Sunday 8 August 2010

Tears on the Ité

The rains continue with vim. I lean out the shutters, watching the drips forming on each stiff discrete stem of ité palm like tears on eyelashes, dropping whitely down, steady and soft and rounded. However hard the rain is falling out there, my thatch weeps its quiet tears evenly, elegantly, separating out each drop.

A speech therapist told me ten years ago that the throat is the victim of tears in each human body. It bears the brunt of our tensions, our fears, our stressful careers and our unshed tears. That was one of the nails in the coffin of the unmourned corpse of my teaching career. I just don’t have the throat for it.

On what shall I blame this permanent ache in my throat, then? Laryngitis, sympathy with the rain, vocal strain from running my training course, unshed tears, my mind’s revolt against illness?

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