There's nowt as queer as folks...

This past week has been feckin' awful challenging in many respects.

Some twats enlightened people on my course decided they would play up during a presentation a fellow student, (who's also my good friend), and I were delivering about the treatment of depression.

She wrote a note to him saying she was stupid bored and wanted to go out for a skive smoke.   They smirked and giggled, passing notes...

I was watching the audience to gauge their reactions to what we were saying, but failed to notice them, but their behaviour was brought to my attention during a break by my friend, who had seen it all.  

In the cafe I tried to tackle him about his bad behaviour, when he came to sit next to me and bore me with tell me tales of his own abusive childhood again and again, ad nauseum.

When we returned to the class-room after the break, they chose to come back ten minutes later than everyone else.   The tutors tackled the group on this, without naming and shaming.

I was very sad hopping mad livid.

She asked me for a lift home afterwards.   This has been a pretty usual occurrence for us, as I take pity on her and we are travelling pretty much the same journey home...   No skin off my nose.   I could scarcely be civil to her all the way home.   I was furious and barely holding back my anger.

I know that, in the scheme of things, this whole episode amounts to little more than a hill of beans. 

I know that there are worse things happening in the world, even in our enchanted Blogworld, concerning those we love.

I know I should rise above it, not rise to their bait in a game of one-upmanship and competitiveness because they both are, of course, perfect and self-aware.   They are going to make shit great therapists with their attitudes!

I am angry with these people for how they behaved and treated me and my friend this week.   I am appalled at their lack of respect and childish collusion.

I think I am, in the very bottom of my heart, just sad...

On Saturday I attended a crochet workshop, to do something creative and have a little fun, rather than just work, work, work on my counselling course.

I had fun. 

In other news, some other shit also hit the fan also not so very nice things happened this week.

...I might take my new crochet hooks into college this week.

It turns out that I am so crapilola at crochet, that I might just find another use for them!

Trams, Film, Dogs and the Ravages of Time (Dunkerque c 1913)

CLICKIE HERE

"Under the knowing eye of a flock of children, a tramway proceeds through the streets of Dunkirk at the beginning of the 20th century", between 1908 and 1913. Later, the town was practically destroyed by bombardment during the Second World War. !In the middle of the ruins, only the statue of Jean Bart that you can spot in the film remains today.

Everyday life unfurls via a long tracking shot: shopkeepers, businessmen, housewives, hawkers, all kinds of onlookers take part in the hustle and bustle of urban life. Then as we move away from the centre, the town is concealed and another movement, that of the outskirts, has the upper hand.

From a nitrate copy, this documentary tinged with timeless beauty is a witness of the impact time has on the filmic image and its subject.

Director: Anonymous
Nationality: French
Length: 5' 15"
Genre: documentary
Sound: silent with soundtrack
Original elements: black & white
Composer: Ivan Boumans Molina
Original language: French"

I love this piece of film which tells of the fleeting nature and passage of time on us. People. And a town, which was captured on celluloid at this brief moment, but whose life would never be quite the same again.

And I make no excuse, to take us back again to my favourite wise, wise words which can be found within The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam dating from 1859, perhaps fifty years before this film saw the light of day:

"The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it".

Please share what these words mean to you here today, if you can spare a few moments from the hectic round of present wrapping, bow tying, elbowing rival shoppers out of the way and mixing up figgy puddings...

For it is at this time of year, is it not, that we think about what has gone before, we make promises of how things are going to be different next year, and sometimes bitter-sweet regret mingles with a few scattered memories of pleasure...

Adieu.

Source for Film

Source for Words

Forgive and Forget...

I spent a wonderful weekend recently with two very special friends...

One I've known for probably fifteen years and love like a sister. We worked together all that time ago, and hated our public-facing jobs in a pair of crumbling Jobcentres. We clung to to one another amid such turmoil; we shared tears and torrid tales of half-or-wholly-mad customers we'd just had the pleasure of interviewing, and talked of derring deeds and running away from it all. ...We cackled a deux over snatched tea-breaks, and a half of lager at the local Working Mens' Club on a Friday lunchtime, when the awld fellas would give up their seats to us, beckoning their mates away, "Howay man, lads, give ower, it's the lasses from the Dole!"

Elaine, whom I call Elle, after The Body McPherson, is to treasure.

That same Sunday, GJ and I headed for Carlisle, a town I haven't spent much time in, to see Sara; Carlisle is a buzzing, vibrant, clever little spot in the west of the country... Sara is wonderful, incroyable, and writes better than I ever can and THIS POST made me cry. Although we've only known one another for the brief and bright life of our blogs, we have clicked like only old souls can. We are âmes sœurs, absolument...

I want to be as talented, as beautiful, as mature as Sara when I grow up and stop being a little girl, stuck in a child's tantrum, tight blonde pigtails flaring and my face flushed crimson with anger.

And I am so grateful to her, for our friendship and love...

Sara might think that I went into counselling mode with her, over over-flowing wine and fine tapas dishes in a lovely crowded bistrot that emptied around us like magic as the short evening wore on; There I go again, proffering advice to others on how to live better, be more happy, being good to yourself.

How very dare I?

In actual fact, Sara knows me better than I know myself and she gave me a much-needed lesson in how to let go of hate, how to forgive others. And as they say in the Great Book, the scales fell from my eyes.

Holding on to hate, or grief for too long, gathering negative feelings to us is a futile pastime.

For anyone.

I have wallowed over-long in grief and sorrow. Always looking at life through a hazy veil. Having my view on life coloured by tragic circumstances outwith my own control, by others' twisted emotions, their bitter lies... I was ignorant, telling myself that I was justified, holding the thought to myself that life just hadn't treated me fairly.

What did it serve, hanging on to this dark cord, attaching me to wrong-doing and anger? To someone I couldn't love but couldn't bring myself to hate, now she is gone from my life...

Who did it serve? Not me. Not my lost parents. Nor my family, or friends.

...Not me...

So, since meeting Sara and receiving her solid and learned wisdom, thank you Sara - You are part of my heart - I have been taking time, sitting at my desk during the day, envisioning letting go of this bad feeling, dissipating this draining energy.

I have written down words of forgiveness on a piece of paper I am currently carrying around with me in my electric blue handbag. I have envisioned white light surrounding us both, the perpetrator and me, from head to foot. Swirls of lightning energy...

And as the light grows and brightens, it melts the thick black cord that twines us both, freeing her, liberating me.

And I do feel better. A bit.

Lighter.

Freer.

I invite you to try it for yourself if there's a bad feeling, some weight, an energy-draining spirit whose tainted emotion you want to free yourself of...

Du courage!

Let me know how you get on?

CLICKIE The sculptures created by Anne Mimi Sammis, whose passion for love and peace, embody the joy, the dance of love between ourselves and others. Enlarged, the sculptures possess a majesty and greater power to convey their message. The small Dove of Peace was enlarged to roughly 6 feet across for its perch on top of the Aspen Chapel.

Anne Mimi Sammis creates commissioned small and large scale bronze sculptures for private and corporate clients worldwide.