A parcel, you said
for you and nobody else
wrapped in blue, tied with a pink ribbon
A piece of Heaven, you said
blue as your eyes, pink for tenderness
all of it for you
A decisive moment, one to remember
just as the gift itself
a shrivelled heart dressed as a gift
© Else Cederborg
"Blood letting is life" - or so they said
Death and illnesses have never been popular with humans: We want neither and fight it in a way animals don't, probably because they don't know that it's possible. In a way, neither do we, but we don't want to accept that fact so we keep fighting, sometimes even winning the illness-death-game, thus beating The Grim Reaper for a while. Not for all eternity as nobody, humans or animals, have succeeded in doing just that. However, some animals have come closer to this achievement than any humans ....
We hear about fraudsters who impose as doctors, and shudder at the thought at meeting such a dangerous criminal when we rely on the hospital services. As some of them are not disclosed at once all of us may have done just that, without knowing it, but not always because we were hurt. Ferdinand Waldo Demara Jr. had no medical background: He wasn't a doctor, but still, it seems that he wasn't all that bad when he pretended being one.
We have been led into believing that our symptoms are kind of "suspect" until they are being exchanged with a doctor's diagnose. Or put another way: Illness is not illness when they are known as symptoms as they only counts when diagnosed. The only reason for this must be that doctors live in the illusion that many symptoms are faked. Instead of accepting something discriminating like that we should demand that doctors are being taught how to communicate with people who are not of the medical world which goes for most of us.
With Sisyfos on Hillsides
Never ending hillsides, steep death-traps
she climbs them, one by one, with Sisyfos as her guide
He preaches the importance of setting goals
She is set on her dreams of the end station, her true home
beautiful dreams of that end station lure her on
steeper and steeper hillsides beckon her
seemingly all of them dead ends
still, brave and resilient she climbs on
Should she have a medal for being brave?
That medal is hers no matter what
so are the gongs, measuring her progress in heavy heartbeats
Tainted and lethal instruments, resounding as she climbs
© Copyright by Else Cederborg
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Sisyphus (or Sisyphos) is a figure from Greek mythology. He was king of Corinth and became infamous for his general trickery when he twice cheated death. Sisyphus ultimately got his comeuppance when Zeus dealt him the eternal punishment of forever rolling a boulder up a hill in the depths of Hades.
Sisyphus was the founder of the Isthmian Games and grandfather of the hero Bellerophon. Sisyphus remains best remembered as a poignant symbol of the folly of those who seek to trifle with the natural order of things and avoid humanity's sad but inescapable lot of mortality. The adjective 'Sisyphean' denotes a task which can never be completed.
In Greek mythology, the story of Sisyphus has multiple and often contradictory versions with embellishments added over time so that the only point of certainty is his terrible punishment. He was the son of Aeolus, described by Homer as a human who rules the winds. Sisyphus is credited with being the founder and first king of Corinth. He gained infamy for his trickery and wicked intelligence, but his greatest feat was to cheat death and Hades himself, not once but twice, thus living up to Homer's description of him as "the most cunning of men" (Iliad, 6:153). In the first episode the king, after dying and descending into Hades, audaciously managed to capture Thanatos, the personification of Death, and chain him up so that no humans died thereafter. Only the intervention of Ares resolved the crisis, and Death was freed to pursue his natural work.
https://www.worldhistory.org/sisyphus/
Wikipedia
When seeing this mummy of a former beauty, the more than 2,000 years old woman, Xin Zhui - also known as "Lady Dai" - from the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD) I feel relief at the thought that I've decided to get cremated and not have a grave site. Lady Dai still has her own hair, she is soft to the touch, and her ligaments are not stiff, but will still bend. The main point is that all of this is not for her to experience, it's for those scientists who have inspected her and deemed her dead body the best-preserved human mummy in history. Did the ones who turned her dead body into this mummy expect that it would end up like this? Hardly, as they loved and admired her for what she had been when alive. Humans always have wanted to keep the moment alive eternally if they feel that it's the peak of a life time. However, the ravages of time often turn that wish into mockery, and by now Lady Dai has become scary and abhorrent. The myths of her beauty would have lived for ages, based on her picture if it hadn't been for the mummy ....
https://youtu.be/DxKRfLg5dbg?feature=shared
Everythings considered ghosts are not bad, no, they are rather nice. They come to check our ability to sustain shocks, that's all they do, except maybe kissing us now and then. Also they may try to play ball with our heads and hearts. However, all in a very friendly manner.
Ghosts are good at saying "booh", but some cry and moan. Those poor, unhappy ones are just wet sheets, and they tumble down in puddles of misery, trailing the wet spot while wailing their agony. That kind of ghosts want to sit in your lap like babies, maybe they even try to suckle your breasts, milk or not.
As to monsters like e.g. vampires, they are driven by fear. They never use mirrors for fear, yes, for fear of themselves, for their two feet fangs or even more. A mirror in your hand will turn them into pudding, their fangs will fall out from their mouths with a rustle, the claws will shrivel into nothing to be concerned with. However, they do keep their bad, infected breath so beware if you meet a smelly, well-dressed and often exceedingly polite weirdo. Look out that may be the big, bad monster from your childhood, the one standing in the corner of your bedroom at night, just looking at you, the one who nearly killed you with surprise by not doing anything. That may be a younger brother of Count Dracula, lurking, smelling and looking stupid -
well, out you whip your mirror in a flash of the moment ....
The funniest part of any lists of the many achievements of the actor Christopher Lee (1922-2015) is that at one point he played a Bond villain because one may say that he - in real life - was the famous movie agent, James Bond, alias 007. How come when James Bond after all was a fictional character by Ian Fleming? Well, the inspiration for the famous author's still much beloved English super agent was his cousin, i.e. the actor Christopher Lee.
As they were cousins I take it that both of them may have been descendants of Charlemagne. At least Christopher Lee was and, what's more, they even look alike.
The Medieval emperor Charlemagne is a most impressive forefather who is known as the "father of Europe". In 800 Pope Leo III crowned him Holy Roman Emperor, and at his death in 814, his empire encompassed a large part of Western Europe. Neither Christopher Lee nor his cousin, Ian Fleming, inherited this illustrious royal status which is not valid today, but notorious acting brought on a title of "Sir" to the family.
In itself the glance is of no substance, so to speak, but still it may be very, very offensive, maybe even like a fist to one's face, a slap or a punch. As an action it's a combination of borders crossed by somebody who were not invited and thus had no right to ignore those borders. He - or she - is an intruder who should have staid away, but didn't.
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