BLOGFISH

End of 2010

2010-12-18T08:18:00.003+01:00

I've always been someone who plans for the future - or rather, who has dreams and hopes for the future. A long time ago - ie back in 1993 - I visited a career consultant. I'd been a nurse since I was 17, I was married and had two young children and I really felt that there had to be more to life than just working and raising a family. I remember poring over the results of that visit, thinking and strategizing about what t0 study and how to build a new career as a lawyer, or a journalist, or a teacher or something. But the thing I remember most clearly was looking ahead toward The Year 2000 when my kids would be older and I'd be more free to do whatever it was I decided to do. 2000 seemed like a long way off, and I couldn't imagine how it would feel to be over forty. :-(

Well. Y2K came and went. Forty came and went too. During the first half of that decade, the career plans and dreams still beckoned but life intervened. I got divorced. I got sick and after two and a half years, I got better again. I moved to a small, quiet town and lived a small, quiet life as a single mom. I worked in aged care, joined a church, started writing, travelled overseas twice, ran a part time business as a copyeditor/writer, bought a house, raised my kids and started thinking about emigration.

The second half of that decade saw US emigration plans flourish, then crash alongside oil prices and retrogression. So we moved to Plan B and soon after I turned fifty, I left South Africa and moved lock, stock and barrel to New Zealand, in pursuit of a safer, healthier, happier life. My son moved to the UK and gapped it, working and falling in love and partying for nearly two years. My daughter and I settled steadily into our new life in NZ. She flourished and nowdays, calls Wellington 'her town'. I returned to clinical nursing here in the 'coolest little capital in the world' and surprised (and delighted) myself by reclaiming old skills and lost confidence. I actually enjoy most of what I do these days, except for the usual nursing nasties (night duty, bed pans, sore feet, etc ...)

HOWEVER: old dreams never die, they just go into hibernation when the climate proves inhospitable. And my old dream of returning to study is back and starting to look more and more inviting and possible and hopeful. Victoria university in Welly is very supportive of the so-called Mature Student (and boo hoo, I'm now much more mature than I was back in 1993.) Anyway, the point being that in 2011 - ie almost fifteen years after I first contemplated starting a degree - I think it's going to happen. Both kids are starting university and I've put in an application to study one or two papers per semesters. Waiting to hear back from them, of course, and still need to hand in my official documentation, but I'm excited and hopeful and optimistic.

Subjects I want to do include philosophy, religious studies and english literature. Not sure what my eventual major will be or even where exactly it will take me afterwards, but for now, the sheer joy of being able to sink my teeth into things like this will be the stimulus that keeps me interested and motivated and going. I can imagine maybe ending up teaching literature or religious studies; I could imagine doing an MA in Creative Writing or Masters in Information Studies; I can even envision possibly heading into chaplaincy or religious feature writing or something like that ... who knows? The freeing thing now is that with my children moving ahead into the rest of their lives, I'm becoming more and more free to focus on doing stuff that works for ME, and not necessarily doing stuff simply to get by and keep us all housed, fed and clothed.

The possibilities are endless. I'm looking forward to 2011. :-)

Lolcat Bible

2009-06-26T07:02:00.002+02:00

Blessinz of teh Ceiling Cat be apwn yu, srsly.

The whole LOLCAT Bible Translation Project can be found HERE. But for now, just a brief excerpt ....

Psalm 23

1 Ceiling Cat iz mai sheprd (which is funni if u knowz teh joek about herdin catz LOL.)
He givz me evrithin I need.

2 He letz me sleeps in teh sunni spot
an haz liek nice waterz r ovar thar.

3 He makez mai soul happi
an maeks sure I go teh riet wai for him. Liek thru teh cat flap insted of out teh opin windo LOL.

4 I iz in teh valli of dogz, fearin no pooch,
bcz Ceiling Cat iz besied me rubbin' mah ears, an it maek me so kumfy.

5 He letz me sit at teh taebl evn when peepl who duzint liek me iz watchn.
He givz me a flea baff an so much gooshy fud it runz out of mai bowl LOL.

6 Niec things an luck wil chase me evrydai
an I wil liv in teh Ceiling Cats houz forevr.

Hole in the Sidewalk

2009-06-26T06:41:00.005+02:00

There Is a Hole in My Sidewalk: Autobiography in Five Short Chapters

By Portia Nelson
(Borrowed by me from Flirting with Faith )

Chapter One
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost...I am helpless.
It isn't my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

Chapter Two
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend that I don't see it.
I fall in again.
I can't believe I am in this same place.
But, it isn't my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

Chapter Three
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in...it's a habit...but,
My eyes are open
I know where I am
It is my fault.
I get out immediately,

Chapter Four
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

Chapter Five
I walk down another street.

The War Within

2009-06-14T00:06:00.009+02:00

I nearly went to church today.

This post probably belongs on my other blog (the immigration story blog) but I'm not ready to be that exposed to any of the few family or friends back in the old country who might chance to read it. And this blog is the one I've used for more personal posts - the deeper things.

Where to start? It's Sunday morning in misty, rainy, beautiful Wellington. I spent a lot of time yesterday exploring websites related to churches in the city and found several that looked interesting - communities that claimed openeness and inclusivity and acceptance as part of their credo. I picked out the one that has fascinated me since we arrived here - our first hotel was directly opposite it and it's a gorgeous old church with a tall spire and stained glass windows.

But why could I possibly be wanting to go to church again, after all these months and years of agonizing and grieving and turmoil over issues of faith and belief and God? Looking back on my life, I recognize the psychological pattern - when I reach an emotional place where I'm feeling very isolated and alone, where I'm struggling with anxiety and depression, where I'm yearning to be accepted, to belong, to be part of a community again, I turn to religion or church - and by default, to God. Why? The reason is probably two-fold.

As a child, the community I knew best was the church community - so by default, when the need to belong somewhere comes up again, I'm emotionally drawn to 'church' as a concept. Secondly, although I call myself agnostic these days, I've always had a deep pull towards the mystical - to whatever lies beyond my ability to reason and think and dissect. To digress: if I ever found a community where the two (intellect and mysticism) could be mixed in a way that satisfied, I'd join in a heart beat!

However, this morning I woke up and thought about the service I'd semi-planned on attending - the 10am Sung Eucharist. I'm drawn by the idea of song and liturgy and ritual, but there is simply no way I can imagine actually taking communion with any degree of honesty any more. I could not eat bread and drink wine and offer prayers of thanks to God for 'saving' my soul by sending Jesus to die in my place, thus ensuring my place in Heaven one day. I don't believe any of that any more. I still cannot articulate any of my beliefs with any degree of certainty, so I remain a mystically-inclined agnostic for now.

So I didn't go to church today. I'd still like to visit St Peters, though. I'd like to sit in the quiet of the sanctuary and just be. Breathe. Wait. Listen. And see what happens. Who knows, I might yet touch 'God' somewhere along the way ...

One Giant Leap

2009-04-11T22:48:00.002+02:00

I did it - made the break, took the leap and flew half way round the world to start a new life!

Today, it is exactly 11 weeks since we arrived in New Zealand, landing at Wellington International airport on a Sunday morning at the end of January. Since then, we've moved three times, I started work at a new job, my girl started her new school and the good news is that so far, we are 95% thrilled to be here. It's beautiful, cultural, peaceful yet vibrant, friendly and very civilized.

The other 5% is interesting. I don't miss South Africa except in a generalized, slightly nostalgic kind of way - such as when I remember Scarborough beach, Kirstenbosch gardens, the squatter camps on the way to the airport, the hospital wards where I did my training years ago, the farm I grew up on .. that kind of thing. All the memories of times long ago and scenes unchanging ... I do miss our people: mum and dad, family get togethers, my book club and writers group friends - that warm sense of belonging that years spent together brings with it. My girl misses her best friends back home, but within days of arriving, she met a lovely British girl with the same zany sense of humor who also loves shopping and shoes and music and movies - and at school, she's part of a small group of new and good friends where she feels welcome and accepted. So life is good for her in that regard.

However, there are two things that have surprised me - and yet, neither one should have! The first is the comparative lack of emails/communcation from all the people I left behind. In the first few weeks, I spent a lot of time emailing and updating our new journey blog, yet comments were minimal and emails even fewer. My two brothers, being family, are the worst offenders. So far, I've had NO emails from the one, and only two one-line replies to a direct question from the other. Hmmmf.

Back in Fish Hoek, it took years and years of effort and taking the initiative before I felt part of a small group of like-minded folks. We were all church folk to start with and coming in as a forty-something single mom meant I didn't fit the mould - I couldn't be invited to dinner because who would the husband talk to? I worked fulltime mostly, so I didn't get to hang out with other mums at extramural and sports events. Added to that, I'm an intelligent introvert who doesn't relate easily to the somewhat superficial chit-chat of parties and pubs and so on - well, it took a while before I felt I belonged. Those friends I made were important to me, but I didn't see them daily or even weekly. So why was I surprised to not get emails back from all of them? Maintaining long-distance friendship requires energy and time, and even back in Fish Hoek, both these commodities was in short supply.

The other thing that surprises me is that I'm starting to feel a yearning to be in a place of worship again. I don't want to go to a church service full of happy clappy songs and fiery sermons about redemption and sin and atonement and so on. But deep inside me there is a yearning to be in a place where there is a sense of presence, a sense of the sacred; a place where I can be silent and still and go deep inside myself to just be quiet and listen and feel ... there is a definite longing for the God I used to love.

If I think about it, I shouldn't be surprised by this either, especially given that this is Easter. I grew up with this God. He is woven into the tapestry of my past. His values, his judgements and his hopes for me permeated every aspect of my life for well over thirty years. I'm still stirred by music like Handel's Messiah, by a few (very few) contemporary christian songs and by the writings of modern christians like Henri Nouwen and Kathleen Norris. My head tells me one thing, but my heart instinctively yearns for the old, safe, emotionally-comforting God I used to know. The good thing is that I'm getting to the place where there is room inside my agnosticism for growth of all kinds. :-)

We'll see. It's a new world, a new life and a new me ... I've even been on a real date since arriving in Welly, with a very decent and likeable man. I'm not ready for romance yet, not by a long chalk, but life is full of possibilities right now, and that's a good place to be!

Down time ...

2008-12-28T17:43:00.005+01:00

This weekend, I had the amazing blessing of getting away from it all for two days .... and here are the pix!

I stayed at this cute little beach cottage ....

... with a pool out back ...

A panoramic view of Scarborough beach late Saturday afternoon ...

I walked on the beach a lot ...

... even at 5.30 AM ...when it was completely deserted ...

Global Financial Crisis Getting Worse

2008-09-16T19:10:00.003+02:00

Back in May, I posted about Signs of the Times. I got some emails back then from people who thought I was being a bit over-reactive and prophet-of-doomish. But seriously, folks, I think if anything, I was understating the case. It's bad - and it's getting worse. And I'm ONLY talking about the economic situation now, nothing more than that.

Reading and listening to BBC news this evening, I learned more about the after effects of the collapse of Lehman Brothers Bank in the US, and how it's affecting banks, businesses and the man in the street world wide. And it really seems as if we are heading into a massive global economic crisis - a global recession according to the boffins. I'm not a financial whizz, by any stretch of imagination, but the facts are starting to speak for themselves.

At times like this, I really wish I understood how economics and global financial matters better, but up to now, as long as I've been able to pay all my bills and keep food on the table here at home, I've felt OK. What this latest crisis is going to mean for me (and you) personally, remains to be seen.

Elleann

Mamma Mia

2008-09-16T18:39:00.003+02:00

Today, my 16-year-old daughter and I went to see the glorious and joy-filled Mamma Mia, in which Meryl Streep just blew me away with her funny, sad and altogether amazing singing. As a die hard ABBA fan, I was sold before I even bought the tickets, but you never know ... non-ABBA people singing ABBA songs? But it was sheer delight, from start to finish - a celebration of the strength and joy of being a woman.

But the bit that I didn't see coming really hit me hard. Meryl Streep is helping her daughter get dressed for the wedding ... and she sings to her. This song completely destroyed me .. I wept like a baby. Here was this go-it-alone single mom loving her little girl and saying goodbye to her. She was me, in every line:

Slipping Through My Fingers.

