Currently
Needle Out
By Chris Way
Lights Go Out
See related

Shark-hunting!

Today's good bit of news is that there's nothing seriously wrong with my dodgy knee, and with a bit of rest, it should heal up fine.

After two weeks of hobbling around with painful knee, this is very good news! The knee is still a little sore, but it's only a small tear to the ligament and a bit of inflammation. It probably did not help that I kept right on walking limping around instead of resting it up, but there were things that needed doing, and anyway, there's no use crying over spilt milk!

A week or so of perambulating on a reduced scale, and it should be right as rain. However right that is. Or left.

Funnily enough, the worst part of this little episode is not the pain (although at first it was pretty painful, and there are some bad twinges now and again). The worst part is having to explain how the knee came to be hurt. Somehow, there is something almost silly about saying that you injured your knee walking down the street.

Not mountain-climbing, not sky-diving, not marathon-running. Just an ordinary stroll down 500 meters of tarmac, and then suddenly - OW! Pain shoots through your knee.

Your audience's reaction invariably involves raised eyebrows. And the occasional twitch of a cheek muscle - just a tic, you know.

Maybe I should have said I'd been wrestling carnivorous grizzly bears. Or shark-hunting. Hmm, that has a nice ring to it. Shark-hunting.

but of course
you and i
know the truth.
i was walking.
as usual,
the truth is
stranger than
fiction.

Today's daydream was that if I were to make a film one day, I think I'd like to build this song into it. It's beautiful - a little melancholy, but not without a dose of hope. A scene for this has been playing in my head:

He's a very chin-up sort of person, often a good sport, always a hide-that-unhappiness sort of person. But he's having one of the worst times of his life (one thing on top of another, and I think he's loved but feels that he's losing or has just lost).

After a day of hiding his feelings and putting up a brave (even cheerful?) front, he comes back to his empty house (quiet but homelike; wooden furniture - neither old nor new, used; red rug slightly crooked; plants but no pets), shuts the door behind him, leans back on it a moment and exhales.

He walks over to the old vinyl record player in the corner, turns it on, sinks into a chair. The needle clicks, and this song plays.

He falls apart, quietly.

(Before you get too concerned, don't worry! A film that fits in Sufjan singing Say Hello and She Is around the beginning, and Man Man's Doo Right towards the end will almost definitely have a happy ending.)

daydreaming and playlisting

Wax-sealed envelopes, and
an ear to hear,
a heart to consider.
This is the way things were;
and this is the way things are.

Warm gum-tree perfume in
damp morning air -
cool in the shadows.
This is the way things were;
and this is the way things are.

When did things shift on us,
who planned it thus?
Answerless questions.
This is the way things were;
and this is the way things are.

Yet
(do)
we

Wear our bright hopes pinned on
brave hearts and lives -
courage aimed futurewards.
Was this the way things were;
is this is the way things are?

Do we really know all the answers?