There are two kinds of quiet. One is the quiet of peace and contentment, the quiet that forms in a still moment and is a deep contentment that pervades every nook of the soul. The kind that forms when you sit in a warm window on a cold rainy day, and stare out at all eternity.

That is not my quiet. I have an unsettling gnawing quiet. A quiet that has no reason and gives no answers.

It is a sense of anticipation and waiting. I don’t know what I ‘m waiting for, but that doesn’t change the feeling. It never does. It’s strange when you recognise a feeling familiar;  a bitter echo of past feelings; each unsatisfying.

The disquiet stems from no source. One source, many sources and no source. It’s hard to be precise about something so amorphous.

Part of it, as James alluded, is that I don’t have much to do. My deficiency, my failing, in my current stage of life is my marriage to purpose. And the absence of purpose from my waking working day I feel very lost. This feeling of being adrift assists the disquiet.

I should know better; I do know better. Its foolish to look for purpose from paid work. The greatest trick you can play on yourself is to seek your purpose from the directions of others. This isn’t the source of purpose, and it never will be.

Knowing better isn’t the same as feeling better or being better. Its strange how our emotional state can override our rational state every time. We can think anything, do anything, dream anything but feelings – ah feelings are not in our domain. You may try to think yourself happy but that is not the natural order of things. That’s why the quote books are so quick to warn that people may forget what you say but they’ll never forget how you make them feel.

Ah the obvious solution! If purpose is lacking then I must find purpose outside of work, there is a wide world outside the office doors. Go seek from there purpose. It must be the case that of all the purposes this planet offers one will be perfect.

That solution underestimates the disquiet’s power and potency. It always triumphs. It is the powerful sensation of waiting for purpose to arrive. That purpose is just around the corner, if I’ll wait just long enough. It is a sense of anticipation and waiting. I don’t know what I‘m waiting for or if will ever arrive, but that doesn’t change the feeling.

After complaints about American dominance of the internet and growing disquiet in some parts of the world, Washington has said it will relinquish some control over the way the network is run and allow foreign governments more of a say in the future of the system.

Source:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/sep/30/icann-agreement-us

you’re right, it has been a very long time, hasn’t it. not much has happened.

(i was told off the other night for saying ‘not much’ happens in my life. to me, it’s just stuff. other people, apparently, find it interesting. i can’t think why – it’s not their life. there’s only so much interest one can dedicate to things that happen in an entirely different world.)

so, to me, telling you, not much has happened. to me, for myself, plenty of things. i got a job, i got a car. the job is hard work, and the hours are long and inconvenient, and as much as i like the work and the people, i won’t be working there for very long, because when i’m under pressure, i fuck up. no, that’s not the case. to clarify – when i am under the pressure of time, i fuck up. when we have five orders in, that’s an average of twenty people all paying around twenty pounds each for their starters and main courses combined, and i’m making twenty starters and preparing the vegetables for twenty different main courses, and i’ve got to do it in a non-sequential order, mixing four different starters here with rice for this, new potatoes for that, green beans for the other and salad for something else, and then back to starters, and help another guy who is only my subordinate by a matter of days and several years’ cooking experience do whatever he’s supposed to be doing, and i’ve got to do all that in about two minutes per order, then i start fucking up. pressure of expectation, not a problem. but time is a thief.

but today, and tomorrow (times of day be damned, it’s still wednesday) i have a day off. no work, no nothing. only what i want to do. driving around, doing what i please. except it’s not what i please, of course, because life isn’t like that.

yeah, it’s going to be one of those posts.

life isn’t like that, or i wouldn’t be sitting here, in my living room, at currently twelve minutes past two in the morning, listening to radiohead very loudly and

not listening to radiohead any more, because the gods of spotify have singled me out for special punishment. i’ve so far listened to two songs and three adverts. that’s motherfucking perverse. that’s not how the ratio works. back on to radiohead now – but if this song ends and i get another advert for a band that the market research people think i might like, (florence and the fucking machine. stop throwing yourself around the stage, get some singing lessons and get a fucking grip),

what was i saying.

listening to radiohead very loudly, when i should be in bed. but i came home from southampton, fucked about for a bit, ‘hopped in the car, went up to asda for some shopping, and hopped back in the car to go home’, in the words of my brother,

testing. the song has ended. AHAH! straight on to another song. still, by rights, i should be advert free for another four at least.

