Saying who and where I am for those who would want to know… a diary for myself, friends and family… so much of the world to discover… I hope anyone who reads enjoys.
I don’t usually do the Daily Prompt from WordPress, but today I did a typically Edinburgh thing – went out to see what is on.
Science Festival has begun – in the Magnificent setting of the National Museum a troupe of dancers from Scotland and China based their piece on the study of mathematical patterns. Whatever, quite beautiful. And very typical of Edinburgh’s free offerings, nearly always there is something something unexpected.
Janis Claxton Dance: Chaos and Contingency
Afterwards I went to a lecture on brains and scanning – quite different and also absorbing. [Thanks consultant neurologist Rustam Al-Shahi Salman and the Medical Research Council.]
Following on from the previous post “Head in the Sand”, one (that’s me) always has to ask: If the head is in the sand, what is the view presented to others? When/if I feel suffocated by so many thoughts often accompanied by so many complicated contradictory feelings or worse not having a clue what I am feeling at all, one remedy is remember the answer to that question and get my head up and out and DO SOMETHING. Which these days is likely to be go for a walk, clean, cook, or write. I do not want other people to see my backside. Mine, private, I will choose who sees what, etc.
And, this also goes with the theme from Sidey, so this is the second response to “Hiding Something“.
An empty Johari window, with the “rooms” arranged clockwise, starting with Room 1 at the top left (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Does anyone remember the good old Johari Window? Wikipedia explains the general idea, particularly as it has been used in management and self-help groups. It is basically that we all have lots of characteristics, beliefs, values, experiences … some are obvious, known to oneself and to the others present, so are in the OPEN arena. Staying on the left of the diagram, some, as I said above, I choose to keep to myself, hence this is HIDDEN, sometimes called the ‘facade’. The idea is that the more open we are with others, the more the ‘open arena’ can expand, and we have transparency and authentic relationships instead of secretive and hypocritical ones. Unfortunately it seems to offer little in the way of making distinctions about what exactly one might offer – help transparency and better managing of relationships, and what when offered is nothing more than sheer indulgence and imposing the me me me rubbish on all and sundry, not to mention having no sense of respect for oneself or others and how they see boundaries.
The right-hand side is even more interesting. The ‘Blind Spot’ represents something about me that others can see, maybe many except me can see, but I don’t see it! Hearing what others give us as feedback, accepting their response as real information to be at least considered as someone else’s view, even when we don’t like it, helps us learn about ourselves, helps us to grow.
Long long ago, I offered an ‘enthusiastic’ suggestion to a group in the Hall of Residence where I then lived – and was taken to task for “aggression/rudeness”. Who? Me? In the naivety of then, it took quite a while to see what others were seeing all too easily. Great ideas maybe, utter lack of sensitivity!
Later, still years ago, when working in an anti-racist context, I remember being shocked when someone said to me, “but you don’t know you are white”. Me, what? of course I know, what do you mean I don’t know? etc. Until I finally realised she was right, I assumed I was me, and I never had to consider that this included the social/cultural acceptance everywhere I went in this country, with being a white me, while she had to negotiate every space she entered.
And, then, the ‘unknown’ quadrant, stuff which exists but no-one knows. Often referred to as ‘just the unconscious’, it does have great meaning when explored, some can be lifted into awareness. Again, this is supposed to happen if we open ourselves to feedback from others, allow our awareness of how they see us to increase. I think this does indeed help self-awareness, but has little to do with exploring the unconscious, as conscious and unconscious mind are not two separate parts of a finite whole. They are not the visible tip and invisible underneath of something like an iceberg (no matter how often this analogy is trotted out) because they are not boxes storing quantities of stuff.
Again helpful, but only so far, no sense that when consciousness and awareness grows, golly gosh, unconsciousness and hidden self might be growing even faster! Development is not take from one and give to the other. It is dynamic inter-action but what kind of inter-action?
Escher – knew what he was portraying – rationality by itself doesn’t work
So the Johari window is very useful in a way, but then stops being useful.
