Share Bright Failing Star

The train journeys have provided a framework to each day which I welcome. They have become my hospital bed giving structure to a void and a means to fill the space between visits. The ritual also validates a feeling that I should somehow suffer alongside mum. I am reassured by my weariness and the routine which feels appropriate in the circumstances. It helps somehow.

The Man Who Sold the World (David Bowie and the 1970s) has been my companion alongside my iPod and its library. The 400 plus pages of Bowie minutiae proves a welcome and fascinating distraction. I read as I listen, soaking up every detail and nuance of the music. The track Subterraneans appears in my headphones and its melody and refrain perfectly compliment my mood pitched somewhere between fear and optimism.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yke-c1z8_9Q

Although the world of David Bowie never ceases to amaze and enthral, I was not expecting to find a comparison to mum but there it was on page 219.

It was now impossible to describe Bowie without mentioning his emaciated appearance, his skull clearly visible under the skin, like one of Egon Schieles’s distorted portraits of sickness. His bodyguard during the Ziggy tours, Stuey George, talked as if he were a wilful destructive child; ‘You’d give him something to eat and he’d say he’d have it in a minute. Many times he would go for days without eating, and then he couldn’t get any food down. We had to fix Complan and make him eat.’

Getting food into mum remains the major challenge.