put my shopping away (a very me shop. a bottle of white burgundy, two bottles of ale, one of turkish lager, two bags of salad, some radishes, bread, cheese, a joint of gammon, some ben and jerrys – half baked, since you ask -  and some broad beans) and sat down, with v for vendetta in the background, editing and uploading about a third of the WSC reviews. put my laptop away, sat and watched Vanilla Sky, which turns out to be a really good movie. i’d heard mixed reviews, but i’m always up for a good dose of headfuckery and scantily clad penelope cruziness. all good.

and now, sitting here, writing this personal letter to you, whoever you are, and feeling, after a glass and a half of wine, like i ought to be all maudlin and wittery. but actually i feel okay. nervous about some things. a long car journey when i’m used to doing half hour hops at the most. and i’m still not that great a driver. i fuck up easily, going too fast. having to overcompensate, which i shouldn’t have to. but, everything seems so slow when you’ve driving at sixty or seventy for half a mile, doing the other half at thirty feels like crawling on your hands and knees. tired of work, and wishing they’d understand i didn’t sign up for a full time job, and that i don’t have to give a reason for not wanting to work a particular day. and that i don’t, really don’t, want to work. it’s something i do because i have no choice, and i really don’t have to be grateful to them. so don’t smile at me and patronise me, and treat me like a benign but wayward child, that just needs managing, steering, to do what they want. they, you, the people who run this pub. you are there for my convenience. not the other way around. there is no working relationship. for the moment, i work, and you pay me. soon, as soon as i have been paid enough, i’ll quit, at a moment of my choosing. you’ll complain, and haggle, and persuade, and wheedle, short staffed, under pressure (of expectation, not time), under a lot of strain, selfish, and so on. and i will say, sorry, don’t care. thanks for the pay packet. bye.

i don’t care. and it probably is selfish, and i probably ought to feel bad about planning, even now, to drop these people in the shit. but i don’t care. they’re just people, who as far as i’m concerned exist to give me money in return for something that, in a way, i rather enjoy.

this has turned into something of a rant. my apologies for the breakdown of grammar, spelling, syntactical comprehension and society. maybe it is one of those posts. enough. i’ve made it through the first eight songs of OK Computer with five adverts, only one of which has been a condom advert. five ads, eight songs. i remember when i started using spotify, it was about one advert to ten songs. i suspect a plot here. gradual phasing in of more ads per song. hmm. wikipedia does not confirm.

This is an insert, because i always start lines of thought and never finish them. the car – it’s a blue rover. it has four wheels, an engine, and gets me from place to place, which is more or less all i ask of it. it does other things too, like play music with the bass so loud it makes the windows rattle, and steam up in cold weather, but those are just extras, i didn’t pay for that. my brother. as he said, when he rang me, unexpectedly and wonderfully, in the middle of the vegetably aisle at asda, this must be the first time we’ve spoken on the phone for a year. the last time i saw him was early july, just after my last post, in london, for lunch. before that, christmas. i don’t see the boy enough, and that’s a fact. i also, as Nick reminded me, don’t see my dad enough. and because he’s my dad, bless him, he doesn’t complain, but i miss him sometimes, and i know he misses me. so i’ll go and see him tomorrow, and i’ll make sure we actually talk about things instead of just sitting on different sofas watching tv.

i’m actually on my own at the moment. mum and julian are in Dorset, and they’ve taken the cat with them. Dad’s in his flat, spending all day watching the Ashes and doing i know not what because i don’t spend enough time there. Fi’s working hard, worrying about resits, and living her own life. sometimes our lives interweave, and those are wonderful times. but sometimes they seem very seperate. who knows.

but it does get lonely, sometimes. as much as i say, to myself and to anyone who, in the wee small hours of the morning, will listen, that i like being on my own, and i like being away from my mum and her boyfriend and all their banal ramblings, and that i like living on my own, sometimes, i’d like to live on my own with somebody else around.

enough now. i’ve done stuff recently, but honestly, i swear to god, it hasn’t been that interesting. i’ve watched movies, eaten sandwiches, drank drinks, played videogames, swept, mopped, sweated and chopped a hell of a lot of parsley. i made a lot of lists, had to erase one (which broke my heart) to make room for another, of things which are a lot harder and less pleasurably to achieve. and i’ve got too much to do, and not enought time to do it in. time is a thief.

(the title was originally just ‘airbag’, the first song off Radiohead’s third album, OK Computer, which i can’t recommend highly enough. if you think Radiohead is dreary shoegazing music, you’re very, very wrong, and it would be nice if you found the time to listen to the album when they stopped being good and started being really, really fucking good. the second half of the title is the song i’m listening to now, around the time of writing the insert paragraphs.  having finished OK Computer, i moved on to another album i discovered around the same time, back in the early 200os,  Jamie Cullum’s Twentysomething. almost as good as i remember, which is rare.)