According to wikipedia, one facet of interest in this area is our human potential. Our potential is unknown to us, and others. To me, this meaning doesn’t seem the same as the way I have understood ‘unconscious’, which is what is there, even if unknown, whereas ‘potential’ is not there yet, even though may be there one day.
I don’t know where I am going with this. Just arrived at a same-old, same-old -
NOT-knowing
is truly important, and it seems to grow too.
Worth remembering? In light of the previous post, ‘just doing’ could be applying ‘common sense’, but the problem with that is that while it might be common, it might not be sense. It could be just tradition and/or prejudice. (like smacking children – post last week). The above Johari Window and discussion is ‘rational’. The problem with rational, is that it is limited (you have to start with a premise, previously known or assumed, here that mental characteristics could be displaced, replaced, shovelled around as if in a finite sort of space).
Is one’s head in the sand? [Hence one's other parts in full view?]
John Keats [1817] … several things dovetailed in my mind, and it at once struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement….. I mean Negative Capability, that is when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.
For regular readers, thanks for putting up with me. This blog is also my personal Diary where I try to sort out some thoughts and feelings. You do not have to read it, though I am glad if you do, however you respond.
One of Fractal Pictures produced by mandelbrot equation (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Regular readers may realise that there are often a lot of notions (from half-baked to overdone) flitting about inside my head – connected, repeated, re-emerging, like fractals. Last Saturday morning I was at a meeting, like many other such I have attended, where the ‘what goes on between people?’ question was being wisely and interestingly addressed. But, as often before, I come away sort of stimulated, sort of cross, sort of … “something is forever missed and surely I am not the only one who finds it so?” Is there a something in real living, maybe a something which is hiding in plain sight?
It seems to me that it is not much wonder that many people do not like the idea of therapy/talking cure/unconscious inner world etc etc and it is not, or not only, because they are afraid of what they might find, it is maybe that those who practice such approaches to life, love, and self-development often seem to come from either of two points on a spectrum, without seeing that the spectrum itself may be hiding something. In caricature, it is ‘we help, you helpee’ also known in all sorts of contexts as the medical model, basically a heirarchy of self-development from someone with education skill and experience (though of course they always say to be good they also acknowledge their own need) or, in the social model, the field of action is ‘well we are in this together, can we find out what is going on if we ask each other and explore what is going on’? Now, I do believe, and research has found, both hold respect, wisdom, tolerance and all sorts of other good things [apologies for this simplistic rendering]. But…
Specifically, what I got cross about last Saturday, was yet another paean to attentive interaction between mother and baby. To demonstrate that babies are social, the speaker showed the Still Face Experiment by Dr. Edward Tronick:
On this video, apart from being irritated that another baby is subjected to needless distress (albeit brief, how do we know the baby thought it brief) and the ‘we already know this you don’t have to tell us again’, it doesn’t take us near to what I think is the real matter – the hidden something.
Contentment in the 1958 James and Joyce Robertson film “going to hospital with mother”, contrasts with the distress in another film, “a two year old goes to hospital”
Tronick says thirty years ago we discovered babies to be social, but 40 years ago I happened to live in a house which was the very house in which James and Joyce Robertson lived and they took lots of super-eight films of young children and their distress when separated from their motherparents carers.
Later, in Edinburgh, we have had the well-deserved praises sung of ‘musicality’ in babies by our very own Colwyn Trevarthen. He observed his daughter, and his grandchild, and other babies interacting with their mothers. Hear him talking about it here. To me, one of the most important things he says is : “… the baby’s looking, or curiosity is more important than any parents desire to teach the baby, or anybody’s desire to teach the baby; the baby is not a pupil, it is not just an ignorant human being that needs to be taught knowledge. But to be part of a human community which is sharing knowledge and understanding you don’t have to have a teacher, you just have to have company, good company, and that company can be of any age…”
So why am I still cross? It is because I think that this joyous interactiveness has always been happening, of course it has, throughout the ages whether anyone discovers it, and videos it or not. Think nursery rhymes and lullabys and age-old life before film. More nastily, I say, alcoholics and drug addicts and all sorts, as well as all child-rearing cultures we know of, have had their moments of interactive and musically responsive engagement with babies. The problem is elsewhere, either when there isn’t responsiveness (still face/abuse) or,
when the situation is not one where one-on-one dialogue is what needs to be happening.
