…. that my life is my own once again. For the past two months my existence has been dominated by my medical condition. First, there was the heart pace-maker, and then the cataract operation. Although there is a longer-term expectation that I will have a second cataract operation, I anticipate that in the next couple of weeks I will be signed-off by the medics dealing with both of these problems. There will almost certainly be a pause, at least, between a decision that my first optical problem has been sorted, and any decision to address the second stage. I’m beginning to focus upon what I would regard as “normal” life.
This sense of the return to normality was given a stimulus today by the fact that, for the first time in many weeks, I was able to get into the garden. Both the cardiac and the optical medics were emphatic in their insistence that I should not do any heavy work. Certainly I would not regard the basic tidying-up which I have been doing today as “heavy”, but it was certainly “work”, and the experience has done wonders for my morale. I have been determined to recover, in as far as this is possible, some degree of physical fitness, and I dug out from my files the instructions I had from my physio some time ago, about some exercises, and I have been linking these with some of my basic yoga moves from way back. It is amazing how these simple experiences have contributed to the feeling of control, and a turning towards (if not a return to) “normality”.
I hope that this is also going to pay dividends in my art activities. I’ve had the motivation to prepare another canvas and do the basic “squaring up” for a new picture.
It is interesting, isn’t it, to reflect on the fact that art is not confined to some particular “aesthetic” part of oneself, but is dependent upon other physical and psychological dimensions to life. We are “whole” persons.