A year on

Don't you occasionally stop and take stock ?

Most of us perhaps feel that the pace of life is sometimes too fast and we have little time to do so.

It is worthwhile and time well spent

So for me and Mezze Moments a year on .....

I have a settled home. Even the last box has now been banished to the recycling.

My energy levels are slightly higher.

The electricity mostly works and the internet too but it is not their pace that has changed but mine.

When they are off I am out on a walk,swimming or reading my book instead of fretting about them.

The blog has been a great source of comfort and commitment for me and above all it has kept me positive.

I still dont know how to do a thousand and one things on it to make it better compared to some others out there but does it really matter ?

It is the words that carry the weight and the pictures the flavour and that is all you need.

My readership, though small, is every little bit valued as are comments and thoughts.

Some of the sense of loss has dissipated though I would not say it is gone.

I still have an acute sense of loss of personal freedom and the ability to walk but in their place are my frequent attempts, sometimes with dire results, to stray off the beaten track and do my own thing.

The rewards are plentiful though often fleeting like the beautiful bird that danced in front of us, a form of egret I believe, this morning on a walk with Tara.

I still struggle with the "full picture " which is often distorted and different depending on who you ask and how many times so the answer there must be DONT ASK

I often despair at the lack of common sense or simple reasoning skills but also common courtesy. It would seem the poorer the person the more courteous. Today as I was getting down from the car, a car sped up to where I was honked loudly and then proceeded to do so again. I expressed my disapproval politely and stood defiantly in his way. He swerved past me irritated.

Being in control of my existence is gradually returning and is counter balanced by necessarily reduced expectations but a keen awareness of the obvious - why should I expect my mali from Bihar to know what chemicals are needed in the pool? It did take months to realise he didnt know but now the penny has dropped I no longer have the right or even the inclination to be angry, nor frustrated, but just accepting of his hard work on my behalf.

Is it easier ? Only in the sense that I am more resigned and more accepting but a lot of what I find hard about living here continues to be so day in day out. Change will come but slowly and painfully perhaps for the millions whose voices are not heard and whose bodies are not counted.

When I arrived last summer I wrote about the workers living in their corrugated huts that I saw every day see .http://mezzemoments.blogspot.com/2009/09/other-side-of-life.html.

A year on they are still there, nothing appears to have changed but the road is complete, if already full of bumps. Baking hot in summer and leaking in the monsoon season these men work for the dignity of keeping themselves and their families. Families who are probably far away and who they hardly ever see but here family is replaced by the friendliness and the camaradie of fellow workers.

Once again this is part conjecture and part extrapolation which seems to be the way that sense is made of the eye numbing spectacles that assault me daily.

So mountains are reduced to molehills and not the other way round and studied consideration supplants strident thoughts but not always.