Schoolbag in hand, she leaves home in the early morning
Waving goodbye with an absent-minded smile
I watch her go with a surge of that well-known sadness
And I have to sit down for a while
The feeling that I'm losing her forever
And without really entering her world
I'm glad whenever I can share her laughter
That funny little girl

Slipping through my fingers all the time
I try to capture every minute
The feeling in it
Slipping through my fingers all the time
Do I really see what's in her mind
Each time I think I'm close to knowing
She keeps on growing
Slipping through my fingers all the time

Sleep in our eyes, her and me at the breakfast table
Barely awake, I let precious time go by
Then when shes gone there's that odd melancholy feeling
And a sense of guilt I can't deny
What happened to the wonderful adventures
The places I had planned for us to go
(slipping through my fingers all the time)
Well, some of that we did but most we didn't
And why I just don't know

Slipping through my fingers all the time
I try to capture every minute
The feeling in it
Slipping through my fingers all the time
Do I really see what's in her mind
Each time I think I'm close to knowing
She keeps on growing
Slipping through my fingers all the time

Sometimes I wish that I could freeze the picture
And save it from the funny tricks of time
Slipping through my fingers...

Slipping through my fingers all the time

Schoolbag in hand she leaves home in the early morning
Waving goodbye with an absent-minded smile...

Idols For Writers

2008-09-16T14:07:00.003+02:00

Ever heard of Idols For Writers? Me neither. But click on the banner above and you'll find it - a weekly writing competition based on the American Idol premise. I'm entering, as are a few writing buddies. How about you? All you need to qualify as an entrant is an active Live Journal or another creative journal with a lot of entries, and a willingness to write to a prompt on a weekly basis. If you don't have the time for that, you can join the community simply as an observer or as a random writer. That means you'll be able to read and vote for the various entries, which will be posted weekly on a Friday.

Join the community now, please! Season Two starts this coming Friday 19th September and the community will be closed at that point. If you can pick my entries out from all the rest of the anonymously posted entries, and if you like my writing well enough, it would be great if you can cast a vote for me!

Once voting is done, I'll be posting some of my entries to my writing journal, which you can find HERE.

Deep Impact

2008-08-19T18:22:00.002+02:00

One of my favorite sci-fi/doomsday movies is Deep Impact, a story about a giant asteroid on a collision course with the earth and the efforts of mankind to save itself, or to save at least a very large handful of scientists, brains, farmers etc.

Anyway, I've recently started getting a daily quote from Delancey Place dot com. Extracts from relevant and interesting non-fiction books and articles and lectures etc. Today's was about asteroids and how often we narrowly miss being smashed to pieces by a stray chunk of cosmic rock.

"As Steve Ostro of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory has put it, 'Suppose that there was a button you could push and you could light up all the Earth-crossing asteroids larger than about ten meters, there would be over 100 million of these objects in the sky.' In short, you would not see a couple of thousand distant twinkling stars, but millions upon millions of nearer, randomly moving objects--'all of which are capable of colliding with the Earth and all of which are moving on slightly different courses through the sky at different rates. It would be deeply unnerving.' Well, be unnerved because it is there. We just can't see it.

"Altogether it is thought--though it is only really a guess, based on cratering rates on the Moon--that some two thousand asteroids big enough to imperil civilized existence regularly cross our orbit. But even a small asteroid--the size of a house, say--could destroy a city. The number of relative tiddlers in Earth-crossing orbits is almost certainly in the hundreds of thousands and possibly in the millions, and they are nearly impossible to track.

"The first one [crossing near the Earth] wasn't spotted until 1991, and that was after it had already gone by. Named 1991 BA, it was noticed as it sailed past us at a distance of 106,000 miles--in cosmic terms the equivalent of a bullet passing through one's sleeve without touching the arm. Two years later, another, somewhat larger asteroid missed us by just 90,000 miles. ... It, too, was not seen until it had passed and would have arrived without warning. According to Timothy Ferris, writing in the New Yorker, such near misses probably happen two or three times a week and go unnoticed.

"An object a hundred yards across couldn't be picked up by any Earth-based telescope until it was within just a few days of us, and that is only if a telescope happened to be trained on it, which is unlikely because even now the number of people searching for such objects is modest. The arresting analogy that is always made is that the number of people in the world who are actively searching for asteroids is fewer than the staff of a typical McDonald's restaurant. (It is actually somewhat higher now. But not much.)"

Why Bother?

2008-08-19T09:44:00.003+02:00

Changing course from applying to emigrate to the US to applying to emigrate to New Zealand meant a whole new round of paperwork. So I got started in mid-June.

On the 21st June, I sent off requests to the SA Nursing Council for verification of credentials and transcripts of training (supposed to take 4 - 6 weeks) and requests for police clearances (supposed to take 28 working days). Delay Number One: the police clearance was returned 10 days ago - but they only sent ONE instead of THREE! Delay Number Two: I just called the Nursing Council and they told me: "Yes, we received your money (R1000.00) on the 23rd of June, but we haven't started doing it yet. We are still busy with requests from May!!! Call again in two weeks time and maybe we'll be a bit further along ... "

So all my sweating to get my package of documents off last week - via courier instead of post and at a considerable price - was a bit of a waste of time. Not a total waste, as at least it meant they got there safely and did not get lost in the mail, but still. Why do I bother to do my part as best I can when the bureaucrats in the system just drag their heels and lose your stuff and couldn't care less?

Makes me sick. There are a lot of people who scorn those of us who prefer to leave this country instead of staying and trying to make a difference, but tell me how exactly one is supposed to 'change' a service mentality like this?

This is Africa. Enough said.

Militant Extremists ...

2008-08-18T20:57:00.003+02:00

Who do you think is being described in the following excerpt?

"The rebels were sustained by the traditional faith of the common people, a religion of radical messages spread by itinerant preachers - messages about the wickedness of the 'sons of darkness', about the breaking of the 'covenant' between God and his people and about an imminent apocalyptic settling of accounts in which the 'sons of righteousness' would rise up against the rich, cleanse the land of oppressors and restore to the people the fruits of their labor."

Sounds to me like something a modern-day commentator might say about a radical militant terrorist group, like Al Queda or some other radical Islamist group opposed to the wicked West .... but it's not. It's from an article entitled "Hadrian and the Limits of Empire," written by Neil Faulkner and published in History Today (Aug 2008) and the rebels in question are first century Jews of Palestine and the diaspora, who had risen up against Roman tax collectors, Greek landlords and fellow Jews perceived as traitors.

Interesting ... ;-)

Then and Now

2008-08-14T19:15:00.002+02:00

In the year I turned 40, I rediscovered myself as a writer.

I'm not going to detail here the strange, mystical, spiritual experience that preceded it, but suffice it to say that one long, dreary Sunday afternoon, while my kids were away visiting their dad, I sat down at the computer and decided to try writing something. Following the adage 'write what you know', I produced a couple of pages of story about an overweight, single mom trying to make ends meet, trying not to feel like a loser, agonizing about finding love again ... in general, all the issues that were plaguing me at the time. (I think I still have it buried in a file somewhere...) It was fun! Words flowed, in an odd kind of way, and I felt good about my ability to create.

I carried on, writing scenes, descriptions, chapters, events - nothing cohesive and certainly nothing publishable. And I enjoyed it hugely! I started a little writer's group - a few friends who met up once a month and read their ramblings to each other. Then, through the internet, I got connected to a Christian writers' group and in 2002, was given the opportunity to attend a Christian Writer's Conference in the USA - all expenses paid. What a gift! Part of attending a conference, however, is that you are expected to bring along a sample of your writing and to receive critical feedback on it from real, live editors or agents or published authors. So I took my collection of scenes and chapters and pulled them together into a kind of a story. Wrote up a synopsis, polished the first chapter and printed it all out. Took it to the conference and got raves from the two editors I submitted it to.

Now, if memory serves, the writing wasn't all that good. The story was about a man who lives for twenty years under an assumed name, hiding his real identity from his first and second wives and his sons. Then one day, something overturns his world, his little daughter's life is in danger and he goes on the run, trying to prevent his carefully-fabricated world from collapsing. The story was heavily imbued with religious elements (befitting a Christian story) and had a redemeptive theme.

Since then I've written a lot more, mainly fiction in the form of a few short stories and a few more attempts at a novel. My writing has been heavily influenced by whatever is going on in my 'inner life' at the time - and for the greater part of the last few years, that has had to do with my personal spiritual journey / odyssey / whatever you want to call it. And interestingly, a recurrent theme has been to do with hidden identity - with things looking like one thing on the surface, but underneath, there is something completely unexpected going on. Characters are never quite who they seem to be, but they all manage to fool everyone around them (and themselves!) until suddenly, for some reason or other, the system breaks down and the old masks no longer serve ... then the real journey of self-discovery and redemption begins!

Now I have turned 50 and once again, life is imitating art to a degree. Not only is a new emigration plan underway, but I think my writing life is getting a revamp. I seem to have lost all interest (for now) in building a 'world' and in developing characters. I am still trying to make sense of the spiritual. My thinking has undergone a 180 degree change in the last two years and after being a Christian for well over 30 years, the most honest thing I can call myself now is 'agnostic'. And that upheaval is the thing I most want to get to write about.

Not as fiction, though. Maybe as literary or narrative non-fiction. We'll see. I hope it will still be fun, though!!

Brilliant Bloggings

2008-08-02T21:59:00.003+02:00

Out of the blue, I got this ultra cool award, from Kelly It was totally unexpected and I am quite sure mostly undeserved, seeing as I hardly ever update here... but I'm very grateful and VERY happy to have it! Thank, honey!! :-)))

Now, what I am supposed to do is this:

1) Put the logo on my blog. DONE!
2) Add a link to the person who awarded me. DONE!
3) Nominate 7 other blogs. UMmmm...
4) Add links to those blogs on mine. More Ummm ....
5) Leave a message for my nominees on their blogs. Well.....

Thing is, I don't hang out and chat on all that many blogs ... since I started working fulltime again back in April, all the stuff I used to do has kind of fallen away and a great deal of RL has taken over. I miss my cyberlife, especially all the long, long chatty emails I used to exchange with my bestest cyberbuds ... so, I'm not too sure who to nominate seeing as Kelly already has one of these awards thingies. I think what I'll do is just hang on to it, until I find a blog that makes me go "Yeah!"

Till then!!

Celebrate!!!

2008-07-14T11:00:00.011+02:00

KLEINMOND in JULY, 2008

The Girls' Weekend in Kleinmond, to celebrate my 50th, was an outstanding, rip-roaring success!

From champagne breakfast on the deck ....

we went on to enjoy walks along the cliff path ...

... hilarious and well-lubricated games of 30 Seconds ...

...watching for whales - we saw a whole pod frolicking in the bay! ...

Kit, Jenni, Rene, Lorr, me, Michelle

..and in between, there was lots of late-night talking, eating, drinking, laughing, hugging, doing hair, sharing stories, taking pictures, watching movies, and much deepening of friendships ...

Michelle

Rene

Kit

Me

Carol

Lorr

Jenni

until at last all that was left was to say goodbye .....

From left to right: Jenni, me, Rene, Lorr, Michelle, Kit and Carol.

The weather was awesomely beautiful, the whole time we were there. Clear cool days, and crispy nights just right for a roaring fire. We feasted well, drinking far too much red wine and whiskey and cream liquers, indulging in far too many chocolates, nuts, fudge and roasted marshmallows, tucking into delicious pasta dishes and salads ....

During the day, we took long walks in the cold wind along a winding, craggy cliff path that led to a sheltered lagoon, then came home to tea and whiskey and brownies and whale-watching from the front window. Saw a whole pod of whales breaching and blowing and rolling over .. it was just awesome! In the evenings, we played 30 Seconds, which was the most fun, and watched a chick flick (27 Dresses) during which a lot of us fell asleep, lol! And all the time, there was this amazing dynamic going on as people connected and talked and shared from the heart. On Sunday morning, we all ended up bundled up in one of the bedrooms drinking tea and eating rusks and having the deepest conversation imaginable and the openness was just amazing.

What a privilege! What a pleasure! What an amazing way to celebrate the beginning of the second half of my life on earth!! :-)))

It's finally here ... 50 at last.

2008-07-06T15:01:00.004+02:00

A friend loaned me a book called "i'm too young to be this damn old". From it a few gems in honor of the day!

I must be getting old. People are beginning to tell me I look so young! (L M Montgomery)

Forty is the old age of youth - but FIFTY is the youth of old age! (French proverb)

Don't think of it as 'wrinkles'. Think of it as 'relaxed fit skin'.