The psychoanaytical child psychotherapists rightly have much that is important and valuable to say about the unresponsive or abusive interactions, as many including the Robertsons have shown. The Tronick video above gives a good idea of abuse/distress when the mother – deliberately for experimental requirements – gives the baby the ‘still face’ look. So therapists, all kinds of therapists, are interested and work with the consequences of deliberate or inadvertent ‘still face’ and other misadventures in relationships. Of course we learn from both the musicality of interactiveness, and the unconscious means by which we survive when ‘musicality’ fails.
However, I always feel there is something being missed, something so obvious that maybe it is hiding in plain sight.
Dad and girls, seems a long time ago.
Like Trevarthen, I have grandchildren, so here is an anecdote to illustrate why I get cross when people imply that these wonderful playful interactive communications are the essential stuff of our social being. I hope it shows what it is I want us to work at, neither the ‘oh dear look at what happened’ nor the ‘oh joy, this is what happens’ ways of thinking. Real living necessary events, of which this is just one in millions.
My gorgeous grand-daughters, G1,G2,G3 happen to be born within less than four years, spaced about 20 months apart. I do not have a picture representing the story I am about to tell – I was much too involved with other things at the time to be taking photos.
If I remember right, Dad and Mum were off-island and I was with the girls, and had the car, and was getting ready to go off with my darlings to meet Dad and Mum from the boat.
G3, the oh so beautiful baby, was luckily asleep, and was maneuvered cleverly into her car-seat without waking her.
G1 was dutifully doing her own buckle, by herself, and letting me know that was the way things should be done.
G2 might have said she would do hers too, then failed, might have said the strap was too tight and her neck hurt, G1 may have said she was too little to do it… might have… might have… I do not remember… what I do remember was that G2 made her little body stiff and straight and yelled that she was NOT HAVING A SEAT BELT. And stayed totally stiff and unbending while continuing to SAY NO. And granny didn’t want the baby to wake up, etc.
And G1 became more of a granny than granny and announced something else which inflamed G2 even more and turned “no” into YELL WITH TEARS… Or maybe it was what granny said/did, or maybe none or all of these.
In the space of a blink – is this familiar folks – competently managed situation is total mayhem.
G1 with Schleppy, much the same age as the story but not the same day.
Fast Forward
G1 has been given a nice book and Schleppy, the adored cuddly object who still resides somewhere in the recesses of duvet and pillows.
G3, bless her, has surveyed scene and gone back to sleep, story of her family life unfolding yet again.
G2 has been removed from the car, we are on the deck, she is still stiff but accepting tissues and cuddles. Still refusing to think about seat belt. Says No, Says her neck hurts, Does more crying, Does more recovery, more crying, more recovery… Born with a torticollis – twisted under-developed neck muscles needing painful attention throughout her baby hood – she might have a sore neck? she might have a notion that sore necks aid getting her own way? she might have a seat-belt that should be adjusted to how big she has become? so what…
Granny still has to get her in the car, safely in a seat-belt, and get them all to the boat, more or less on time.
Fast forward again… if I remember right the helpful breakthrough for this instance was nothing to do with seat-belts or necks or buckles or bribes/threats (yes there were some of those too) but with my own heartfelt “I want to get to the boat to get mummy and daddy they have been away all day and we all miss them”. Little body unbent and a small voice informed me that she did not like it when they were away. Which is obvious enough post-trauma to the emotionally literate literati – but remember, she said her neck hurt, tantrum seemed to arise from something between herself and G1, how was a granny to know she was acting out attachment /separation anxieties or whatever, and was she? maybe she just now had enough and got over whatever it was?
