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From Your precepts I get understanding;
Therefore I hate every false way.
Your word is a lamp to my feet
And a light to my path.
I have sworn and I will confirm it,
That I will keep Your righteous ordinances.
Hebrew Psalm 119:104-106 nasb
No I haven’t become deeply religious. I just think it’s beautiful. It was stuck to my front door by a woman who wanted to talk religion to me today and I found this on flickr.
I don’t get religious unless there is something really really wrong. (Hey at least I’m honest). I prayed like crazy in the back of a police car rushing to hospital when my mum was dying in the A&E at Guy’s Hospital. I also felt what had happened before it happened too. I have a great sense of forboding or spirituality, not sure which. Anyway. I forgot the words to Hail Mary and actually believed she would be dead when I arrived (as the policeman told me accidentally in the car) because I couldn’t remember the words and got stuck after “full of grace”. Man, that was an all consuming kind of guilt. I spent the best part of my life reciting that prayer day in day out at school and at mass and I couldn’t remember the words when I needed them most?
I think it was at that moment I fell out massively with God too, that accident. I wondered and still do about old God. I was looking at my father at the time, all weirdly crushed and broken. A deeply religious devout man who never missed mass unless it was exceptional. Why would God do that? I mean seriously what a schmuck. And I’m being polite.
On a funny note I also prayed for God to give me every kind of um, womanly feature earlier than anyone else at school and he obliged. Except when I got said stuff and other girls started to notice and got bitchy on me I was on my knees like “Jesus. Take it all back!”. And at school we were told by the nuns that we each had a guardian angel. When I was about 6 I decided to test mine by stepping in front of a lorry just outside the sweet shop. My mum caught me in the nick of time and upon finding out my motives, took her atheist self right up to the catholic school and threatened them three ways from Sunday.
I have questions to and about everything. God or scientists. And I doubt they would ever be able to answer me satisfactorily. So until that point I don’t rule out anything. Religion is about Man not God, and sections of religion are distorted or shaped to suit and govern and bully and guilt and extort. But I can still find a whole lot of poetry and human goodness in the words written around the Abrahamic faiths when they aren’t being barked at me. I like the spiritual. Less religiosity and more of that please.
I suspect I’ll wonder that a lot looking at vast landscapes next week. I’ll try to update flickr (sidebar right) for anyone who is interested and likes looking at some hopefully pretty pictures. This has come around sooooooooooooo quick.
The day started out strangely and way too fast. I almost forgot a hospital appointment. I have been that preoccupied with trying to be busy, broke but busy, that I plain forgot. I downed two strong cups of Nespresso and darted down the road to the hospital. It is less than 15 mins walk. A potential third round of cancerous cells still stays away. Ha. A few hours later I was heading back up the hill to collect my flatmate and make our way down to south London for her serious appointment with a dentist.
The beautiful blue skies of the last few days had turned sour and drizzled all over me the whole morning. We would have to take a taxi to London Bridge as I was already sick of being drizzled on.
My flatmate was anxious. She is one of those lucky types who has avoided any kind of medical need all 30 odd years of her life and so crumbles with fear at the thought of anything of the kind.
Today she was having a root canal. Last week an NHS doctor had plied her mouth open with plastic jacks and injected her aching gums with local anaesthetic before shoving her mouth full of more plastic and preparing to go in. She panicked and demanded it all be stopped. So they referred her to one who uses whacking great loads of sedative (verging on a general anaesthetic). She paid to go private to bring the (by then) super urgent appointment forward by a week. It was gonna cost her £600.
I regaled her with my tales of medical bravery and 'what it feels like' to be off your head on locals or generals, on the surburban overline train journey to Bromley North. I once had a cyst removed from my eye with nothing more than local, a steady hand and a scalpel I told her, ha! I had to watch the whole process and stay completely still. Eye surgery, scalpels, horror story!? She balked and laughed. By comparison, this will be a walk in the park I reassured her. Do you think you will be a long time, I questioned. Because I want to check out the shopping centre, I followed up chuckling.