The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and you are not decrepit enough to turn them down. (TS Elliot)

Man fools himself. He prays for a long life and he fears old age. (Chinese proverb)

It is never too late - in fiction or in life - to revise! (Nancy Thayer)

It is hard to feel 'middle-aged' because how can you know how long you are going to live? (Mignon McLaughlin)

'It is quite useless to discuss questions of age with old people, they have such peculiar ideas on the subject. "Not really old at all, only seventy" you hear them saying! (Nancy Mitford)

And my favorite one so far: At fifty, the mad woman in the attic breaks free, stomps down the stairs and sets fire to the house. She won't be imprisoned any more! (Erica Jong)

Soooo ... without any further ado: Happy 50th Birthday to ME!

Dream On ...

2008-06-13T11:38:00.002+02:00

I'm a firm believer in dreams - not as a means of foretelling the future, but as a way of helping me understand what's going on inside my head - how I'm feeling about the stuff in my life.

Last night I dreamed that my foot was injured, blood pouring out all over the place. As I hopped about trying to get help to staunch it (and the best help I got was someone handing me what I thought was a strong bandage, but turned out to be a piece of thin toilet paper!), I found myself limping because the knee of the other leg had developed a huge, very painful bump which grew, as I watched. I knew it was about to burst and bleed too, so I was shouting for ice and pressure bandages and help ...

Then - of course - I woke up.

Here's what my favorite Dream Dictionary site has to say:

Feet

To see your own feet in your dream, symbolizes your foundation, stability and sense of understanding. It signifies your need to be more practical and sensible. Keep both feet on the ground. Alternatively, it represents mobility, independence and freedom. Perhaps you have taken a step in the right direction and are contemplating your goals or your next step. The sole of the foot may be a pun of being or feeling like the only support of some person/situation.

Foot

To dream that you injured or hurt your foot, signifies a lack of progress, freedom, and independence. Alternatively, the dream may suggests that you have taken a step in the wrong direction. In particular, to dream that your foot gets cut by glass, then it indicates passivity. You are hesitant or reluctant in taking the first step toward a goal or decision.

Knee

To dream of your knees, symbolizes a level of support your may be receiving. It also indicates that you are feeling very emotional. Feelings of inadequacy and issues of power/control also come into play. You may have more than you can handle.

Blood

To see blood in your dream, represents life, love, and passion as well as disappointments. If you see the word "blood" written in your dream, then it may refer to some situation in your life that is permanent and cannot be changed.

To dream that you are bleeding or losing blood, signifies that you are suffering from exhaustion or that you are feeling emotionally drained.

In my Real Life, I am indeed facing a very large decision which will have huge consequences for me and mine, and I am really not at all sure yet what the best thing to do is. (In the old days, I would have said 'the Right Thing', not the Best Thing! Progress indeed!) And yes, I am feeling unsupported in this decision-making process so as a result, I am feeling emotionally exhausted. The dreams I have won't give me the answers I need, but they do help me realize that I need to find support within this process (hard for me to do as I'm frickin' independent-minded!) and I need to make sure I don't get stressed out over it either...

The unconscious mind is a wonderful thing!

Oh, the relief!!!!

2008-05-31T13:24:00.005+02:00

If you read about the last time, you will understand the title of this post.

In the end, it took us eighteen months, probably around R2000.00 in instructor and test fees, four attempts and more stress than you can imagine. But finally, today, my son beat the giant that is the K53 test system and now holds an official South African driver's license.

Signs of the Times

2008-05-30T19:42:00.002+02:00

One of my favourite genres for both books and movie is the end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it scenario. Deep Impact, The Day After (and The Day After Tomorrow), I Am Legend, The Day of the Triffids, and a hundred and one other sci-fi novels about the end of civilisation and 'what happens afterwards'.

But what would it be like if one of those scenarios were to play out in my life time? Even maybe within the next few years, maybe? When we look at what's going on in the world today, it can get a little scary. It can get a LOT scary, in fact. So what exactly is going on, then?

Population explosion - we're almost at 6,9 billion now.
Sky-rocketing food prices leading to people dying of starvation.
Sky-rocketing fuel prices leading to all kinds of knock-on effects.
Global warming leading to ....
Environmental damage that might be irreparable - deforestation, ozone layer holes etc.
Increasing amount and size of natural disasters - Katrina, the 2006 tsunami, the Burmese cyclone, the Chinese earthquake ....
AIDS

Where will it end?

Which Swinging Sixties Chick Are You?

2008-05-30T13:27:00.002+02:00

You are Marianne Faithfull...

Congratulations! You are my heroine! A singer, actress, rock star girl-friend and all round beautiful person, you are also a poster girl for 60's excess. Due to your blond hair, big eyes and innocent appearance, you inspire chivalry in people- they want to take care you. In reality, however, you are strong and independent- you do not want to be controlled. You are ethereal and intense and people find it hard to know the "real" you. You are experimental and willing to try anything once. You are adventourous and people are drawn to your beauty and magical quality.

You like to be surrounded by beautiful things... clothes, literature, music, people and have romantic notions about drugs and decandent living. Sex, drugs and rock 'n roll, you started using pot and sleeping with girls at age 17, by 22 you had slept with 3 Rolling Stones, countless rock stars and were living on a wall, shooting up heroin. Times have been tough but you have survived, you have overcome many addictions and are still recording today. You have a strong soul.

Described as having the face of an angel and the best body in rock music, along with Keith Richards, you are something of a minor medical miracle!

Us and Them

2008-05-27T15:40:00.011+02:00

In the days following the xenophobic outbreaks, the people of South Africa have opened the hearts and homes to those affected by the violence.

Refugee camps have been set up in at least five sites in the Western Cape alone, including one less than ten minutes drive from my home. A friend of mine has been volunteering there since the weekend, making food and distributing donated goods to more than 1500 people (a conservative estimate). Churches, community organizations and NGOs have all thrown themselves into the relief effort ... but there is NO official presence beyond a police patrol. No one is organizing anything - and we have the entire SA Navy just a few kms down the coast ...

And just guess where our President is? After a 'rare televised appearance' on Sunday evening in which he lambasted the 'shameful acts' - two weeks after the violence broke out, he has now flown off to Japan!!! He's gone to a conference called - wait for it - Towards a Vibrant Africa: A Continent of Hope and Opportunity. Unbelievable ... he can fly halfway round the world but he couldn't be bothered to take a trip to the townships. If this had happened in Mandela's day (which is doubtful) he would have been in the townships the very next day, talking to the people. He would have been on television soon after that, addressing the nation.

Do we really have to put up with Mbeki's non-leadership for another year?

Blog here has loads of info on the community reaction to the crisis, and see this amazing Slideshow too, from News 24.

From Shame through Helplessness ... to Fear

2008-05-23T22:16:00.006+02:00

Today it feels like South Africa is teetering on the edge of major disaster.

About ten days ago, the so-called "xenophobic violence" started up north in the township of Alexandra in Gauteng. Since then over 40 people have died, some brutally hacked or burned to death by rampaging mobs. Over 25,000 foreigners - men, women and children from Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Somalia, Malawi, Nigeria, Ghana etc - have been displaced, their shacks looted and burned, forcing them to seek refuge in police stations and other community centres. Zimbabwe and Malawi have instituted official repatriation programmes, aimed at bringing their people back home. It is estimated that of SA's 49 million people, maybe 4 - 5 million are foreign nationals, some here legally but the majority illegally.

When it was all happening far away, up in the townships outside Johannesburg, like many others I felt shocked and ashamed that 'our people' could behave in such a barbaric fashion but still it seemed distant from my everyday life. But today that changed. We woke up to find that the violence was right here, on our doorsteps in the Cape. The local papers told of attacks on Somalian and Zimbabweans in settlements in and around Cape Town - of looting and burning and of thousands of foreigners being transported out of the area by the police for their own protection, as crowds wielding pangas, knives, batons and homemade weapons took to the streets.

At work, colleagues who live in these areas had stories to tell:

A Mozambican who works with one staff member's husband was warned (not sure by whom) TWO DAYS ago to 'leave the area or suffer the consequences'.
Another staff member lives over the road from a Somalian woman. A taxi arrived at the her door in the middle of the night, bringing her all the stock from her small shop, which had just been burnt to the ground.
Tonight, as I was leaving work, the RN taking over from me was on the phone arranging to pay for two Zimbabwean friends of hers to be brought from their shack on the other side of the Peninsula to her house on this side, just to keep them safe.

At lunch time today, I walked through a busy mall and I looked at the faces around me. As a white South African, I am ashamed to say that I cannot tell the difference between any of the African cultures. We have 11 different official languages here and each group has their own society and culture. How then can I know who is from another country? And as I looked, I wondered who among those people was foreign and fearing for their safety, their lives? And I also wondered what I would do if I saw someone being attacked? Would I step up and say NO? Or would I keep quiet and skulk away? Where is the line between standing up for what you believe - and staying safe because I have a family who need me? What if the person being attacked was also a mom with a baby? What would I do?

Later on today, I mentioned these thoughts and found that I was not alone - many of us had had the same experience. And underneath all this lurks that other fear: we, the white people of South Africa, are also 'foreigners' in this land. The rallying cry of not that long ago was "Kill the Farmer, Kill the Boer!"

According to BBC news tonight, the situation is calming down a bit. But there are too many unanswered questions and too much anger ... and throughout this whole thing, our "President" - the same wimp who said of Zimbabwe: "Crisis? What crisis?" - has been hugely conspicuous by his absense and his silence. He has not visited the hard-hit areas, he has not spoken out, he has not offered apologies to those who have suffered at the hands of the citizens of his country.

It's not over yet.

Why do we need stories?

2008-05-22T12:23:00.003+02:00

What would life be like if we didn't have stories? That we need stories is evidenced by the shelves full of books in our libraries and bookstores and schools, and by the sold-out movie theatres that you'll find in every corner of every country of the world. We find stories everywhere - on the radio, in the lyrics of a song, in the words of the lady at the water cooler recounting her weekend away. But WHY do we need stories? I found a wonderful answer to this question here today, in an article by Jacqui Banaszynski. She writes:

I asked Pete (a journalist writing about forest services) last week to tell me why we need stories, and he sent me back a note which, he confessed, was wine-induced, and he said this:

“I need stories to know I’m not alone. That is reason enough. They tell me what we do and how we live and occasionally, if I’m lucky, they tell me why. There is a commonality to stories that makes us whole beings. Walt Whitman knew that when he wrote ‘Leaves of Grass’:

‘I celebrate myself,
And what I assume, you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.’”

There's more to it than that, I'm sure, but it's a pretty good starting point.

Grovel, grovel, grovel ...

2008-05-22T10:39:00.003+02:00

Last night, I totally put my foot in it with my darlin' daughter.

A couple of weeks ago, she told me that she and her friend Lana* would be going to the library after school and Lana would be giving her some tutoring in Life Science. (Lana is a very bright gal!) So last night my gal says to me that today, after school, her friend Jo* (another bright girl) would be coming home with her to work on Physical Science. I was a leetle bitty distracted at the time (watching something on TV) and so I say: 'That's so cool, darling. I'm glad you've got such great friends to tutor you in all this stuff.'

A deafening silence ensues, loud enough to make me realize something is badly wrong. I glance over at her and see her staring at me in that teenagerish fashion - rolling her eyes without actually moving them - so I say: "What? What?"

"Actually, mom," she says, "I'm going to be tutoring her."

Luckily for me, my gal is a wonderful person and accepted my groveling very graciously.

** not their real names

A Nation's Shame

2008-05-20T22:09:00.006+02:00

Today, I am ashamed to be a South African. The following story filled the front pages of all the local papers on Monday, and was on international news last night:

Flames of Hate
Residents laugh as foreigner burns in his own blankets

Picture by Halden Krog

As we made our way through the Ramaphosa squatter camp in Reiger Park on Gauteng’s East Rand, a woman’s words made us freeze in horror. “They are burning people down there,” she said.

I ran to the nearest police officer and said: “The locals say they’re burning a person at the other intersection.”

Officers leapt into a Casspir and a Nyala, and drove through the debris and barricades in the road.

I ran after them, with other photographers following.

Two hundred metres down the road we found the first man. He had been severely beaten and was semi- conscious. Police thought he was dead, but later realised he wasn’t.

About 25m from him a man was on his knees. There was a mattress covering him, and it was on fire.

He, too, was alight.

Police threw the mattress off him and kicked sand onto him to put out the flames. Another officer ran over with a fire extinguisher, pointed it at him and extinguished the flames. Other officers radioed for medical help.

