Hear here

I give thanks for the things I can hear here. For the waves and wind and the rain, especially when the foliage is full, church bells and festivals and 'homecoming' musicians playing on the Den. Squirrels scurrying through the branches, and all the birds...layers and layers of stereo song in the still of the morning from the many trees and shrubs about. It reminds me of jungles and makes me grateful I know what they sound like for real, and for when Phil Spector made the news for all the right reasons...

I give thanks for the sounds of the dogs and children when they're playing happily, likewise the humans. I like silence and natural sounds, but if I didn't hear my neighbours chattering I'd not hear a real live real time voice for days and would wander off in my head even more than I do now...

I give thanks for a programme last night about what people thought about their bodies. There was an ex model who had long only been thought of as one, a fat activist woman and a man born with only vestigial legs, a young chap transgendering from being a chapess and a young mother before and after breast cancer surgery. It wasn't surprising that the more loved and appreciated these folks were for who they were, the more at ease they were showing what they looked like for the camera and the world, but they all had insecurities and a tale to tell that moved me.

Not being much loved myself, nor the subject of a documentary, no one one would think to ask me how I feel about my body now, and I would hope to be loving enough myself not to share what others wouldn't care to hear...but though it's nice, it's naive to imagine it's all unmitigated gratitude after you've been chopped about and rearranged. I know I could pay someone to listen if I really wanted to talk about it, or write it one some relevant forum where other people in a similar position could go 'Ooh, I know...now listen to me!' I'm grateful it all seems unnecessary somehow...