts today and I don’t know where today is. Could be in the middle, because the beginning took place about nine years ago. Maybe. Or…

  • on the angry ground

    the sun has shone it all out on the angry ground and the grass is crying for pity in the evening we will all grow red the babies will lie in the darkness and the people will watch him sink below the horizon leaving art forms behind him. [York, 1975]

  • phone call

    I’m sorry to have to say but he’s not really listening anyway [Berlin, July 1985]