The man was alive, but barely. He groaned, but he could not speak.

It was all over in 20 seconds.

There was a concrete pillar lying near him, splattered with blood. We can only imagine what was done to him before he was set alight.

The police stayed with him until the paramedics arrived, doing what they could . But residents gathered at the scene were laughing.

Kim Ludbrook, a photographer, admonished them, and we reminded them this was human being and that what had happened was barbaric.

Still they laughed.

The burn victim, whose name has not been released, died last night in hospital.

Original story and more links here.

I can't believe the level of hate that is on display here right now. These people are our neighbours, who have fled their own countries, often as refugees, to try and build a better life here. They often end up living in shacks in squatter communities, scraping a living by selling fruit and junk items on street corners, trying to survive and raise their children in a country where there is still some hope for some kind of future. And now this - so far 22 have died simply for the 'crime' of not being South Africans.

If Mandela were dead, he would be spinning in his grave at what his successors have done with his bright, shining dream for this country. Time and again, our so-called democratic government has failed its own people and now it has failed the refugees from Zimbabwe, Mozambique and other African nations in turmoil, who fled here, seeking shelter and peace within our borders, and how found only more hate. And now, for some, death at the hands of an angry mob ...

I have no words, only deep shame and despair.

Quick Plug

2008-05-17T11:51:00.006+02:00

This is probably my favorite online word game site.

The site was founded a year ago with the Original Game where players were given a two-part phrase describing both a person and something else. For example, a post may be 'He was like Stalinism: of Russian descent' or 'She was like a walled city: unnecessarily defensive.'

The player's goal is try to think of a more clever second part. For example, if the topic was 'She was like conditioning shampoo: multi-tasking', you might respond with 'always making promises she couldn't keep' or 'often found in hotel bathrooms.'

The site now offers seven daily/weekly games that foster abstract and creative thinking. Games are of the challenge and response type - given a clue, users come up with a creative response and then vote for the posts they think are really good - winners are announced when the next round starts.

It's a lot of fun for people who love word play and quite competitive too ... at present, I'm running second only to the legendary Beau - yeah, go me! LOL! There is also the opportunity to submit your own clever word game for inclusion ... mine is called Fictionary!

See you there?

Thoughts on Work, Writing and Life

2008-05-17T10:41:00.004+02:00

Way back at the end of 1998, I left bedside nursing for a managerial post and in 2001, I moved on to an administrative post with a risk management company. When that job ended in early 2004, I decided that I no longer wanted to be in the nursing world. I'd originally trained as an RN at the suggestion of my father and for a number of reasons, had never pursued my love of reading, writing, literature, film etc, so when I found myself with a small retrenchment package and an even smaller pension payout, I took a chance and started freelancing as an editor/writer. I wanted a new identity for myself now that I was in my 40s and was determined to find it doing something I really loved - ie working with words!

In the beginning, I worked mainly on commercial projects - brochures, directories, newsletters etc. I was lucky to get quite a lot of work via a friend who is a successful graphic designer, but I struggled to find the oomph to go out and rustle up business for myself. We scraped by on my earnings and the various packages until early 2005, when economic necessity forced me to face up to the fact that I needed more money than I was earning as a freelancer if I wanted to survive.

I fought long and hard against the idea of doing relief RN shifts - going back to nursing felt just like 'failing' to me. In the end, with a great deal of unhappiness, I signed up with an agency and did some shifts in ICU and HiCare at a local hospital. I hated it - I felt stupid, incompetent, out of my depth and useless - but the money was more than useful! So 2005 to the end of 2007 saw me doing a combination of part time RN work and some freelance stuff. Some months were great and others were really tight, but we never starved and I never missed a mortgage payment either.

Towards the end of 2007, with my USA emigration process staggering along in fits and starts, I started reviewing options for 2008. This, the year in which I faced up to turning 50, had to be a year that meant something, in which I achieved something out of the ordinary to mark the event (and probably to prove to myself that I wasn't a failure / loser / ordinary etc ...) I decided to pursue a new qualification which I hoped would be useful to me in the US.

But none of that worked out - my house sale fell through meaning I had NO spare cash in the bank to fund a sabbatical year, plus there was a screw-up and I didn't get into the course I'd applied for. Major bummer all round. Think again time ... and only six months left before 50 showed up. In the end, it wasn't that hard a decision. I needed a regular income, I'd been doing relief work for the past 18 months with a LTC facility and they had an opening. I figured if nothing else, I could spend my free time writing properly again for a change, the way I used to do before I started freelancing. So by April the 1st, I started back in fulltime nursing.

Now here's the odd and very surprising thing: I'm happier and more at peace now than I have been in a very long time. It's not just the job, of course, although I have to say I am really, really happy there, for many different reasons (like the people, like the ambience, like the feeling that I'm good at what I do, like building relationships with my patients etc etc.) It's also living in a place that is much more 'me', it's coming to terms with the spiritual and philosophical issues that have caused me so much deep heartache over the last few years, and it's seeing my kids moving on and feeling secure and happy too.

So all that remains for this year is to get actually Write The Book. And get through July 6th in one piece ... anyone got any wonderful ideas on a unique way to celebrate a 50th?

Word Counters Union

2008-05-16T15:56:00.005+02:00

The Rules: (copied from Aestril)

is an informal group of bloggers who have all agreed to write a certain amount of words on our creative writing projects every day and report on what we’ve written each day on our blogs. And to keep everyone honest and motivated, we also check up on one another frequently.

The ground rules
(Invented by Liz, adapted and expanded by Ing, copied by Aestril, and then copied by me ... )

Write at least 100 words every day on a creative project. Doesn’t matter what genre. Most of us – if not all, at the moment – write fiction, but the Union also covers nonfiction, as long as it’s creative writing. And no “banking.” If you write 1000 words today, you don’t get to take ten days off. It’s a hundred words MINIMUM per day.
The day’s word count to be posted by midnight Pacific Time. Some of us are in the eastern U.S., some in the West…and at some point (even if temporarily) some of us might be right smack in the middle. You’re welcome to treat midnight, local time, as your own personal deadline. But as a (more or less) official deadline, this gives us the best flexibility for folks across the States.
No fudging — and new words only. The words don’t have to be polished, but they do have to exist in some form other than our minds (a rough draft is all you need). Just planning a great piece of dialog or a cool scene in your head doesn’t count. We’re all probably great at that already. Words written on blogs don’t count (we’re writing books here). Crits given to other people don’t count. Simply editing doesn’t count. New content added during revision does count, however.
Doesn’t matter if it sucks. That’s why first attempts are called rough drafts. Editing can come later. It’s getting it from the head and onto the page that’s the real test. Flogging yourself doesn’t count. The idea is to write books, not to gaze lovingly at our navels.
No excuses! Well, okay. Dying is a reasonable excuse. But being too busy isn’t. Sickness? Only if you wish you were dying.
If you can’t update daily, say so. Whether you’re going on vacation or just someplace without Internet access (say, prison? The Gobi Desert? A Ukrainian hospital? Southern Utah?) say so before you go…and have the right number of words completed by the time you come home. This is vital, as it will keep you on track and prevent floggings from fellow union members.
Keep each other honest — be honest — and support your fellow writers. As Word Counters’ Union members, we post our daily progress in a prominent place on our blogs, link to other union members’ blogs, and visit them to keep up on their progress. If you miss your daily goal, your fellow bloggers will know it, and will verbally flog you (either on their blogs or on yours); if someone in your WCU circle misses the writing goal, you can — indeed, are obligated to — flog that person. One last thing. The most important thing. Probably goes without saying because everyone who has joined so far is great, but I can’t resist saying it anyway: be supportive and kind to your fellow writers. When asked, give honest criticism…but always give encouragement too (speaking for myself, I really need it).

Who can join?

Anyone. That’s the simple answer…and the only one, really. You can ask to join an existing group (there’s only one right now) or invite some blogging friends to form a new one. Whatever you want. Just abide by the spirit of the ground rules, that’s all.

How it started (as written by Ing)

“Liz of Real Joined-Up Writing came up with the idea when she got tired of all the whining I did on my blog about how I wished I had the time and motivation to start actually writing the novel that I’ve been contemplating for years. She came up with the idea (partly inspired by the concept behind National Novel Writing Month) that we would all write at least 100 words a day, and anyone who didn’t accomplish that would get publicly flogged on the other members’ blogs (or berated viciously in comments left randomly on his/her most current post).”

Why I'm participating:

Because I need the daily accountability (and the occasional kick in the butt) to keep me headed towards my goal of completing a full novel by the end of 2008. AND I love making cool new writing friends!!

Tomorrow ...

2008-05-15T22:55:00.002+02:00

... will be blog-catching-up day. And word-count-completing day. And photo-blog-updating day. It will be. I promise. It'll also be the day I do the rounds to properly visit the blogs of all my new Word Count buddies ... looking forward to getting to know you!

Right now, though, I'm wrestling with jaw-cracking yawns and slitty eyes, so I'm off to bed, to sleep, perchance to dream ....

G'night, all ...

Tagged - Eight is Enough!

2008-05-12T19:28:00.007+02:00

I got tagged by Kel to do the Eight is Enough meme ... so here goes with Eight Random Facts About Me:

1. I wish on stars. The kind of wish that starts: 'Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight, I wish I may, I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight...'

2. I love dictionaries, thesauruses, atlases, encyclopedias and books of facts about absolutely anything at all. The day I discovered Wikipedia was the day I knew I'd arrived in cyberheaven and I have since spent countless hours there, acquiring a vast amount of useless knowledge.

3. I don't wear any jewellery at all except a ring I inherited from my grandmother who died when I was 22.

4. I have had some serious star-crushes in my life. Can't remember the early ones too clearly (why do I keep thinking John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever? That can't be right ...) But as a fully-grown adult girl-person, the ones who've stolen my heart are Aragon (not Viggo), Josh Groban's voice when he sings Oceano, and of course, Heath Ledger, who 'had me at hello.' ;-)

5. My worst fault is that I procrastinate. Which is why I started this meme about two hours ago and it's still not finished!!

6. I really HATE FaceBook. In the same vein, I also hate parties which force you to stand around eating food you don't like and making inane social chit chat with people who actually interested in things like the color of your nail varnish.

7. I don't know whether this one makes me feel embarrassed or angry, lol. In my teens, I attended a very pentecostal church where the women were supposed to cover their heads during the 'time of worship'. So I wore something that looked like this:

8. I am both a slob and a perfectionist. I'll wear the same clothes for three days if I'm not going anywhere. But I hate leaving the house in a mess, so I make myself late by 'just quickly' wiping down kitchen counters and straightening things up before we leave.

Okay...now I'm supposed to 'tag' someone else. Let's go with: Julie and Eileen. These are the rules:

1. Each player starts with 8 random facts/habits about themselves.
2. People who are tagged, write a blog post about their own 8 random things, and post these rules.
3. At the end of your post you need to tag a couple others (the number is apparently up to the tagger) and include their names.
4. Don’t forget to leave them a comment and tell them they’ve been tagged, and to read your blog.

Writing Buddies

2008-05-08T11:20:00.005+02:00

I just got linked up (thanks to Kells) with an accountability group called Word Count Buddies.

Basically, you have to write at least 100 words per day or suffer a cyberflogging! With my personal goal of completing my new novel within the Big Five Oh year (ie by 31st Dec 2008), I need something to keep me focused on actually writing every day - and blog entries/emails/comments don't count!

So here we go. So far so good. They look like an interesting group of writers - thirteen in all. Hope that number will prove lucky for some, including me!

Redwood tree, CA 2004 - we all have to start somewhere ...

K-Fucking-53

2008-04-14T08:21:00.005+02:00

My poor son failed his driver's test for the third time last Friday. He is a good, careful, safe driver BUT in the test yard, before he even got out on the road to prove that, he rolled back 1 mm on his hill start.

Instant fail.

I am so angry about the fucking system (which like so many other shitty things about this crappy country) that I could spit (and I'm trying NOT to think about Mbeki and his "What crisis?" stance on Zimbabwe). This article, from NY Times late last year, tells it much better than I, in my present state of rage, ever could:

The Road to a South African Driver’s License

In South Africa, getting a license can be far harder than driving.

By MICHAEL WINES
Published: October 30, 2007

JOHANNESBURG, Oct. 29 — “You will never drive this way again in your life,” Cullen says.