So, it is not Saturday, and Sunday that I write again. The plan to return was delayed for one day, and I came back only on Sunday. The question is too difficult to answer. The question, “what am I?” has no simple answer, I told her.

My boss is on leave and I take up her duties as well. But since we are now in between two busy seasons, there are not much additional work to do. Over the evenings after work, we had long talks over the phone. We even saw once, in a pre-arranged gathering amongst our mutual retiring friends before my short trip. During the very short time after dinner, it was late and there was little time to effort, she let me held her hands, kissed her and hugged her, briefly. I knew that she was happy, at that fleeting moment. I wrote, afterward, that seeing her, we temporary forgot our unhappiness. She wrote back, “… and then?” but why I should care.

She said, and I have no reason to disagree, rationally, that I should say goodbye, because I endured a period of unhappiness, disturbance, in the past weeks about that incident. The first step to do was to leave so further disclosure of our relationship can be avoided; since if that happens, would cause a storm much bigger and much unhappiness.

Love, is never rational, I told her. I never regret it, and know that she does not either. Quiet, but unhappy, is equally not bad.

I told her that I should not mention too many unhappy incidents at home to her. I wrote, “no matter what she is, she is not my consultant or psychologist.” The only answer that I come up with on the question “What am I?” so far. Yes, she said, she is the participant.

The storm has been subdued a bit, or we are only in the eye of the storm, waiting for its destructive force again, in a different direction. We all know that the storm will not die down, only is waiting for intensification again. Perhaps, it does not matter whether I decide to leave her. Have I told her so?

Yes, there is a recipe for beating stress!

First let’s play a game, answer these few questions for me:

1. Did you leave an unmade bed at home?
2. Do you have a messy closet in your home?
3. Do you have a messy handbag?
4. Would you find it difficult to tell me what you’re having for dinner five days from now?
5. Do you have dirty dishes sitting in your kitchen sink?
6. Would it take you more than three minutes to find your last tax return and documents?
7. Did you forget to kiss your husband before you (or he) left home?
8. Do you have one or more piles of paper around your house-on top of the refrigerator, game table, kitchen counter, desk, or on the floor?

How did you do? Did you answer “no” to six of the questions? How about four? Two? One? Don’t feel bad. We all understand the struggle to control our lives.  Life’s trials…

• Hassles: Any of life’s pressures or traumas will do.
• Hustle: These are common everyday demands and can be supplied by any family member, neighbor, employer, children’s club, church duty, or committee responsibility.
• Hurried(s): You can pick them fresh, directly off your schedule, expectations, and responsibilities.

Don’t despair; help is on the way!

It’s called Organization, and I’m glad to share it with one and all:

• 1 quality period of time with God each day.
• 1 list of carefully-thought-through- long-term and short-term goals.
• 1 list of priority activities to direct you toward achieving those goals.
• 1 monthly calendar
• 1 weekly schedule book
• 1 pad of daily schedules
• 10-25 (or more, as needed) boxes with lids
• 1 box of file folders
• Several large trash bags
• 1 pad of weekly menu planners
• Assorted jars, shoeboxes, pens, baskets, and trays as needed
• Label 7 folders: 1 Immediate Attention, 1 To Do, 1 To Call, 1 To Pay, 1 To Order, 1 To File, 1 Junk Mail

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“By wisdom a house is built, and by understanding it is established; and by knowledge the rooms are filled with all the precious and pleasant riches.” ~ Proverbs

There are thousands of ‘healers’ in Los Angeles offering dozens of homeopathic ’solutions ‘ for headaches, arthritis, asthma, deficiency diseases, obesity, acne and skin care, infertility, anxiety…the list is endless.

Out of these thousands of  healers, perhaps only one (if there are more-let us know) is front-line neurologist who blends best-of-breed western medical practices with superior eastern healing practices.

And that is key. One without the other is like a fish without water.

There is one man,a  practicing neurologist, who combines the best of the west with the best of the east in his practice-he goes beyond health and wellness, to TCR: Total-Cure-Revival ™.

