Veins and words

 This afternoon was blood test time. As usual, I apologised to the nurse before she'd even got her gloves on.

"I'm sorry," I said. "My veins are not the easiest to find."

She laughed. "A lot of people say that," she said. "We'll be fine."

She poked about on my arm for a while, then suggested we try the other one. 

Finally, she looked at me.

"You weren't joking, were you," she said. "Do you actually have any veins?"

Eventually, she thought she'd found something, put in the needle and, hey presto, we had lift-off.

As I got my coat on to leave, she said 'Can I suggest something?"

"What's that?" I replied.

(This is the bit that Tasha will love).

"Could you get a tattoo?"

(Yep, I was a bit taken aback.)

"Erm. A tattoo?"

"Yes. Right where I got the blood out. It is going to save you and other nurses an awful lot of time in the future."

Jon wasn't too impressed when I relayed the story to him 😂.

This evening I went to the cinema to see The Crucible, beamed live from the National Theatre. Amazing! I've never seen or read The Crucible before (I know, I know. I'm a philistine). All I knew was that it was about witchcraft. What a word-wizard Arthur Miller was. Incredible that such a dark play could make you come out feeling satisfied and somehow buoyant alongside the sadness.

There are only so many words in the world, but people have made endless magic with them. They've made us feel every emotion known to man, just through their imaginings. Poems, monologues, plays, novels, short stories, films, docudramas and lyrics, as well as the wordless like music and art. All of life condensed into something so small, and yet so enormous.

We're so lucky. What would we be without language and art?

Another gem from Rick Rubin...

The ability to look deeply

is the root of creativity.

To see past the ordinary and mundane

and get to what might otherwise be invisible.

What else can you add? This is what all these genius artists did, and still do.