The dental nurse, who would otherwise have been a grumpy miserable bitch, but for the words 'private' across the surgery door in this greedy country, sashayed her off. The procedure would last one hour 20. Ill be back in what seems like 2 minutes for you I called after her. Like Johnny Depp in that film about Las Vegas! I snorted. And off she went.
I pottered around the shopping centre of a town I went to school in and hadn't visited since my parents upped and left 9 years ago.
It felt surreal. The place looked tired. The George Orwell mural (he was born there) had been replaced with Charles Darwin (he wasn't, I don't think) and Allders had been replaced by a some cheapo foreign shop which was complete crap and full of aggressive mums with screaming babies in killer carts. My flatmate had asked me to pick her up some, let's just say, personal and private over the counter medication at Boots. Ladies will understand what I mean when I say the kind of problem you get when you have taken a course of anti biotics. Which she had been on for her damn tooth, for over a month. I surreptiously perused the brands and picked up the pill form she wanted. Took it to the counter in a stealth move. Whereupon the check out girl rang a fucking bell and held the box up to her colleagues in the Medicines department and yelled loudly "okay to dispense?"!! I felt like a giant red arrow was pulsating above my head with everyone staring. Then she starts asking all sorts of questions, with a queue of people behind me. God I don't know I spluttered, going red. She's about to have a tooth and absess yanked out under sedatives, does that matter, can she mix her drugs? I enquired sarkily, like I gave a shit. Off she trotted.
1. Monument Valley Sunset Drama Scene 2, 2. img151, 3. DSC05195, 4. 2609059925_420abcd741 Created with fd's Flickr Toys.
In all the whirlwind of the last few weeks, I've been working out a travel itinerary and surprise party for my parents. They celebrate their 40th (Ruby) wedding anniversary this year. How about that?!
My mum and dad have been happily married for all that time, which is pretty damn sensational really. Of course, they have had highs and lows. We almost lost my mum at one point in a horrible accident. My father cut a lonely figure for a long time as she hauled herself both tremendously positively and equally negatively through a difficult recovery. My father went through a torrid time at work too, stressed and often seeming depressed, my mother took up the flack.
Perfect coupling. It takes hard work and pure unselfish love. Reflecting on their lifelong experience has made me feel both weirdly cynical and feel renewed and encouraged. At one point a few weeks back I wondered at my ability to make a success of their celebrations - but I've since thrown myself into the whole thing and I am loving every minute of it.
The party will be held in Los Angeles. My sister lives there, works there and is married to an American so America is truly a part of our lives. He is an arty kind soul and between us all we have organised some great ideas. Artily projected photos of their wedding all around the room. A red velvet anniversary cake with a beautiful picture of them in the icing overlaid onto the cake. Red velvet layer cake grossed my friend out so in a moment of martini driven craziness last night I baked some fairy cake versions to prove her wrong and convince myself! Yummy. There will be about 20 people at the party, most of whom I know from my sister's wedding. I have my dress, fresh from France. Almost all set!
After that the fun extends to two weeks of travelling with them all. Los Angeles to Las Vegas to the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley and Bryce Canyon, San Francisco, the Napa Valley, the coastline down to LA taking in Carmel and with luck a trip out of Monterey to photograph the grey whales! I bought a bunch of new lenses for my camera and attended a photography course yesterday on landscapes. I hope to get some good ones of the Big Country! And I am beyond excited to learn more about the Navajos. A people, of many respect to Native Americans, whose history has always made my heart hurt. My father is the real photographer in the family. It will be great to mess around with cameras, colour, light and sunsets.
The whole experience will be a delicious photographic feast. And more to the point a celebration of 40 years of selfless, humourful, devoted and sunny love. A rare thing worth fully celebrating with heart and soul.