For more information on this true healer, neurologist and teacher, and how you can receive a TCR, stay posted….

just a warning: this post is likely to be extremely long, moderately irritable, and jammed to the gills with inconsequentiality.

so, yeah, it’s been a while. i’ll see if i can go chronologically, and if i forget things i’ll do another post tomorrow. here i sit with some water, some chocolate, a paper plate of Madelines, those delicious little morsels which have been unfairly tainted in the minds of some by their apparently causing Proust to go off on perhaps the world’s longest tangent (four volumes! four fucken volumes! get the fuck out of bed and have a wank. jesus.), and yeah. trying to relax myself, basically. err. what happened. essay the first happened. nothing too painful. i already had the plan and quotes etc, so it went okay. i got a first for another essay while i was writing it, so that cheered me up.

my short term memory is extemely poor. i can’t remember what happened before last tuesday, but on tuesday evening a motley selection of us went out to a pizza place for James’ birthday. good meatballs, decent beer, moderate company. what am i saying, i love these people. some of them, anyway. they all have good and bad points, but a few of them – there were thirteen there, and i’m talking about perhaps four) are just fucking gems of human beings. i’ll name no names, for modesty’s sake, but they’re just excellent people, people i genuinely enjoy spending time with. sounds unfair on the others, and i don’t *not* enjoy their company, but there are little niggles, aspects of personality or character flaws that get to me a little, which these other four don’t have.

next…uhh. ohyes… wednesday was one of those days of loosely organised chaos that the English department, not savvy at the best of times, does ever so well. it was the options market, which involved first of all me utterly failing to subtly leave the main options talk about Shakespeare, a compulsory module for straight English students, when i realised it didn’t apply to me. i was in the front row of seats, and quite close to the middle – i had to dislodge two other people to get out the end of the row, and every seat that flipped up made the most incredible noise. not subtle, at all. the guy giving the talk actually paused to let me leave. anyway, after that slight incident, i went up to the english department to sort out what was what, get the right form, give it back, get another form, read it, give that back, get the first form back again and generally fuck about for half an hour or so, striking up quite a friendship with the unexpectedly cute and young department secretary – all the previous ones having been decidedly on the frumpy side of fifty. after a certain amoung of dithering, i settled on a top three of modules, and then had to get another form (cue a redux of the getting the wrong form sketch detailed above) because i read the module options printout and saw the world’s most amazing module, called, for some reason best known to the module convener, Reeling and Writhing. didn’t have an awful lot to do with the content, which was….oh, i’ve wittered about this enough on the group thread, and nearly everyone who reads this is on there anyway. suffice it to say, we read lots of Homer, Ovid, Herodotus, the Bible, look at lots of paintings based on mythology, study the intertexts of various myths, and then (and this is the best bit) write 300-500 lines of poetry based on our emotional response to what we’ve read. i literally cannot wait, i want it to be september right now. sigh.

thursday, not much during the day. a friend’s birthday barbeque in the evening. i met a girl who pretty much embodies ‘Rah’ but, surprisingly, i didn’t take an instant dislike to. perhaps because she appeared fairly dizzy and sweet-natured, perhaps because she was just incredibly *nice*, but partly because i couldn’t help suspecting that underneath it all, she had a slightly self-critical attitude – i felt like she was very self aware. another very dear friend of mine had a fall on some distinctly H&S-baiting ground, and i spent a bit of the evening chatting to her and doing a spot of calming-down – although considering what could have been, she was heroically calm. i know people from back in the old days who would have made themselves the entire focus of the party over a slight flesh wound. it was nice to actually sit down and chat together, frankly, because she’s one hell of a person and i haven’t actually had a chance to properly talk to her in real life – late night facebook chats don’t count, even if they do go on til three am without any lulls – something that used to happen a bit in the old days but which i’ve got out of the habit of.

it’s interesting to see how people move on. this late night chatting business has got me thinking. i used to talk to my friend Ella on the phone at least three or four nights a week, and while i wasn’t her best schoolfriend, being a year above her and at a different school, we clicked really well and were…confidantes, i suppose. we talked about *everything*. i can’t be arsed to go into the whole history, i’m tired enough as it is, but we drifted apart because we turned out to be quite different people, in the end – and because our various mutual friends fell out and caused havoc, and, probably, because we were both a bit too lazy to put the effort in. oddly enough, i think we’d get on better now than we did before – we’re much more similarly in outlook, if nothing else. she’s in france, on a year abroad, and appears to spend her entire time doing cabaret shows and acting along to the Rocky Horror picture show. she also appears, through the university of Paris, to know another old friend of mine, Maddy, who i’ve known since god knows when and…i don’t know, there’s an odd class of relationship. i have it with two or three people, all kids of my dad’s colleagues – it’s sort of like distant family. I’ve known Maddy, and Izzy and her sister, for so long it feels like they’re my cousins, and even though we barely speak and we haven’t seen each other for years, and are living completely different lives, we could bump into each other in a coffee shop tomorrow and still get on like a house on fire. even when i was at school, and Maddy and i kept completely different circles, we’d get on really well on the rare occasions we talked, and it made me wonder why i didn’t make more of her friendship. Izzy likewise, although she was the year below. we went on holiday together as kids, for god’s sake – how people drift apart.