Cullen, a laconic fellow with disheveled hair and a cigarette sagging from his lips, is maneuvering a clapped-out Toyota down a suburban Johannesburg street. He yanks his hand brake up at every stop. He lowers it only after he has hit the gas and the Toyota is straining forward like a leashed Labrador after a biscuit. Cullen swivels constantly in search of cars behind him, cars in his side mirrors, cars in every alley, cars at every intersection.

Occasionally, he watches the road ahead.

“I need a drink,” he says.

Cullen is a South African driving instructor. You would drink, too. His job is to teach people how to pass South Africa’s driver’s license examination, a trial of the country’s K53 method of defensive driving. Herein lies a problem, for the K53 method resembles normal driving about as much as Snoop Dogg resembles Perry Como.

But not the only problem. Securing a South African driver’s license is not as simple as passing the K53 test, which is not simple at all. It also requires that one apply for the license, a bureaucratic process so daunting that it set off riots this year. It necessitates eye examinations before applying for a license and before the road test — and all over again, should one fail. It often demands that one game the driving examiner, who may wish to flunk the hapless applicant to meet the day’s failure quota.

It is helpful to learn South Africa’s extensive and sometimes charming traffic code, which sometimes rates children between 6 and 13 as one-third of a passenger and includes a road sign that depicts a stick-figure man astride an ostrich.

If one does all this, one can proceed to take the K53, and flunk on the merits. For the K53 is just part of the Catch-22 that faces every aspiring motorist here: To drive legally, one very sensibly needs a license. Except that licenses often seem impossible to get.

All right, not impossible. They are nevertheless very difficult. In a two-year period that ended in July, the national transport ministry says, 1.5 million people applied for driver’s licenses. Fewer than 4 in 10 actually received them. Over all, the government says, South Africa has about 8.5 million motor vehicles and 7.8 million licensed drivers. The nation’s transport minister said in July that so few motorists get licenses because they do not study hard enough for their exams, and he could be right: the K53 is hardly a no-brainer.

Based on Britain’s national driving exam, the K53 effectively requires an applicant to imagine that he is driving a live claymore mine under assault by guerrillas in bumper cars. The hand brake must be engaged silently at all stops (ratchet-clicking is strictly forbidden), and all mirrors must be checked every seven seconds. Points are deducted for glancing at the gearshift, driving too slowly, failing to ensure that head- and taillights are securely attached, failing to check the play on the clutch pedal, failing to look beneath the car for leaks and several score other sins.

There are many ways to fail instantly, including permitting one’s automobile to roll backward, even an inch, while stopping or starting.

Road safety experts hail the K53 as a textbook lesson in defensive driving. True, some of the minutiae are “perhaps overkill,” said Gary Ronald, the spokesman for the South African Automobile Association. “But it does work.”

In practice, he acknowledged, it appears that very few people pass the K53 on the first try. South African drivers tend to throw caution not just to the winds but into a deep ravine, often with a derisive farewell blow of the horn. Red lights are frequently treated like a matador’s red cape, especially by drivers of so-called combis, minivans that move a vast share of the population to and fro each day.

Even though the K53 method has been used for a dozen years — or perhaps because so few drivers have obtained licenses — traffic accidents and deaths are rising fast, to 15,400 fatalities last year, up nearly 9 percent from 2005. The fatality rate per mile traveled, the best measure of road safety, is five times that in the United States, which is in turn higher than in most developed nations.

Another reason may be that the exam is stacked against some applicants. The $25 fee to schedule a driver’s exam is split between the national and local governments. Some localities, Mr. Ronald said, have become so fond of that easy money that they are notorious for flunking applicants, apparently in the expectation that they will pony up $25 more to reapply.

And many might, were it easy to reapply. It is not. License applicants are supposed to apply by telephone, which has proven less than successful. “I have attempted to call the call center — in quick succession — 271 times. Not joking,” one miserable soul wrote in November on the Internet site drivers.com. “I have gotten though to music and voice prompts 18 times. Each time this lasts for three minutes, before you are disconnected.”

Early this year the government installed a computer system to manage auto-related matters. The system promptly broke down. In the ensuing chaos, supplicants for driver’s licenses began to line up outside motor vehicle offices before sunrise, waiting hours to get a precious application form. In July the police rushed to one Johannesburg office after throngs of furious would-be drivers tried to break down the doors to apply for licenses.

“People seem to judge by the long queues that the system is not working,” a spokesman for the Transport Ministry said at the time. He added, soothingly, “It’s not true.”

To be sure, South Africans’ licensing misery is, in one odd way, a sign of progress. “A lot of the backlog is caused by the huge upsurge in the number of formerly disadvantaged people who can now afford to buy a car,” said Les Stephenson, the motoring editor of the Independent Online Web site. “Unfortunately, the traffic department just can’t keep up.”

Indeed. In one instance sure to warm the heart of any applicant, a heroic woman recently locked herself and her two children, ages 8 and 2, inside a Cape Town motor vehicle office after bureaucrats refused to hand over her new driver’s license on the grounds that they were closed — 15 minutes before the posted quitting time of 3 p.m.

Few drivers are so persistent. With genuine licenses so hard to obtain, a growing black market offers bootleg ones, usually obtained from corrupt motor vehicle officials, for $150 to $450. In the last two years, investigators found more than 42,000 fake licenses on the government’s own computer registry, and arrested a thousand people, including scores of bureaucrats, on charges of subverting the licensing process.

That total does not include undetected scams, which are legion, and fakes sold by forgers and thieves. Among those caught in the act is the speaker of the South African Parliament, Baleka Mbete-Kgositsile, nabbed in 1997, but not prosecuted, for procuring a phony license from a government testing center.

Ms. Mbete had a ready explanation. She was, she said, too busy to stand in line.

In Memorian

2008-04-04T13:01:00.002+02:00

In memory of Heath

4 April 1979 - 22 January 2008

The Book Thief

2008-03-31T10:43:00.003+02:00

Australian author Markus Zusak is my new hero and inspiration. I'm two-thirds the way through The Book Thief, which is, as he says: " ... just a small story really, about among other things: a girl, some words, an accordionist, some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist-fighter, and quite a lot of thievery. . . . "

This book captivates me on a multiplicity of levels. The use of words is simply outstanding - consider this from the opening paragraphs:

Where are my manners?

I could introduce myself properly, but it's not really necessary. You will know me well enough and soon enough, depending on a diverse range of variables. It suffices to say that at some point in time, I will be standing over you, as genially as possible. Your soul will be in my arms. A color will be perched on my shoulder. I will carry you gently away.

At that moment, you will be lying there (I rarely find people standing up). You will be caked in your own body. There might be a discovery; a scream will dribble down the air. The only sound I'll hear after that will be my own breathing, and the sound of the smell, of my footsteps.

The question is, what color will everything be at that moment when I come for you? What will the sky be saying?

These words are spoken by the book's narrator - Death. (Yeah, that Death!) Set during World War II in Germany, The Book Thief is the story of Liesel Meminger, a foster child living in extreme poverty in a small suburb outside Munich. Liesel steals books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement before he is marched off to Dachau.

This book works for me in sooo many ways. It touches on things like goodness and evil, words and literature, compassion and hatred, risk, faith, friendship, love, loss - and death. But even more than the actual story itself, as a wannabe writer, I am deeply inspired by the author, Markus Zusak.

In answer to the question of what inspired TBT:

It was a lot like finding a tap that's never been switched on before and turning it on... When I was growing up, my mum and dad told me stories about growing up in Nazi Germany - about a teenage boy who gave a starving Jewish man a piece of bread, of fiery skies and of people who didn't want to fly the Nazi flag. That world came rushing out of the tap. It was all at my feet, but then I had to organize it and turn it all into an imaginative piece of work. Fragments needed to be joined and I searched for the originality that would create not only a story but a style that was compelling for me to write.

In the end, The Book Thief took me three years to write. If nothing else, I know it’s a far different book from anything I’ve done before, which is what made it so challenging. I was also finally satisfied that there was a good sense of imagination in it. In three years, I must have failed over a thousand times, but each failure brought me closer to what I needed to write, and for that, I’m grateful.

Links to interviews: Here, here and here.

The Solution to South Africa's Electricity Crisis

2008-03-16T20:33:00.003+01:00

(Sent to me by a friend the other day .... too good not to share! )

My Book of the Moment

2008-03-16T16:21:00.003+01:00

Ideas: A History From Fire To Freud by Peter Watson

In my ongoing quest to make sense of life, I found this book at the library a few weeks back. It's a thick tome (1015 pages in paperback not including the index) but taken in small bites, it is very edible!

From The New Statesman review:

" ... a universal history of ideas seems an impossibly daunting project. Yet in Ideas: a history from fire to Freud, Watson gives us an astonishing overview of human intellectual development which covers everything from the emergence of language to the discovery of the unconscious, including the idea of the factory and the invention of America, the eclipse of the idea of the soul in 19th-century materialism and the continuing elusiveness of the self. In a book of such vast scope, a reader could easily get lost, but the narrative has a powerful momentum. Watson holds to a consistently naturalistic philosophy in which humanity is seen as an animal species developing in the material world. For him, human thought develops as much in response to changes in the natural environment - such as shifts in climate and the appearance of new diseases - as from any internal dynamism of its own. This overarching perspective informs and unifies the book, and the result is a masterpiece of historical writing."

It is a long and slow read, given the amount of information to be absorbed, but it is utterly stimulating and I am loving it. Read the full New Statesman review here.

Updates

2008-03-16T15:22:00.002+01:00

It's been a while, but I'm still in the land of the living - have been photoblogging regularly and watching a lot of DVDs, but have neglected this little bloglet! So time for a bit of catch up time! :)

In February, we moved house - see the pics here. We've been in residence for nearly three weeks now and I am happy to say that it was a really, really good move! My daughter can walk to school in 3 mins, the local library is a 10 min walk away, there is a small shopping centre over the road with a grocery store, fresh veggie market, video rental outlet, laundry, post office, second hand clothes stores, and a ton of other small shops. The flat itself is more like a small house and I have a study in which to write!

One of the benefits of having a son who now works part time in a DVD rental outlet is that he gets to take out two free movies at the end of each shift - and one evening, he brought home the first disc of Season One of 24 - and I got hooked! I'm just about to start watching Season Six, and what a ride it's been. There is so much I could say about the clever storytelling, the non-stop tension which leaves me exhausted, the amazing and incredible plot twists, the dialogue which reaches new lows at times, the wonderful snatches of humor, the alarmingly high body count and the adorable Chloe, who is far and away my favorite character now that (SPOILER!) Tony is dead. And then there's Jack. Who wouldn't want him on your side in a time of crisis? But you can't love Jack the way you can love Chloe and the late Tony!

So much for 24. :)

I'm going back to nursing full time from April, too. After all my carefully laid plans for this momentous year fell through, including my application to study Primary Health Care, I had to rethink everything again. Money became a serious issue, leading to the renting out of my old house and the move to this place, plus my resignation from all my part time jobs and signing on for a full time post with a full time salary. So that leaves me with only one major goal for this year (now that house, job and kids have been taken care of) and that is to actually write one full, complete novel and begin submitting it to agents and publishers. I have wonderful support in the form of two main people: my newest writing buddy Kells, who is encouragement personified and a cheerleader deluxe, and my oldest (as opposed to newest!) and very cherished writing buddy of many years standing, Pat in LA. Both these ladies are great, great writers in their own right - Pat is a leading light in a certain fanfiction community, and Kells has a debut novel that is currently being shopped around . You can still read it online here, if you're quick - once it's been sold, it will no doubt be taken down.

OK, more to follow soon.

There will never, ever be another 'Heath'.

2008-01-25T17:36:00.000+01:00

Three days on, the pain is still acute, the sorrow an ever-present ache. I've run out of words, but Heath's family and friends paid tribute to him in today's newspapers in Western Australia so I'd like to post their words here.

How Do We Begin To Describe The Sudden, Tragic Loss?

By Lisa Pendrill

HEATH Ledger's heartbroken family has tried to describe in words the devastating loss of their beloved son, brother and uncle.

Two columns of death notices in today's West Australian newspaper begin with "How do we describe our sudden and tragic loss? ... ''

The family paid tribute to "Heatho'', "Beef'' and "Roast'' - pet names for the actor who died suddenly in New York on Wednesday - saying "there will never, ever be another Heath''.