So end of anecdote, we all got to the boat, we were all glad to see Mum and Dad.
———————–
And, we have all been in similar complex situations, with children, with adults, with people. We are NOT therapists, however much we know about what they do. Life is not often like Tronick or Trevarthen videos, one-on-one. It is multi-tasking, multi-nuanced, stuff that has to be got on with, in the moment, now. And sometimes in this ‘now’ all of us sometimes offer a ‘still face’ to others, or have a tantrum. We can’t always be present to their needs; G2 could not be present to what Iwanted of her. Living in families, in work contexts, villages, cities, anywhere, there is stuff which has to be done which is not play or music. [Poets and mystics can sit on top of mountains thinking wondrous thoughts, but there is somebody down in the village fetching the water and stirring the stew. Or, in real life learning, we do not need to re-invent wheels, we want to pass what we know to others, so finding ways to 'instil it' is not just useful, it is a social/parental responsibility. Always playful freedom to learn could result in tyranny and ignorance just as readily as it results in happier outcomes.]
Since then I call this ordinary life living all the stuff we have to do whether or not they seem musical or joyous or whatever the “seat-belt syndrome“. It is not deep unconscious defence or dilemma, nor is it musical dialogue, it is the straightforward: Do it, Get the seat-belt fastened. Where is the work being done which enables us to understand what is happening as life goes forward?
So although I value all the work on deep inner world stuff, and on relationships, good or bad, I want to hear more about the seat-belt syndrome.
What makes ordinary life work? Is there a hidden something we are missing, whatever it is, the Ok lets go factor? This is the stuff of life: we go, and we keep going even when we do not know or understand what it is we are in.
———————-
Put together from a variety of stimuli including Sidey’s theme for this week: Hiding Something, which helped me to think of a way to add some regularly occurring thoughts into a sort of sequence. I think it is a great theme, and maybe deserves another post later in the week. Watch this space!
Just in case you live somewhere where it is dark, or darkish, in the night sky, there is a comet visible now in the southern hemisphere and coming to visibility in the north in a few days. And – it is not at all near to us, so it won’t hit the earth. Look at http://earthsky.org/space/comet-panstarrs-possibly-visible-to-eye-in-march-2013. From the earthsky page,: “Comet Panstarrs at Burns Beach in northern metropolitan area in Perth, Western Australia. Rocks off the coast with birds and a small fishing boat. One hour after sunset in early March. Photo by EarthSky Facebook friend Michael Goh. Thank you, Michael!”
Sometimes I get tired of being preoccupied with all sorts of rubbish, trivia, even important things, then get reminded that there is so much wonder in the universe for us to enjoy, just have to look.
After this weekend I find myself with a lot to think about, not least the inspiration first from Sidey who offered this photograph [from Wini Esterhuizen with her permission] as a theme, and then from Kate who produced not one but two thought-provoking posts, especially the first about the corridors and psychology and institutions. And of course Speccy has been to the NIRDP conference reminding us of human-ness and how much we need to get out of our own wee worlds. Kate said:
“In the Victorian years, institutions such as these were made to instil values from outside: iron-spined Christian values, paternalistic judgement enshrined in bricks and mortar”
Quite. Hence – Corridors of Power.
I also came across a news item in which our reveredmoronic powerful Minister of Justice, Chris Grayling, has made yet another pronouncement which would be utterly inane (as his thought process appears to be) if it were not also so utterly damaging to hope and health in our society. He thinks we should scrap the Human Rights Act, which enables us to engage with the European Convention on Human Rights, and in its place we would have… wait for it… a British Bill of Rights. I cannot work out if this stroke of genius/idiocy implies that the British are more or less human than the europeans, no doubt that will become clearer when we see what goes in to the Bill of Rights. [I know it is about those nasty courts and judges over there having an influence on British way of life - does he mean his way of life?]
