Patterns in the sand

I have regular pattern in my life where there was none before. Meds at 8am, 2pm and 8pm. And irregular pattern but pattern nonetheless. Hospital visits with their accompanying blood tests. Drink lots of water, warm up your arms, chat to the nurse to distract your veins so they don’t notice the needle coming to suck out the blood. A week later I still sport a large dark bruise on one arm from the first, failed, attempt to get blood out of me during a clinic visit.

I recently got the results of that test. Pacmans have dropped again. Bugger. I will need to be retested towards the end of the month. Four weeks after this last test. This is a pattern I could well do without.

Not long after I was first diagnosed, I wanted a picture of my brain. The MRI would have allowed me to see the pattern of my lesions. I could have developed a performance piece. Dancers would have skirted round fixed white points. Nerve impulses zooming round my body, their progress stilted and confused by the myelin scarring. I don’t know the patterns. The sands seem to shift with the slightest breeze.

I used to be fine with the vagaries of my life. Never knowing what the next job would be. Where I would have to go. Recently it has been harder to deal with the irregularity. There have been late changes to jobs that were booked but now disappear in the gust of funding scarcity. Whilst there has always been unpredictability, it used to be relatively rare for a job, once booked, to disappear completely.

The patterns in the sand may shift but surely there should always be the same amount of sand there? Added to perhaps but not taken away. Whilst pondering this complication in my not-so-simple life, I remembered the beauty of sand art. At this time of year, when the shofar is sounded in the synagogue, the music in this piece is particularly apt – enjoy: http://youtu.be/U8fl3OokqWk