Elder sister Kate wrote: "I can hardly breathe when I try to write this . . . we were the ultimate in soul mates. I feel both my heart and life have been torn apart. I loved our special talks, our daily chats from where ever you were in the world.

"I especially loved all the precious time we spent together. We were so fortunate to have you as long as we did. You were so many things to so many people, but to me you were just my little brother.

"There will never, ever be another "Heath'' and I think that in itself is the greatest tragedy.

"I will continue to talk with you everyday and love you just as if you were here. You will never leave my thoughts "Roast'', ever.''

A tribute from all members of Heath's immediate family said: "How do we describe our sudden and tragic loss? ... You were the most amazing individual "old soul" in a young man's body.

"You so loved us, as we dearly loved you. As a close knit and very private family unit we have observed you so determined yet quietly travelling in your self-styled path in life, nothing would get in your way ... no mountain too tall, no river too wide.

"You dreamed your dreams and lived them with passion and intelligent commitment. We have been priviledged to accompany you on a ride through life that has simply been amazing and through it all, we have loved each other beyond imagination.

"Your true legacy lives on in beautiful little Matilda, who will always remain in the greatest of care. Our hearts are broken . . . Dad and Ines, Mum and Roger, Kate and Nathan, Rori and Scarlett, Ashleigh, Olivia, Elana and Nadia.

Ledger's father Kim added: "Heatho'', "Beef'', . . . my beautiful boy, so loving, so talented, so independent, so caring, so young . . . no more chess games mate . . . this is it, couldn't beat you anyway!

"My body aches for the sound of your voice, our chats, our laughs and our life and times together.

"Your truly varied artistic skills, insatiable desire to improve and eclectic abilities set you apart from any other person on the planet . . . it had only just started for you ... and for us to further enjoy. We were one, in soul and commitment. Just . . . Father and Son. I will love you forever, Dad.''

Heath's mother, Sally, wrote: "Our darling boy, special in so many ways to all of us. You knew you were so loved. You lived life with courage and daring and we are so grateful for the wonderful times we shared. We will be there for Matilda. Your loving Mamma, Rog and Ash."

Heath's brother-in-law Nathan said Heath dared to live his dreams. "My dearest brother-in-law, my loss, my life will never be the same. Your kind nature and generosity will be something I will never forget. You will live on in my memory forever. You achieved so much in such a short time. You dared to live your dreams and accomplish so much, mate. Your sister Kate and your nieces Rori and Scarlett will be in good hands. Goodbye my friend.''

Younger sister Olivia wrote: "Heath inspired so many young actors around the world to pursue their dreams. You're my idol, my hero, but most impoartantly, my loving big brother. I'll treasure every moment we spent together. I love you Heath, I miss you and pray every night you're safe.''

Stepmother Ines asked "How do we ever recover from such a tragic loss? You have left us all broken-hearted yet filled with such wonderful memories.

"Your generosity, love and kindess you showed to me, Elana and Nadia was beyond comprehension. You are the beautiful stepson I grew to love and respect and it was a privilege to have known you during the last seven years.

"You charismatic persona will be truly missed.''

Stepsisters Elana and Nadia added: "Heath, you were the older brother we always wanted. Such an amazing person who entered our lives, someone we looked up to and admired. We loved having you around and being a part of such a beautiful family. You will never be forgotten. We promise to look out for the ones you so loved. Our hearts go out to Matilda. We love you.''

Notices were also posted by grandparents Jackie and John, aunty, uncles and cousins Sue, Lester, Jarrad, Simon and Sascha, Mike, Di, Adam, Verity, Tim, Thea, Llew, Jess and James.

Other tributes were published on behalf of Heath's school, Guildford Grammar, the Perth Training Centre, The Cobra Club of WA, Actors Equity of WA, Arts Minister Sheila McHale, Sony Pictures, John Hughes and family and friends throughout Western Australia.

At last '08

2008-01-05T18:42:00.000+01:00

I haven't posted for the longest time. Since just before I finished (and won) NaNoWriMo, life had been fraught with one difficulty after another and I have been kinda reeling under the onslaught.

1. My Green Card application was denied as the proposed employer was deemed by the INS to be unable to support salary payments. What a nightmare the next three weeks were as I tried to save the situation. I was told it was possible to appeal and that if I had an approved employer, things might be saved - this turned out to be not true - the appeal could only be on the same basis as the initial application.

2. As the denial had nothing to do with me, a second application stood as good a chance of succeeding. So I ditched the old agent, found a new one after hours of internet research, lorryloads of emails and several crackly transatlantic phone calls, and received a viable new job offer just before Christmas - its' with a LTC facility in Greenwich, Connecticut. The offer is good, the company solid, the benefits and starting salary excellent. So now we start the I-140 application process all over again.....

3. Complicating things is a little thing called retrogression which basically means No Green Cards for anyone at all until the INS has cleared its backlog of cases. :(( Lobbyists are working to improve things and get much needed health care professionals back on the green card track but the chances are that nothing will change until after the US presidential elections in Nov '08.

4. The sale of my house collapsed just before Christmas. :(( Which means a complete rethink of all my plans for '08, most of which hinged on having a substantial amount of money in the bank generating interest with which to supplement our monthly income.

5. On the plus side: My darling son surpassed all expectations when he passed his school-leaving exams with a B aggregate and university exemption. I am so proud of him!!

6. Also on the plus side, I've started a new blog project for '08 - the aim is to post a picture a day every single day for a year, capturing small slices of everyday life for posterity. You can see it HERE.

And that's about it for now. No writing has been done since the end of NaNo .... but lots and lots of reading and DVD viewing to offset the stresses of life. So my creative well is slowly being refilled and that has to be a good thing!

Quick Update

2007-12-03T11:54:00.001+01:00

Finally, November is over and NaNoWriMo is done!! And I did it!

It was an awesome experience, and one which has turned my writing life around. On 3oth November at 9.15pm, I uploaded my doc for the last time and with 50,042 words, I 'won' NaNo - which after failing once before was a really, really good feeling!! If you're interested, my profile page (with a short excerpt from the WIP) can be FOUND HERE.

For those who, like me, are into stats, it was interesting to learn that globally, an amazing 101,404 authors registered with 15,329 succeeding, which is a mere 15.1%. South Africa had the biggest yet contingent of NaNoWriMo participants, with 92 authors registered. Of those, 27 completed, i.e. 29.3%. Go us!!

Well worth doing, and next November, I'll be in there again, BIK HOK TAM**

Woo hoo!
Elle

** Bum In Chair, Hands On Keyboard, Typing Away Madly!!

From Up There to Down Here ...

2007-11-27T07:15:00.000+01:00

Carol Lazar wrote this in the Star on Monday:
We are a proud democracy. We call ourselves the rainbow nation and we are the only country in the world that voluntarily changed from a tyrannical apartheid regime to a fully-fledged democracy where all our citizens, irrespective of race, creed or colour have full human rights.

With our ground-breaking Truth and Reconciliation Commission, established after the end of apartheid, we were hailed as champions of democracy, a flagship among nations, a beacon of light.

So what happened? How did we lose our credibility? And why has UN Watch, the very respected and credible non-governmental organisation based in Geneva, placed South Africa at the bottom of the human rights list?

To read the whole thing, go HERE
She concludes by saying:
I used to feel proud of being a South African.

But when my democratic, rainbow nation votes for those who practice human rights' abuses, I feel ashamed.

Will we again become the polecat of the world?

How A Country Goes Down While Everyone Stands By and Watches ...

2007-11-16T08:05:00.000+01:00

"Jacob Zuma is your next president - and get over it," says leading political analyst Dr Xolela Mangcu. Speaking at a Bureau for Economic Research conference entitled Key challenges facing the South African economy, Mangcu said Zuma was a strong candidate for next month's ANC's leadership election conference, even though many outsiders doubted his candidacy.

"This is Zuma's election to lose," said Mangcu, to the disbelief of several hundred delegates.

I used to just shake my head and laugh at the antics of politicians in this country - I'm NOT a political animal by any stretch of imagination. But now I am reduced to tears. Tears of rage and disbelief and deep helplessness.

How can there be any hope for a country when a leading political analyst tells us that we're going to have to accept this man as our future president and that all we can do is to 'get over it already'?? A man who was previously sacked as deputy president of the ANC, who has been charged with corruption (his former financial advisor and lifelong friend is now in prison following convictions for fraud and corruption), charged with rape (acquitted but the whole thing was very dodgy AND revealed that he thought he could avoid AIDS by showering well after sex).

The sad and scary thing is that he has the support of the people who think that his behaviour is just fine! He is currently front runner in a race in which the only other serious contender for the position of leader of the ANC, and therefore future president of SA, is the current president (who, if he won, would be having THIRD term in office).

I'm so angry and so frustrated. This whole country is rife with fraud and corruption - this morning's news was about new evidence re the Land Bank scandal, where employees have stolen over a billion rands worth of funds. Today, no less than FIVE board members have been arrested in this regard! The leader of the Scorpions (the leading crime-fighting division in SA) is on trial for irregularities. The police chief is being investigated for who knows what.

It's a total fucking mess. GREEN CARD, where are you???

Jesus

2007-10-28T08:57:00.000+01:00

This morning, as part of my getting-organized-for-NaNoWriMo (ie procrastination with a purpose), I came across something I wrote in February 2006 - ie about 18 months ago. It was part of an application to a Christian writing organization and I was required to answer the question 'Why are you a Christian?'

Briefly explain why you are a Christian.

I am a Christian simply because I love Jesus. Without Him, life has no rhyme or reason, no purpose or point. Even at my lowest ebb, those times when faith is nothing more than a daily choice to trust in a dimly and waveringly perceived God, I would still choose Him.

What's really interesting is that despite this whole deconversion experience, my intense attraction to and interest in the person of Jesus has never disappeared completely. It's still there. And that is particularly evidenced by the fact that the NaNo book I'm going to be working on is a re-write of a book I did in 2003/2004, a book my crit partners and I called my 'Josh' book.

Back in July 2003, I sat down one day and watched the remade version of Jesus Christ Superstar. It knocked me sideways ... and into a surge of creativity. I wrote and wrote and wrote for about three months and my desire at that point was to write a story about Jesus that would make him human and accessible and attractive to the reader in the same way that the movie had made him human and accessible and attractive to me. I took that completed story to a Christian Writer's conference in April 2004 and while some editors shook their heads (What? A Jesus who doubts his calling? A Jesus who drinks beer? And drives a truck? Hoo boy ....), there were a few who liked it very much indeed. One of the literary agents asked me to send him the full ms once I was back home ...

But on my return home, life intervened and I fell into a spiritual and emotional funk and I put that story away (all 120K words of it) and never followed through. And since then, my spiritual journey has taken me a long a difficult path. I've ranted and cried and been angry and been afraid and wrestled with despair and nihilism of the worst kind.

But now. Now I find in me that same attraction to Jesus that has always been there. My beliefs at present are undefined ... I'm holding onto the mystery, continuing to read and think and explore and engage in discussion .. but I'm also going to write again. I'm going to rewrite that story bringing to it all the things that have been a part of me over the last three years. I think it was Phillip Yancey who said we write not because we have all the answers, but because we have questions that won't go away. We write to try and find those answers.

It's terrifying, but in a good way!!! I'm excited!

November

2007-10-24T09:07:00.001+02:00

November is NaNoWriMo time - National Novel Writing Month.

Foolish dreamer that I am, I signed up again (!) so from now until the end of November, any and all blogging that happens will be on my other blog: Write On The Edge which is specifically writing-related.

If, as has happened before, I fail in my Nano efforts, I'll be back here much sooner. So wish me luck!

True Grit

2007-10-15T22:10:00.000+02:00

This weekend, I spent a night with my parents, who are now in their mid-70s and living in a retirement village about an hour from us. My kids had gone to visit their dad and I had a sudden yen to go hang out with the old folks back home :-) I also wanted to bring them up to date on my plans for next year and its much easier to talk big things through face-to-face rather than over the phone.

And it's funny - you think you know all there is to know about your parents and then suddenly, you learn something new. Sunday morning, mom and I were talking about the past, and how we as a family nearly emigrated to Australia in 1963, when I was five. I've always known the story, about how sailing was delayed so my dad had to take a temporary job. And about how we moved to a small village an hour outside of Cape Town while we waited for the three months to pass.