Oh yes – it is only last month that he thought maybe rapists could be cautioned if the rapee was not able to give evidence [even the justice minister can't think about enabling ways to give evidence?]. And a few weeks before that, he approved of smacking children. Here he did seem to recognize that he might need an evidence base, because a lot of us don’t like smacking anyone, not even small cuddly cats and dogs. So he provided irrefutable evidence: “It never did me any harm“.
On this smacking topic much has been said about the psychology, and harm, which is difficult to evidence because, lets face it, most of us have a pretty complex psychology (see corridors from Kate as above). We are influenced by all sorts of things. Some of us are unexpectedly resilient to some stuff, and others, some different us are unexpectedly vulnerable, maybe to the same, or maybe to different, stuff. [if that is a terrible complicated couple of sentences - apologies]
So I would just like to add a little mite about the PHYSIOLOGY of smacking, not psychology [even though I happen to think that body and mind are rather connected.] When someone receives a ‘smack’ or walks into a door or falls off a swing or gets kicked in the shin by a fellow footballers boot, ie receives a sudden pain, guess what, the body reacts. I think it produces adrenalin – or one of those things – I am sure wikipedia or other google can tell you the correct details.
This adrenalin spikes, as it does in all situations of shock, so that us who are basically animal, can fight or flee. In other words, as the neuroscientists tell us, a smack leads to pain, leads to shock reaction, leads to adrenalin spike and straight into the most undeveloped animal part of our brains. Forget cognition and thought, or the idea of considered response, smack produces shock, and its physiological consequences – animal reaction. And, if it happens a lot, or regularly, and we survive anyway, which we do, the good old brain cells have a nice pattern they can return to over and over again. It might be addiction to adrenalin, or brain dead re affect in certain areas, or whatever. Who cares if it is called ‘harm’, or something more scientific, like amygdala activity? (amygdala = lower level brain action centre, again check details).
Corridors in the brain if you like, which lead straight to incapacity to think about stuff that has not been thought about (in this brain) before.
Oh dear, it seems we have animals in the corridors of power.
So… misquoting Kate… can I say
Upbringing practices such as these were made to instil values from outside: iron-spined Christian values, paternalistic judgement enshrined in I am bigger and more powerful than you
Help Help – reactive, unresponsive unthinking values! How many people vote, and act, and pronounce, conservative-ly for these reasons? Real values come from development INSIDE – as we live and grow together with others reaching out to the social parts in our brains. And, we do try to pass them on, but the instil method does not work. [I was also at a couple of meetings on Saturday re personal growth and development [Scottish Association for Psychodynamic Counselling in the morning, and Human Development Scotland, in the afternoon, but thoughts from there can wait for another post. ]
Last week just as I was getting to sleep, there was a rattle noise somewhere. As all the windows, and blinds and all sorts of stuff rattle in this old building, I just tuned it out. But in the morning, it was obvious I had an unwelcome guest, who had scattered a teabag inadvertently left on the kitchen counter.
Uh oh – the BI Times reports that the island’s rodent population is on the rise, especially the rats, which, like the deer, can be seen ducking into the undergrowth as you walk or cycle past. I had thought I was safe enough in my walk-up, but a mouse had made it upstairs.
I report with regret and some squeamishness that the rodent population is now at least one less. The only offering from the island store was old-fashioned traps. They work. And he was quite beautiful, not brown, but a soft grey with a white belly, and wonderful big black eyes, and I felt unexpectedly terrible. [Would I have felt terrible if he had been plain ordinary brown mouse?]
Enough of the mouse. the island is also home to many other creatures, both wild and collected. This morning we went to Dave’s house to see the latest addition to his amazing collection. Caspar, the Australian cockatoo has joined the gang. Elvis the turtle, who will grow bigger, a juvenile snapping turtle, several snakes and two dragon lizards. (there is also Roscoe, a smaller cockatoo who lives upstairs and so is not in the photos.) Kids are Rory, Ruby, Fiona and Mattias.
