positive and negative

I certainly don’t intend to be negative or slanted in my view of life. What I write reflects where I am at the time. If the balance is I’m having a rough time, then of course that’s reflected here. I can’t do much else as it isn’t a work of fiction. Anyway, my ventures into searching for answers are now being joined by others, and one has pointed me to my next branch of the project.

How comes those who believe can’t convey whatever it is that they believe in to others?

That’s a question that is going to need complex research to analyse. Apart from the recently discovered god gene, which apparently determines if we believe or not, what I really need to know is what faith and belief have as their foundation in reality, and then why it can’t be passed from person to person like any other information. If I learn something I can convey it to others. If I feel something I can only describe it. But religious belief is based on a feeling not in our universal spectrum of feelings. It’s a feeling most people don’t have on their list. No different from describing sight to someone born blind. What on earth makes the devout so convinced they have something, and then they can’t even share it or show it to others, who just have to sit back and scratch their heads, wondering what foreign energy animates them, and makes them so much calmer and happier than those of us born without.

I’m waiting to see if my friend joins in here to investigate as well, as without her original question as to how I am without faith, I couldn’t formulate yet another dilemma that there are two types of people in existence who can’t see how the others operate. Maybe this question (if answered) holds the key to everything.

Secondly Carla has replied to my questions, and may well be able to post them soon. But having read them about half actually agree with my own. If it appeared they didn’t it was only in the inadequacy of the written word compared to a conversation. On suffering we are totally on message, and more or less on its less evil relative, adversity. I’ll go through them all in full if I can post them again.

Otherwise apart from my fascinating hypnosis last week, I’ve had very little to report from my own life. One of those periods when family ask what I’ve been doing and I answer nothing. The half hour or so I spent in the park on Saturday produced some of my best photos so far, and told me that I live where I do as it has some of the nicest surroundings you’ll come across anywhere. Having been there until I was 5, remembered everything about it (as did a neighbour who left when he was 3!) and not being able to afford the old family plot, had to do the next best. But our park is probably better. Holidays are fine, but I learnt a long time ago it was better to not go somewhere nice and then get depressed when you came home, but arrange somehow to live somewhere as good as the holiday places, which I did. That in turn reminded me of our old house where I went after I was 5. It had become a special place, which I really discovered after leaving, as despite some very unhappy memories, the place was still special regardless of what happened there. Being there from 5 to 33 I felt so safe there it didn’t help with my phobias, as there was literally no place like home, and when I was in a state, I wanted to be there. Due to the downside I was glad to close the front door for the last time in 1993, but gradually realised I needed a break not a complete split. It wasn’t even the family element, as I was there on my own towards the end after both my parents went their separate ways. That improved things, but it was the place that remained and given a chance would return and never leave again.

I dream about living there regularly, and have photographic memories of every inch of it, each cupboard, shelf, door and window. I could build a model of it as it was in complete accuracy, and like the big brother house I would recreate if rich enough, could do the same with that. Orange was the dominant colour, thanks to my mum’s fascination with it as a ‘cheerful colour’. Decorated in the mid 70s, it had an orange hall as you came in leading to a double orange kitchen. The orange theme followed upstairs to the landing, and until I took it over as my bedroom, my mum’s office. I decorated my earlier room in purple, my favourite colour at the time, and had white walls with a purple carpet and striped white and purple curtains, which appear to still be there. My parent’s bedroom, as in Kingsbury before, was pink. In a good way. Pink flowers on the walls with pink cupboards and drawers. Newer ones were wood and white, but blended in perfectly. The bathroom was green and yellow, later on getting a skylight as we built across the old window. The lounge went from one end of the house to the other with a sliding door if we wanted half used as the dining room. The kitchen had a fascinating ‘museum cupboard’ which twisted under the stairs, and contained food and kitchen items from antiquity. The old cupboard doors were yellow with red handles, but painted white once the kitchen was rebuilt in 1974 or so. I pass the house almost every week to or from seeing my mum, the curtains are frequently open, and I can see in without the privilege of being there. I learnt to appreciate what good I had from there, but too late to use it. I like where I am now, but it’s not in the same sort of area, and will never afford anything like it in my lifetime the way things stand. If I married money it would be a double bonus, and it often seems when good things happen they happen large, so when the door opens it can let everything through in one go.

I remember the workmen building the cupboards and fitted bookshelves, that added over the years as we had more possessions. The rooms were bigger than almost anywhere else I know, the main bedroom was almost the size of my current loft room which is the size of two rooms made into one. I reckon even my clothes would have fitted in had I had that room now. We also collected au pairs and other ladies from Europe the way other people collect china. From the age of 8 we had an au pair, and some remained friends, and either stayed with us when visiting London or dropped in when passing through. Many used our space to store excess baggage, and we often had cases filled with flowery dresses to partly compensate for the lack of real people living there. Compared to now, where all there is is me, my things and an incontinent stray cat as well as the official one, the only benefit is I am in charge of the whole place. After one evening that wears off and all you notice is there’s no one there to talk to or hear moving around in another room. The old place was so huge I always had a tenant, and one night one had a sleepover with about 5 women flushing the toilet all night long. That was too much, but the potential was there to do so. And being so familiar even with no one left there besides me, it was home and almost seemed to have a life of its own from all the years of memories it had absorbed. So the place had become elevated beyond the level of anywhere else and when there I felt almost as if I’d entered a higher realm which reduced with distance.

No point to it, just had something that was good to share and showed how there is some magic in my life, albeit in the past.