ugh, wittering. i don’t know, i find myself vaguely dissatisfied tonight. probably because the essay i handed in today was a complete crock – no proper introduction or conclusion, i didn’t answer the question (which i’d written)… the story i was writing about, Herman Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener, is irritatingly difficult to analyse, or rather, to express one’s thoughts in terms of. and i haven’t spoken to Fi properly for a couple of days, and i know she’s having a rough time of it, but i miss long, rambling phone calls. to be rectified soon, i hope.

i’m just getting irritable with small things, like John’s obstinacy and ignorance-based cleanliness fetish. hopefully i’ll be less pissed off soon, because god help everyone around me if i’m like this til exams.

i haven’t written about James’ birthday party (nothing much to tell, but a few interesting details) or compiled, as advertised, a list of “Fantasy” books even normal people ought to read, (the top three, which is all i have so far, runs: 1) The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe, 2) The Dark Tower by Stephen King, 3) the Bas-Lag books by China Mieville – read them all, now. drop whatever you’re doing, get the books, read them, and enjoy your new outlook on humanity and the universe), or about visiting Ross in hosptial, but i’m tired, and i’m (probably) going to go to bed with some Ray Bradbury, or possibly Sherlock Holmes, and a cup of tea, and see you all on the morrow. enough for now. xx

(nearly 1500 words! writing double that for an essay was like pulling teeth, and this happened in about twenty minutes…sigh…)

As yet

undecided

which is a problem

because before I was categorically appalled.

I fear my stance might be right-wing.

I fear my stance, if I look too closely, might be inhumane.

I fear my stance might make me a bad person.

In my heart

I believe in torture.

Torture is a way of life.

No one is innocent.

Anyone who cannot torture themselves

needs to be taught a lesson.

Self-inflicted, otherwise, seems just for the soul.

Most people are strong enough to suffer alone

anyway in their own minds.

But those who torture outside of themselves

I wish them the same and worse.

I wish them suffering and comprehensible pain of every kind.

I wish their blood to bleed as they watch their friends scream

animalistic cries of the wounded and damned.

I wish for them to know the inevitable and fear.

As yet

unadmitted

that I truly have a wish of agony

that I believe there are those deserving

because before I was categorically appalled.

      Nick paid a boy to save them seats on the bus.   He knew all the seats would be taken before the bus stopped to take on passengers.   Boys were hired to climb through windows while the bus was still rolling, something that provided the boys with subsistence.   They had tickets, but having tickets didn’t guarantee them seats.   While they said goodbye to Manila, Ted tried to deal with the fact that he might be heading into hostile territory, where as an American he could be a target, in places where he had no right to be, and had no connection with, really.   He didn’t let Nick know what he was thinking or how he was feeling.   Every time they spoke he put up a brave front, testing himself to see how he would react later, and he preferred to let Nick lead the conversation.   He saw the outside of the Dew Drop Inn from inside the bus, as they went through Angeles City and passed by the gate to the airbase.   (He remembered, as if he could forget, Nick’s story about an American service man raping a Philippine young lady in the Dew Drop Inn, and he wondered what had happened to the GI.)

      Back home, when he was going to college, he had heard stories about young men being entrapped or framed by young women seeking a ticket to America.   He had no first hand knowledge of it.   He had a better idea now than then how it worked; he had some idea how an unsuspecting male could fall into such a trap.   He would like to think it couldn’t happen to him; besides he was married and didn’t see himself being unfaithful.   It was said to have been one of the dangerous of playing around in Mexico; if there, why not in the Philippines, and especially so in a town next to an American airforce base.   In his mind, it could happen even when the sex was consensual and have the woman still cry rape.   Then have it her word against his.   All this while Nick was practically screaming about the injustice of cases tried in American military courts, when the crimes were committed on Philippine soil.