A couple of photos of Finn and his sister Sullivan too – they grow bigger. Mattias, Sullivan’s person, likes the snakes. Finn and Sullivan were NOT invited inside to see the creatures.
And what do the creatures eat – well the birds eat some sort of bird seed – but the lizards and snakes eat large worms and mice. Dave has a freezer full – I could have given him mine.
We are all OK and no-one on BI was hurt – but the sea strength has devastated roads and dunes and low-lying buildings.
Sandy was much worse even than predicted – apparently the water was in a standing wave ABOVE the breakwater last night. The boats may not be able to get in to the harbor – there may be a new sand bar at the entrance – some of the breakwater stone slabs look as if they are inside the harbor – all that sort of stuff is being checked out at the moment – no news yet. The mainland had it worse. Here, everyone was out this utterly beautiful quiet sunny morning taking pictures of devastation. Click for bigger pictures.
Setting out from Bridgegate Square along the Corn Neck Road
Discovering the destruction of Corn Neck road
And where have the dunes gone?
What has happened to the beaches?
The sea meets rocks
Debris carried across what used to be road
The Beachhead restaurant was well prepared
But they can’t have expected this much stuff
No road, rocks on the beach
Even further along, the road is undermined
The water scooped out all the foundations
The Trustram Dodge marker stone has moved!
The dogs don’t care, mud, sand, dirt, all OK
Back to town, half a road, and no dunes
Even where the road was higher, it has cracked
Back in town, Water Street – looking calm and beautiful
Look closer – between Water Street and the small beach INSIDE the harbor
Sand and debris everywhere underfoot
Old Harbor new dock by Ballard’s beach restaurant
This was the new dock – walked on it on Sunday
Free Spirit no more
The breakwater by Ballard’s – sea still surging over it
Ballard’s beach restaurant band-stand
Plywood protection has gone
Inside Ballard’s beach restaurant
The sea is still powerful
I feel like a gawker after an accident – I am a gawker and so are we all, but we want to know what has happened to our place. Corn Neck Road – out along the beaches – in the pictures – fortunately the Beach Avenue bridge held, so people who live further out can reach there and come in to town via Beach and Ocean Avenues. I have not gone up Spring Street but am told that as it turns below the Spring House Hotel and runs above the shore, the water has undermined the road and it is not passable. I have to go to the family home – further along Spring Street – the long way, up High Street past the school to the South of the island, back past SE lighthouse and then down the hill. Ballard’s beach restaurant is ruined and the Beachhead has an awful lot of clearing up to do.
The mainland fared worse still. My sympathies and good wishes to everyone in the aftermath of this amazing storm.
And indeed it makes one think of everyone everywhere who has suffered from the elements. Why oh why do we not use armies and human ingenuity for things like this, rather than for devastating each other?
So I didn’t have any ideas apart from emperors and nakedness which wouldn’t suit a family blog.
So I looked up the quote (thanks google) and found the original:
BEWARE OF ALL enterprises that require new clothes
Indeed – why leave out that word BEWARE, and what’s with the ALL
Then I read the very next quote which happened to be open on the page (its a bit more wordy):
So behave that the odor of your actions may enhance the general sweetness of the atmosphere, that when we behold or scent a flower, we may not be reminded how inconsistent your deeds are with it; for all odor is but one form of advertisement of a moral quality, and if fair actions had not been performed, the lily would not smell sweet. The foul slime stands for the sloth and vice of man, the decay of humanity; the fragrant flower that springs from it, for the purity and courage which are immortal.
eeeugh – beware indeed -
free association -
what will I think of next -
see yourself as others see you -
actions speak louder than words -
etc etc till mind settled on
be the change you want to see in the world
So who said that – another google – apparently originated with Gandhi, but has been grabbed by the electioneering at the moment here in USA there is a plethora of youtube yuk to be found, in my view considerably distorting the original intent. And then I chanced on a great article [Brian Morton, NY Times] Falser Words were Never Spoken, which begins with a polular misquote from Thoreau, and goes on to what Gandhi night really have said [there being no evidence at all that he said what he is said to have said]:
Gandhi’s words have been tweaked a little too in recent years. Perhaps you’ve noticed a bumper sticker that purports to quote him: “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” When you first come across it, this does sound like something Gandhi would have said. But when you think about it a little, it starts to sound more like … a bumper sticker. Displayed brightly on the back of a Prius, it suggests that your responsibilities begin and end with your own behavior. It’s apolitical, and a little smug.
