To everything, worms, worms, worms
there is a reason, worms, worms, worms
and a time for every parasite
under heaven.

..A time to laugh, a time to weep....

Well, a few months on, I ask myself. What is the purpose of life? Everything comes as a lesson, and that which you don't learn repeats itself. Despite battering rams of flagyl, despite garlic bombs and imodium, the parasites are flourishing and refuse to be diminished.

I am once more defeated.

Some say that things of the body are lessons for the spirit. So I have tried to be humble and embrace the spirit, but it appears insubstantial and evasive, like a flowing river. I ponder on the nature of water, its flow, as the Buddha did, when he sat by the river as a boatman, water as substance, as Jesus did when He walked on it, or water as a stream of life, as Tagore wrote? What can I learn from the nature of flowing water, to apply to this life lesson?

To move around obstacles, rather than facing them head on? To move rapidly and cleanse, rather than to stay stagnant? Should I contemplate the clear trickling brook? or the fireman's hose with it's blast of power?

I think at this stage it's time for water as liberator. I shall seek an internal irrigation, one of such magnitude that my lowest desires shall be purged, and flushed into the canals of life, there to flow eternally to the sea, while I stand tall and walk, evermore free of worms and those that seek to foster them.

Despair is a small price to pay for the hope that arises in pursuit of remedy.

I remain your constant

Edith Winsome