Monday 25 February 2013

 Words are sometimes a problem for me now, when at one time words were part of my job, they are not as forthcoming.  When you have M.E. you loose words.  'Presque vu' - 'almost seen', 'on the tip of my tongue', they float about just out of reach and it drives you potty trying to catch them, like netting gold fish darting hither and thither in a pond or if you've ever had the occasion to try to catch a tame rabbit.

  One morning my eldest daughter came into the living-room with a big grey-brown rabbit she'd found hopping about in the back entry of our house. It was obviously an escapee, someone's beloved pet having made a run for freedom.  I decided a box to put it in was the best option (rather than a pie!) and went to find something suitable, but by the time I returned she'd made the mistake of putting it down.  Then....of course we had to catch it again!  Every time we approached it under the table it would niftily evade us.  It sat there there, eyeing us craftily from a distance, perfectly still.  Tantalising us with it's stillness, and then at the last moment it ducked and dove or otherwise manoeuvred, all the while growling and muttering, evading capture.  Until that moment I'd thought of rabbits as fluffy bunny creatures, that idea changed quickly, this was a beast, trying to bite at every juncture, spitting and screaming.  At least three quarters of an hour passed, school time loomed and my patience was wearing very....very thin, eventually all was resolved when there was a knock at the front door and a neighbour stuck her head around it and called, "Anyone seen our rabbit?". Words were at my beck and call back then, so you can imagine a few choice one's were thrown towards the door that particular morning!

4 comments:

Teresa Evangeline said...

Hello Jane! Just wanted to greet you, let you know you've crossed my mind and it's lovely to see you post, escaping words are such a difficult thing to deal with...

Best thoughts xo

Half-heard in the Stillness said...

Hi Teresa, sending greetings back to you, thank you for those thoughts!

Hugs Jane x

June said...

I love this story Jane. I can almost see the chaos that must have been your house that morning. I laughed as I read about this 'little beast' getting the best of you girls.
It's always such a treat to read a post from you my sweet friend.
sending hugs...

WOL said...

Ha! The bunny made a break for it. I empathize with you about those evasive, recalcitrant words you know are out there but which refuse to come when they're called. (I am reminded of the scene in Alice Through The Looking Glass of Alice and Humpty Dumpty discussing words.) Lately, I've developed this madden tendency to type "there" when I mean "their" or "meat" when I mean "meet" or "won" when I mean "one." I'm sure there must be a medical name for it, but -- oddly enough,-- it escapes me at the moment. (Dyshomophonia?) And then there are those mystifying instances where there's a word I want that I'm sure I don't know, and I'm wondering how you'd go about finding out what it is, when it just pops into my mind. (Do you know the name of that circular rope thingie the Arabs use to hold their headscarfs (keffiyeh) down? Apparently, I did! It's an aqal.) Words are what set us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom, they're what make us human. To lose our words is tantamount to watching our humanity slip away. No wonder it's frightening.