Crawled out of bed coughing and spluttering, scarcely human but warmed by the messages of support and concern. Thank you so very much. Last night I couldn’t even manage chicken soup and had some steamed broccoli, plain, which tasted like ambrosia. Lay propped up on pillows reading a Jonathan Kellerman thriller. All night I tossed and turned between giant stalks of broccoli and grimly smiling detectives of the Los Angeles Police Department.
The housemate slept better, we are waiting for test results.
I squirted droplets of water onto tiny seedlings with an old syringe. Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it, the seedlings flourish and sprout in abundance. Had a wild impulsive urge to make towering mounds of biodynamic compost, with ground-up egg shells, coffee grounds, mystical yarrow, pungent chicken droppings and chopped-up nettles, all bagged and concocted by the light of the silvery moon. Realised almost in the same thought that such magnificent broody smouldering heaps of compost would attract far too many insects and rodents in the fierce summer heat. Perhaps a small smelly bucket kept at the far end of the garage? Maybe not.
Sat for 15 minutes of meditation, just to keep up the discipline. Where does the determination to keep up a habit or practice come from? Something that shapes each day, helps when Pandora’s box flies open and all the winged horrors descend.
Tenacity again, the will to see justice done. Had an email this morning from my friend Y in Buenos Aires where she has flown over from Cape Town to follow the Argentinian Dirty War trial. The trial, documenting 789 abuse cases, is the largest in the South American nation since 2003. Y’s father, a political journalist working out of Argentina, was drugged and dropped alive from a plane into the Rio del Plata — his killers in the military junta have never been brought to trial. Y still wants to know what happened to him; she was a small girl when he disappeared in the 1970s. She writes letters each month, signs petitions and protests, keeps searching and pushing for more to be done. She keeps on hoping against hope for answers, confessions and closure. It is estimated that more than 30 000 people were tortured and killed between 1976 and 1983 in Argentina and their families fight on to know what happened and to bring those responsible to justice.