      He was excited about getting to see where Nick grew up.   The town was small and dusty, but far nicer than he had imagined it would be, not even close to having the poverty that he had expected to see.   This bothered him.   He didn’t think people here were suffering.   There were even cars on the streets, though donkey carts outnumbered them.   He thought, “How quaint and Spanish looking.   I wouldn’t mind living here.   I can see though how Nick might want to get away, just as I wanted to get away from my hometown.”   That was the feeling about the place that he had the whole time he was there, in the little store Nick’s parents ran, and that was how he felt as they walk around town, a town that obviously hadn’t change for generations, where landowners were still absent and poor farmers still turned a good portion of their crops over to the owners of their land; going back to the forties and the fifties, but bubbling over now again, these were some of the dynamics that had led to the Huk revolt.   There were no signs of a revolt now, though Nick had assured Ted that they were there.

      They got off the bus at last in the center of this brown adobe small town, with streets that were narrow and far from busy.   Just up the main street was the house where Nick was born.   Open, seven days a week then, a small store occupied the ground floor of the house, while Nick’s family lived upstairs on the second and third floors, but climbing all those stairs was not hard on them.   Not far away, situated on the north end of a plaza, was the Catholic Church, and covered walkways connected it with a market and most of the other businesses in the town.   Very close indeed, and mission-shaped, the church was the main landmark in town.   They could see it from their balcony.   The balcony was on the second floor and overlooked the street and was a nice place to sit and eat when the heat wasn’t too unreal.   The street wasn’t paved but that made no difference because the dirt was packed as hard as cement.   They entered the store and began to climb to the second floor before they were noticed.   The stairs in this place were narrow, and at the top of the stairs a beaded curtain screened the doorway.   The house was filled with the clutter of several lifetimes and especially in the main room with the balcony.   Calm music came from a radio, which somehow seemed incongruent with the clutter.

      The welcome was warm and extended throughout the visit.   Throughout both of Nick’s parents expressed their appreciation of Ted in a number of ways.   They fed him and pampered him.   Ted thought, “I didn’t expect this.   I don’t think my parents would’ve been this gracious.   They’re treating me like a son.   I could never repay them enough.”

      They stayed for three days.

      They would slip out during the day and go into the countryside.   Nick’s father, who had fought with the resistance…that was what Ted was told…had control of a group of men there, even after the war, and they really didn’t disband until Magsaysay made his concessions in the fifties.   The peace had now begun to crumble, a little at a time, and Ted could see signs of it here and there.

      Ted woke up under a shade tree outside of town.   With grins on their faces and dirt under their fingernails, poor farmers surrounded him and Nick.   When Ted open his eyes, he said, “I surrender.”

      Nick said, “He’s had a long nap.”

     ”I surrender.”

      “I vouch for him.”

      “He vouches for me.”

      “That’s right.   He’s with me.   What am I talking about?   The choice is his, but he’s not the enemy.   He’s with the Peace Corps.   Ted, you see, they’re not thinking of a revolution.   They just want to get rid of a few slippery politicians.”

      Ted said, “I’m not part of this.   Like he said, I’m with the Peace Corps.   Do you think it would be possible for me to stand?   We could then go into town and work this out?   Maybe you can help me understand what this is all about.”

      “You’re free to go.”

      “You’ve always been free.”

      “We really mean you’re free.”

     “We mean you no harm.   We don’t mean to hurt you.   We don’t have anything against you.   It is your government that we don’t like.”

      Ted then said, “It was his idea, not mine.   He brought me here.   He’s from here, and obviously I’m not.   And if it were up to me, you’d all be winners.”

      “You may go.   But you mustn’t tell people we detained you.”

      “I didn’t know I was being detained.”

      Randy Ford

Sundays are curious days. For a long while, it was my favorite day of the week; it still may be. A sunny Sunday with beginning with a meaningful service and people I love in the morning can be the perfect day. 

Certain times, I’m left feeling disjointed Sunday evening. It’s almost a shock to my system to have an eventful, social morning with nothing to follow it up in the evening but hours of alone time in the dark. I can easily occupy myself with a good book, but I still feel a peculiar disquiet. Is this a natural feeling? Should I be trying to find a way to fix it, or let it be?

I hope you found reasons to rejoice this Easter. He is risen!

Not so rainy today, but yesterday – ah, yesterday – the sky was dark and full of tears until late in the afternoon. I meant to post this then, but I was too heavy with weather, so instead, you get it now.

Edit, May 21: at least you would if embedding the video hadn’t been disabled. Click here, instead.

This video encapsulates how I felt for almost all of February.

But April is different entirely.