But what I hadn't known was that apparently my gran (his mum) was terribly, terribly unhappy about her only son going off to Oz. And my own mum was also terribly, terribly unhappy about moving to a foreign country with two small kids and a husband with a fondness for the bottle. They were all praying that the move wouldn't happen. So when sailing was delayed, and Dad had to take a temp job, granny and grandpa started driving an hour each way to visit us every Sunday. I'm guessing they all worked really hard to persuade my dad that emigration was a bad idea.

It worked. We never went. My dad worked for that same company (and that same shitty boss) until he took a medical retirement 14 years ago at 61.

The other thing is that in his 20s, my dad was an alcoholic. He always said that when he became a Christian, God set him free from drink. But listening to my mom talk last Sunday morning, I realized it wasn't quite as simple as that.

Those first years in that lousy job must have been difficult. I'm saying this because mom told me that in those days he drank a lot. Vodka in the morning, brandy at night. Looking back now, I wonder how much of that drinking resulted from the fact that his dream had been taken away from him - no moving to Australia, no chance to do whatever it was he might have dreamed of doing over there. Instead, he found himself counting beans for a large agricultural company, working for the boss from hell, in a country town far from anywhere, with a wife and two little girls to support. Maybe he gave up, gave in to the pressure to stay in SA, pressure applied very lovingly by his own mother, father and wife. And for a man who was used to finding solace in the bottle, well - is it any surprise that he started binge-drinking again?

He also had regular attacks of the so-called Monday Morning Flu. One day, in desperation, my mom called the doctor. He came in after evening surgery. Mom was putting us kids to bed and she pointed listlessly at the bedroom, saying 'He's in there...'. The doc knew them both well and he knew what was up. That night, he put the writing on the wall for my dad. Told him that if he kept on boozing, not only would he destroy his family but he'd also probably kill himself as his liver was taking severe strain.

And my dad heard him. He stopped drinking. Just like that. Then and there. Apparently, he had one more bender in Dec of that year, but after that nothing. Mom said those early weeks and months of sobriety were hell - he eschewed any form of help, refused AA, refused counselling, refused medication. And to this day, he doesn't touch alcohol.

Now that is pretty damn amazing, I think. But the point here is that he did it alone, by sheer will power and determination. At this point, 'God' had nothing to do with it, at least from his perspective. My mum had started going to church by then, but my dad, a 'back-slidden' Christian, wanted nothing to do with it. As the years went by, he slowly started a spiritual journey of his own - reading books (including The Christian Agnostic by L D Weatherhead) and listening to church on the radio in the dark - which culminated in his eventual return to faith, some time after the birth of my youngest brother in 1969.

Later on Sunday morning, mom came to me and hugged me. "I know I talked a lot about dad and our troubles this morning," she said. "But one thing you must know is that throughout it all, we both loved our kids above everything else. You were the ones who mattered."

That story changed my mental picture of my dad a bit, not that it was a bad one to start with. Quite the contrary, in fact. And it inspires me. I may look like my mom and I share her loony sense of humor, but generally I'm a lot more like my dad - logical, analytical, intellectual, etc. And then of course there are the not-so-good traits we share, but lets not go there now. And given that no family is perfect, there are, of course, 'Issues' on all sides, some of which I know I still have to deal with.

But still. I'm proud of him. I'm proud of his grit and determination. And I'm proud to be his daughter.

New Year, New Goal, New Me ...

2007-10-08T22:05:00.000+02:00

Following on from this post I did a ton of research and thinking about 2008 and how best to use the time we still have to wait before the emigration plans come to fruition. And the more I thought about all the options, and about the fact that next year brings with it the Dreaded 'Five-Oh' birthday, the more it seemed like a really good idea to throw caution to the wind and just go for it. Take some risks, change my life radically and see what happens!!

So, with the house sale continuing as planned, my son will be moving out to live with his dad for his first year out of school, and my daughter and I will be looking for a cost-effective rental for next year. And then - I'm enrolling in January for a post-graduate diploma course in Primary Health Care. Yep, going back to varsity at the age of 49.... woo hoo! Stellenbosch University offers an ITE course in PHC - its a combination of distance education and contact hours, as well as experiential learning hours.

Primary Health Care is (sort of) the equivalent of the US Nurse Practitioner - you learn to assess, diagnose, prescribe, treat and manage a wide range of acute and chronic health conditions. I've spent the last six months working in a pharmacy-based primary health care clinic and I learned that 1) I really love working with clients individually and sleuthing out what the problem really is - and so often its totally different to the thing that they ask for when they arrive. And 2) I really don't know enough to be sure that my assessment and 'diagnosis' are accurate. Oh, and 3) I love academics and assignments and projects and learning so taking a year out to focus on that will be just plain awesome, seeing as the last qualification I studied for was my diploma in psychiatric nursing, way back in '87! :-)

Also, my research shows that it may well be possible to do some follow on study from this course which will convert my original RN qualification into an MA. But we'll see about that. One of the best outcomes of this course, apart from the new skills, is that having this qualification will open all kinds of other employment doors for me once we get to the US. Many of my US friends have said that they far prefer seeing the NP to seeing the MD!

There are also a few other things on the cards for 2008: a weekend away with my best friend (also facing 50 soon) to learn how to paraglide! A major health and fitness revamp! Etc etc....

The road ahead is looking GOOD!

After all the grumbles ...

2007-10-01T23:43:00.000+02:00

So enough of the ranting and grumbling. Today I came across this joke and thought it really funny!!

A hunter walking through the jungle found a huge dead dinosaur with a pygmy standing beside it. Amazed, he asked: "Did you kill that?".
The pygmy said "Yes."
The hunter asked "How could a little fella like you kill a huge beast like that?"
Said the pygmy: "I killed it with my club."
The astonished hunter asked: "How big is your club?"
The pygmy replied: "There's about 90 of us."

:-)

Grrrrr.......

2007-09-30T20:22:00.001+02:00

Maybe its just me. Maybe I'm just in a really bad mood today.

I was browsing an O magazine and found a short article titled Why Am I Here? I read it and now I am so irritated that I wish I hadn't.

Your primary purpose on earth is to recognize your true nature as a spiritual, creative being. ..... When you recognize that you are a divine immortal being with the power to create and master many abilities, then trouble and despair subside and your human experience becomes joyful, calm and peaceful.

I'm sorry but even from inside my current disillusioned, agnostic, sceptical point of view, this reeks of New Age bullsh*t. The kind of thinking that seduces people into believing that simply by embracing their inner god of goddess, they will evolve into some kind of enlightened superspiritual being and all their problems will vanish. Its even more unrealistic than the magical thinking that pervades some branches of Christianity!

I googled the book the quote came from and found this from a review on Amazon:

" The book is channeled by the author's spirit teacher guides, The Three Bishops, as well as Joachim and the Emissaries of the Third Ray. These highly evolved and loving guides work specifically to bring about understanding, direction, and support to all souls so that we may learn to become the creative masters of the life that we’re intended to have on Earth. The guides state that Earth is “soul school,” and that we’re here to master 22 basic soul lessons in order to fulfill our purpose. Each lesson is laid out in such a way that anyone—on any level—will be ready to follow the instructions. The guides make it very clear in this book that the timing to learn our soul lessons, open our hearts, and raise our vibration on the Earth plane is now. Negative occurrences will worsen if our energy doesn’t shift and elevate to a more loving plane. We have no time to waste!"

How anyone can swallow such hogwash is beyond me! 22 soul lessons? Emissaries of the Third Ray? Raise our vibrations? Puh-leese! Tell that to the innocents who died in Bosnia, Rwanda and the Congo; to the child soldiers in the Sudan; to those battling cancer and AIDS ... just raise your vibrations and embrace soul lesson number 12, guys, and all will be well.

Rant over.

The God Conundrum and Multi-level Marketing

2007-09-30T11:55:00.001+02:00

Here is just one of the many things that has baffled me over the last while.

According to the evangelical, biblical point of view, God created man 'for his pleasure'. To quote the bible, Revelation 4:11 says, “Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are and were created.” According to everything I was taught, God's desire is for us to freely choose to love him, not just serve him robotically, so when he created man, he also gave him 'free will' so that man might willingly choose to love God, to set aside all self-interest and serve him and him only.

But having this gift of free will from God also means that man can potentially say to God: 'Well, thanks for creating me (in your image with all these amazing attributes such as the ability to love and care and think and reason and create and all), but actually I think I'm going to choose to be captain of my own fate, master of my own soul."

So, the question is this: why then would God turn around and say: "Sorry, you made the WRONG CHOICE! You were supposed to choose to love me! Now I'm going to punish you by casting you into the eternal (eternal, mind you!) burning fires of hell?" (If you believe that hell literally exists of course!) If that's the case, then what the heck is the point of having free will in the first place? We should all have been created with an in-built, incorruptible love for God then there would have been no need for messy lakes of fire and judgement calls and God could have taken all the pleasure he wanted from us all along without having to send the billions who never 'accepted Jesus into their hearts' to eternal damnation, which must be really hard for him to do seeing as he says he loves us all equally.

And another thing: what is the purpose of punishment, anyway? To correct someone who has gone wrong, surely? Or to wipe them out once and for all, no second chances, no opportunity to make things right, to be redeemed?

And about the idea of us being created solely for God's pleasure. Isn't that kind of one-sided too? Sometimes the evangelical viewpoint makes me feel so manipulated:

You are born. You grow up and after a while you learn that you are a sinner - albeit a sinner with free will. You go along, living your life doing good stuff and bad stuff. You learn that God loves you even though you are such an ugly dirty sinner and he wants you to love him. But at some point you learn that the good stuff isn't good enough for God, you'll be going to hell when you die unless you make some major changes. And to help you along the way, the spirit of God sneaks into your most private thoughts and makes you feel really bad about doing the bad stuff. So you say sorry to God and choose to put your self to death and to live only for him. Now he's happy because you are loving him and being obedient to him and all the other Christians out there rejoice because - you've arrived! "Welcome to the club! "

Now your new mission in life is to get all the unsaved billions out there to join the club too - for their own good of course..... doesn't this sound an awful lot like multilevel marketing?

Too many questions, too many doubts, too few answers.... but the good news today is that my new book arrived! The God Theory by Bernhard Haisch. It looks like a long, slow read ... but it looks good.

Braggin' on my babies

2007-09-23T22:33:00.000+02:00

Sometimes your kids do or say things that just make you want to tell the world what great kids they really are. This week, after all the trauma of the failed drivers license, M made us real proud of him.

He placed 6th out of his class of 32 (and 41st in his grade of 208 kids) in the mock matric exams. And if that wasn't great enough, on Thursday night at the school cultural awards dinner, he was awarded full colors for service to Backstage--he's been part of the backstage support crew for the last three years of high school.

Go, M!!!

Then my daughter. She and a friend were talking about 'big words' tonight and she says - "I know TWO big words!" (Big laugh from the friend). "Yep" she says. "Protagonist and antagonist." "Huh?" says the friend. "Protagonist" says my girl,"is the character in a story who goes through the most change during the story, and antagonist is the person or thing who causes the most change!"

Oh, she rocks!!! :-) We talked about this a while back and she remembered!!

*Insert proud smiling face picture here!*

I love this picture

2007-09-19T21:56:00.001+02:00

It's apparently called 'The Day God Spilled The Paint'.

Next Year

2007-09-19T18:26:00.000+02:00

Today something weird happened. I was talking to M on the way to the test center about me and my thoughts and dreams and hopes and plans for next year, to try and take his mind off the upcoming test. I don't know if he was too interested but it kept us occupied for the half hour drive.

I said: "Next year just has to be better than this year has been." And I waffled on about some of the ideas I'd had and which ones looked potentially feasible and which ones were turning out to be just a laugh a minute. Then I added,"Of course next year has one big disadvantage in the 'must be better' stakes."

"What's that?" he said.

"Well," and by now I'm feeling stupid, "well, next year is the year I turn--I turn-f--f--fi--fi..." and I simply could not bring myself to utter the word? It was as if I was blocked, muted, gagged. But he got it.

"What is so bad about being fifty?" he asked. So I tried to explain. "It means you're not a beautiful, supple twenty-something anymore. Or even a vibrant, full-of-potential, richly fertile thirty-year-old. You can't even claim to be a fabulous forty, in the prime of life!"

He's like - "Well, duh mom! Of course you're not." So I tried again.

"It's more to do with loss of hope. The brutal reality is that my chance to be a young, beautiful and desirable woman is now officially past. And that makes me feel sad."

