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chapter 15 - here and now and still arriving

Is it me, or is the world impossibly beautiful????

I think my head is going to explode.

I don't know how to respond to it all but it feels like a crime (or a waste) not to.

Unbelievable overpowering amazingness, indescribable intricacy,
explosive colour, ridiculous imagination, richness and life and
potential and vibrant breathing creation, how is it possible that you
exist and that I don't die?

How is it possible not to be thrown?

Two words floating round my mind in it all are immanence and imminence.


This is was the dictionary says they mean -

im ma nent adj. 1 living, remaining, or operating within; inherent 2 Theol. present throughout the universe: said of God


im mi nent adj. :About to occur; likely to happen without delay; impending; threatening.

I like what happens when they collide.


4.11.05 09:40


chapter 16 - here I am

If the God I knew yesterday is so different from the God I know today, is he still the same God? Or is it only me who has changed?

What is going on in the heavenlies? It feels like the world has started spinning backwards on its axis and I can’t remember how to stand. It feels exhilarating, terrifying and somehow very much more real. Oh, I am REAL. I think I forgot.

It changes everything.

The glass bubble has burst or is bursting and I am surprised to find myself by moments so near to the world, so near to others. How confusing. Will it all vanish again tomorrow? But for now I laugh; how strange we are.

Someone has switched the volume back on. Feelings hurt, throw you high in the air like a baby in strong arms, swallow you blackly and deeply or are impossibly good. They are untameable and swirl around like wind currents or wild creatures buffeting you and catching you unawares; they don’t simply seep at the edges of objects like they
used to.

Is this alright? Won’t we all get swept away?

Someone has stolen half of the rules. Where are my comfy dualisms, my two-coloured glasses that helped me organize my past and present, my time and my head? Which way is up and whichway down now? Have I been swept away from God on a false current?

And yet I keep finding him in the most unexpected of places.

Oh, there you are.

Final thought: Object-i-fy is such a sad word



12.11.05 11:45


chapter 17 - figs


FIG

is such a very wonderful word. Has anyone else noticed this? And oh,
figgy figgy pudding, think of all that that makes you think of...





14.11.05 23:26


chapter 18 - gwendoline


And on the theme of storecupboard edibles...

One of the chief drawbacks of tesco internet shopping is that you can't
see what you're buying. Hence the last few weeks' minor errors of value
frozen meat, tinned thai sauce instead of jarred, 2 kilos of natural yogurt
and one very small turnip.

Today saw the arrival of "Gwendoline," the ginger dragon. It seems that
the default setting (which you can adjust: I didn't) for ginger root (costing 72p) is a vast beastie measuring 15 inches (not including wingspan) - that is approximately 37.5cm. That is a LOT of ginger.

Ps Jason says that Gwendoline sounds like gasoline; but the name was
his idea. It's the name of his mum's car. These funny welsh people, I
don't know.

15.11.05 12:49


chapter 19 - The Great Escape





What is that warm feeling full of colour and safety and comfort that floods in with shadows of memories?

Why does it feel so attractive to dwell in the place where those thoughts of old thoughts of old dreams live?

Question: Is nostalgia always a good thing?

Maybe dwelling in it constructs an escapist world with walls that don’t
really exist, behind which we project all that we feel we lack in the
present moment. My feeling is increasingly that this saps the goodness from the here and now, because it becomes an illusive ideal; a refuge or 'safe haven' to flee to; in short a refusal to engage with the fearful aspects of the real world. And it cultivates the baseline belief that the 'real' will never be as good as the imagined/past/non-existent.

I wonder if it also stops the past from ever being properly buried. We think, if only I could find that lost thing; if I could recover it; if I could be there again, it would all make sense, it would all be good. Why aren’t things as they were before? And the thing still hurts. We feel hard-done
by, forlorn, abandoned.

“What is nostalgia, but ideals which masquerade as the past?”

The word 'Nostalgia' comes from a combination of two ancient Greek words: 'nostos' (or "homecoming" and 'algos' (which means "pain"
So in origin, it’s the idea of that sense of ‘home’ being embittered, frustrated, or lost. The idea of a native country now inaccessible – and the longing to return. I guess its kind of a platonic idealism; the longing for a foreign country full of conditions set by our imaginations that has never really existed. Like the desire for the boyfriend/girlfriend you don’t
have (or the house/car/job)… and then I would feel like this and this would happen and it would all be ok… in the same way it’s not based on reality but on a projection, a fantasy of the lack felt in the current moment.

The past can provide some food for this sense of loss/lack/emptiness; the future others; alternative realities (eg films, fiction, fantasy) others...

But is it always a bad thing?

Memories washing over you like autumn days with strains of nearly forgotten music, the smell of roasting chestnuts, crunching leaves and playing in the park; thick snow and fireworks, old films, first stories and coming in from the cold… – if you can see it and remain in the now is it ok? Can you appreciate without dwelling in? Can you miss without feeling incomplete?

16.11.05 23:28





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