No fake teeth but a genuine smile

These things come to me. That’s why i call this blog ‘Musings of a Masseur’. Sometimes they come to me inbetween things, walking the dog, changing the bedding on the couch in clinic or on waking. Do you get that? Almost like someone knocking on a door, they wake you in the middle of the night, and if not written down they wake you again. Although if you do get to go back to sleep, thinking ‘Wow, that’s a great one, i’m sure to remember, no need to get up and write’, and then in the morning you can’t, it can seep into your day. That sense of wanting, even needing, to remember and the longer you give to the yearning the worse those sensations are.

Yet this wasn’t one of those. Not a nightime musing, more of a day time one I remember that. It came when i saw someone with baring their unnaturally white teeth immediate before seeing someone with the sweetest of smiles. And those words from Charles Eisenstein once more came to mind – ‘the calculus of worth’ – what do we hold dear and how do we weight the judgement of it.

Whether you have all your own teeth or not, I’m sure it’s the generosity of your smile that warms hearts more.

Travelling with Cancer

The difference between branch line and locomotive train travel. The fear of not knowing

You stand waiting on a platform all alone. You have to travel alone, it’s happening to you, not them. Across from you are well wishers, shouting well meant platitudes, words of wisdom, caring, sharing lived experiences that bear no relation to where you stand yet are heartfelt.

Fear rising, you hope the train approaching isn’t for you. If it is, you at least hope you only travel a few short stops then be able to disembark. These are stories you ve been told. This is the story you imagine

And for a while you do. You recovery, you have time to recoup losses and look to return. Then you find yourself on a different platform, with fewer people standing opposite. Some familiar faces, some new to the crowd, smaller in number, distilled with experience.

But this time you re not so confident. Over the year you’re read about, heard on the news, been told of many who didn’t make it. And this time you can’t bring yourself to think the train fast approaching isn’t a branch line, it’s the intercity locomotive, fast paced and with stops you hadn’t anticipated, little time to consider forward plans. Can you take a break? Make time to catch the next one?

Yet how can you when the voices now holler different tones, diverse and contradictory. And if you choose to stand back from it all, unhearing, it feels too confusing to comprehend

I want to be able to choose. Maybe travel to the next station on foot, after a break to assess, pick up another form of transport, choose the most radical of all, no forward travel for now.

art therapy, colours and figure