Sure enough, it turns out there is no reliable documentary evidence for the quotation. The closest verifiable remark we have from Gandhi is this: “If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. … We need not wait to see what others do.”
So what is happening when we rewrite quotes?
What is happening when we make a short soundbite?
Is it avoiding the original intent?
Distorting it?
Just rephrasing but in tune with it?
or is it that anything we do is the ACTION by which the secret intent in our unconscious hearts will be seen? Alongside what we thought we intended…
Either good or bad or neither good nor bad…
BEWARE
BEWARE
BEWARE
Politicians especially need to beware. We see you.
Another quote:
Once you write something or say something, its out there, and people will get to know you, sure, bringing their own view to the word. But you can bring your view also, and learn to know yourself as others do, as you do not, yet.
Who said that – me – you read it here first, I do not know if it is new, and I am having a green day today.
Isn’t blogging great! Fit to be seen, at least by some.
This is a double challenge: Sidey’s weekend theme is “Those that survive” and the Daily Post writing challenge has suggested “And now for something completely different“. BOTH bring up memories. Almost by definition the idea of ‘survive’ creates a revisit to difficult times, when challenge was strong, feelings were high, and stress and worry for self and others seemed nearly overwhelming. The Daily Post topic is a memory in itself, who of my age would not remember Monty Python and that first ever time the gang took off with this phrase in 1971 (according to wikipedia, my memory is not that good).
Will I challenge myself to do a John Cleese? I don’t think so… maybe another day… Sidey’s theme had me thinking about the past. This was particularly the case because, coincidentally, my ex-husband was on the island for two weeks at the end of September, visiting the family, and of course we had a lot of contact and interaction which inevitably threw up the memories. I realised that apart from an ‘about’ page, this blog has been about the present. So – completely different - a blast from the past. [Also, different, those of you who look at the blog regularly, may have noticed that I don't do videos, or you-tube songs and music.]
In 1990/91 the year the marriage broke down for ever and I moved home and job to Edinburgh this song seemed to blare from every corner. I will survive. [First performed in 1978 by Gloria Gaynor - guess where I got the date]
I HATED it. [implies victim or something like that]
One of my friends said I was the one who got over the wall, I liked that better, she is still married and they survive too.
I loved all the single women I met in a new place, widowed, divorced and not yet married, who invited me to lunch and concerts and dancing. Thanks especially to Fred, Irene and Caroline who sang along so often. Where are you all now?
A great line in the song is: Oh as long as I know how to love I know I’ll stay alive
By definition, indeed, if alive, I have survived. Continue blogging, laughing, dancing, playing having a lot of living to do.
The loving has never stopped, it just seems to be built in along with all the other feelings that run around inside.
I try not to let some of them out. That’s part of why I read and write poetry, an acceptable place for the not-loving to live in, and indeed for me to discover the not-loving which is still hiding inside!
Second post today – Just after writing a post about things not mattering much – I make a cup of coffee and swipe the mug off the bench on to the floor. This mug. I have had it for nearly 9 years and Fiona the once mug-maker is 12 this week.
I mind. I shouted very loudly
NO
I was a little surprised this was the word chosen to shout.
This is a public Diary but still a stream of consciousness, so what is written re thoughts/feelings at any one time might be not what I think/feel generally, though it could be. It could have been a moody moment, good or bad. The actions are real though. If I have written about something that happened, it did happen.
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