Looking back, it often feels as if I somehow missed out on being that person in the past and that turning *this age* kind of puts the seal on the fact that I'll never ever be that person. :-( Instead, I get to be officially 'middle-aged'. Before this, I could still refer to myself as 'forty-something' and get away with it, but the Big Five Oh puts a stop to all that. End. Finito. Over and done with.

Over the hill. :-(

Actually, although I still hate, loathe and detest the idea, it doesn't cause quite the same emotionally devastating surge of rage and depression it has done for the last few years. I *know* that it's important for my psychological development that I accept and embrace this next step. And hopefully, next year with all its changes will be a part of that process. I'm actually really excited about a possible 'Me Year' and what better year for that than a landmark birthday year?

And in other not-so-wonderful news, M did not get his license. He had a fair shot at it, he passed all the yard tests like parking and three-point-turns etc, and his examiner said his actual driving was absolutely fine, but he failed him because at a traffic circle, he and another car arrived almost simultaneously and although M judged it safe to go, technically he should have waited. It's a bummer. He seems to have bounced back quicker today though, I think I'm the one who is most exhausted now, having encouraged and cajoled and supported him through the last twenty-four hours of fear and dithering. Not to mention sitting in long queues for paperwork and paying all the fees for the second time.

C'est la effing vie.

Walking through D-Day ....

2007-09-18T15:32:00.000+02:00

What a nightmare.

Less than ten minutes after Examiner Guy took M off, they came back, and one look at my boy's face told me that D stood for Disaster, not Driver's License.

He was devastated. The guy failed him on item one - ie reverse parking- simply because when he stopped, he didn't stop deep enough into the bay.

While M tried to pull himself together, I went to rebook him, and was told that the next available date would be in Feb 2008, and that we'd have to join the very long queue downstairs to do the paperwork, retake the eye test and pay the fee again. We decided to do it later, and left.

On the way out, we met up with M's instructor who was bringing another pupil in for her test. We told him what had happened and he said: 'Did the guy tell you where he wanted you to stop?"

"No," said M.

"He should have," said the instructor. We talked some more and as a result, back upstairs we went to talk to the Chief Examiner. And to cut a long story short, the Chief Examiner called in Examiner Guy, quizzed him, and then told us that we were in the right and the Examiner was in the wrong. He should have said to M: "Reverse in here, as far as this pole, and then stop." He didn't do that and therefore he had no right to fail M.

But as far as M was concerned, the vindication was too late. He was still emotionally shattered, felt like a completely useless failure as a driver and we'd wasted a day and the fees not getting his license. And all that the Chief Examiner could offer us was the name and fax number of somebody higher up to whom I could address a letter explaining the situation and asking for a free second test, which might be sooner if there was a cancellation or still might be in Feb next year.

By this stage, I was seething with rage and frustration, but there was nothing we could do about it. All we could do was go home, M still feeling devastated and me full of righteous anger and frustration.

Less than half an hour after we got home, the phone rang. It was Mr Chief Examiner and he said: "I can jump your son to the head of the queue - if he'd like to come in tomorrow, he can retake the test at 2pm. But you'll still have to redo the paperwork and pay the fees. What would you like to do?"

So, tomorrow we go back again, to retake the test. I'm working very hard here to help M overcome the demon of Fear that makes him want to never, ever go back there again, not tomorrow and not next February. Character-building it may be, but comfortable it is not!

Your good thoughts and prayers are appreciated!

D- Day

2007-09-18T08:18:00.000+02:00

I wasn't going to blog about this until after the event but ... my son takes his driver's license test at 10am this morning. I don't know who is more nervous, him or me.

The examiners at this test center are freakily perfectionistic, impossibly picky, totally demanding and will fail you - on the spot - if you roll back even 1 cm during your three-point turn. (It happened to the student who was there when we went for the practice drive last Wednesday morning - she didn't even get out on the road!)

So my boy, who is basically a good driver, is a bit anxious, to say the least. As is his mother.

More later.

Silver linings.

2007-09-15T23:14:00.000+02:00

After having toyed with the idea for six or seven years, in May 2005 I attended an introductory meeting for nurses interested in emigrating to the US and finally made the decision to give it a go! Got started on the process which was estimated to take between two and two and a half years.

Paperwork, paperwork, paperwork! It seemed to never end. Got a job offer from a hospital in central CA. Medicals, bloodwork, telephone interviews. Lost that job offer when the hospital group changed ownership. But we kept going. Studied for, wrote and passed the NCLEX exam in June 2006. In October 2006, we heard that emigration processing had speeded up and there was a chance that we'd get there sooner, much much sooner. Like within six months - yippee!! More paperwork. Took the IELTS exam for English proficiency. Got a police clearance. More paperwork. Finally, in January 2007, the emigration attorneys filed my I-140 application, the second to last step in the process. When the I-140 is approved, you get a INS priority date, meaning you are in the home stretch - just a consular interview to get through and finally, that Green Card will be yours.

Time passed and we waited. The news was that processing time seemed to have slowed right down again, people were waiting longer now, much much longer. Like EIGHTEEN MONTHS from the issuing of an I-140 to getting a priority date, a wait that used to take max 4- 5 months.

A few days ago, I got an email from my agent, who is wonderful and amazingly committed and supportive.

It is so difficult to judge timing etc for applications right now. We need to find an offer for you as soon as possible and I have someone who might be interested in the Home Health side at the moment and am waiting for their response to your resume’.

My opinion is that you should do what you need to do in order to survive in South Africa for at least another year to 18 months judging from the current INS priority dates.

Well. That was a blow and no mistake. Part of my need for this to happen relates to the fact that in many ways we are living 'in limbo' - not really wanting to get too deeply into anything here but not able to get involved in anything over there either. My son who is graduating from high school in Dec this year has registered for a one year Foundation course in 2008, with a view to continuing his education when we get to the States. My daughter goes into Grade 10 next year - we'd hoped she'd be able to start senior high in the US not here, as the curricula are very different. I've been marking time with several part-time jobs, gradually distancing myself from friends, not dating and wrestling with existential crises, lol!

More importantly, though, with the upcoming move in mind, I recently accepted an offer on my house, made by dear friends who plan to sell their own large home and renovate my smaller home into a comfortable retirement property. The deal isn't done yet--they have to sell before it can go through. But with my son moving out in Jan (he'll probably live with his dad for 2008, which will be great for them and will mean easier access to college for him), I'd planned to rent something really small and easy to maintain for my daughter and myself. Put the money from the house sale into the bank and let the interest fund the rental property. That still seems like a good plan.

But here's the biggie: In many ways, I've felt like I've really wasted time the last year or so. Not doing much writing. Not developing career-wise, just getting by with not very challenging part-time work. Not doing anything constructive at all, really. Just drifting along, gathering dust, getting depressed (and indulging in a lot of comfort eating!) Now I suddenly have a large chunk of time up ahead for which I have no specific plans. A year to a year and a half.. maybe even two, who knows?

I could carry on drifting, waiting, dreaming, eating, reading, blogging etc etc.

OR I could take hold of this time and make it productive.

So I started thinking about all the things I've often thought of doing, if I had the time and money. And I made a list, including the serious and the silly (and I'm very open to more suggestions!):

Do an MFA in creative writing
Get a personal trainer and get into shape
Study primary health care, useful for advanced nursing practice in the US
Audit courses in a subject that interests me … science, philosophy, literature, cosmology
Write, produce and direct a short movie
Study naturopathy or homeopathy
Plan, train for and do some kind of challenging trip eg the Otter Trail, or cycling from here to Durban (yeah, and get murdered along the way? No thanks! ;-) Maybe somewhere outside SA would work though ....
Buy a video camera and learn to use it
Buy a good digital camera and do a digital photography course
Join an amateur dramatic society and get involved in a few plays
Do a course in counselling e.g. LifeLine or similar
Do a basic paramedic course and volunteer part time with CMR
Do a course in therapeutic massage or reflexology
Learn to speak French
Learn to play a musical instrument, eg violin, cello
Learn a new software package, eg InDesign
Take up bellydancing or paragliding or rockclimbing or microlighting - something that stretches me mentally and physically

Now I'm doing the research, looking into everything, doing the financial calculations, thinking hard, dreaming big. If it works out, the gray cloud of delay could have a shiny silver lining and this might just be the midlife sabbatical year I've often dreamt of taking.

Two Books

2007-09-11T21:59:00.000+02:00

As part of my ongoing quest for truth, I'm doing a lot of reading. Confession time: I have a bad habit of not always finishing non-fiction books; all too often I dip into something, get a hold of the main idea behind it, and then skim read it to the end.

Bad me. :-(

But onto Book One. I'm currently re-reading a very good book, one I read years and years ago but which I had forgotten about until now. It's The Christian Agnostic by Leslie D Weatherhead. It seems I'm not the only one who remembers this book from way back then and who is re-reading it now. To quote one Amazon reviewer:

I read this book many years ago and recently decided to read it again. I am totally amazed at the willingness of Leslie Weatherhead to open the Christian Faith to open minded thinking. He says it's ok to be an agnostic about the doctrinal stuff, and still find great meaning and life in the core of the faith. He then proceeds to open mindedly deal with many issues in an "outside the box" kind of way. I did not agree with everything he says, but he does not require this. He gives the thinking Christian permission and blessing to think for himself or herself, and insists, that the truth of Christianity is that which we grasp and apprehend for ourselves, the rest can be stored in an imaginary file in the mind. He writes with warmth and humility. He was one of the great preachers and pastors of our time. Everyone, Christian or not, will be enriched by this special book. It was written many years ago, and dated in some respects, but the flavor of Weatherhead is a wonderful flavor indeed. I loved it.

Agreed, on all counts.

Book Two is one I discovered when googling something else altogether! I read the blurbs, the reviews, the home page of the author and something inside me just went YES! So I've ordered it and hopefully it will arrive in two to three weeks time (one of the joys of living in Africa....) but seeing as I have the Christian Agnostic to keep me busy, I'll be patient. So, Book Two is called The God Theory: Universes, Zero-point Fields, And What's Behind It All by Bernard Haisch, published in May 2006. The Amazon editorial review describes it thus:

Physicist Haisch thinks "Let there be light" isn't just a randomly chosen phrase for the Creation. Indeed, he believes that in the mysteries of light rest clues to the deepest mysteries of the universe, something he calls God, though he doesn't mean by that word the personification that some believers prefer. A scientist who has worked in astrophysics and theoretical physics, Haisch has retained his wonder at the universe from childhood, as he describes in the affecting memoir with which the book begins. Many scientists find no tension between their profession and the profession of belief in divinity, but Haisch goes one step further by attempting to find a scientific explanation for the phenomenon generally called God. Light, that familiar but utterly mysterious force, is the key to such an understanding. Readable and engaging, Haisch will be embraced by those concerned with finding ways of reconciling science and religion. Patricia Monaghan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

This is the coolest sounding book I've come across in a long time. I hope it gets here soon!

Dead Dog on the Tube

2007-09-10T15:25:00.000+02:00

On the radio today, I heard a DJ interviewing one of the finalists in a "Gigantic Mistakes" competition and a young woman shared her Gigantic Mistake.

She was house-sitting in London some time ago, taking care of the single, childless home-owner's very, very, very precious dog at the same time. As luck would have it, the dog died. Bad news. Not knowing what to do with the body, she called a vet and was told she could bring the body in and they would dispose of it.

Well. As she had no car and no spare money for a cab, she opted to use the tube. Next problem was how to carry a dead dog (a Staffie!) on the tube without either contravening some health regulation or grossing out all the other travellers! So, she stuck the dog in a suitcase.

Lugging the Dog-in-a-Case through the Central London underground proved exhausting as the Staffie was pretty heavy. So she was quite relieved when a young man offered to help her, but he soon wanted to know what was in her bag that was making it so heavy. Not wanting to admit to carrying around a dead dog, she said she was moving house and the case was full of clothes, books, CDs etc .

Big mistake!

The next thing she knew, the young man had disappeared along with her Dog-in-a-Case!

The hardest part was telling the bereaved homeowner what had happened and why it wasn't going to be possible for her to view the remains of her beloved pet...

Bummer! I wonder how the thief felt when he opened up the case and found the Corpse .....

RAD and GOD

2007-09-06T18:27:00.000+02:00

I have been researching RAD—Reactive Attachment Disorder—for the purposes of a current writing project. RAD is a psycho-physiological disorder that can occur when the child, in its first 3 years of life, experiences early separation from the primary caregiver, or repeated losses or changes of the primary caregiver, or is abused, neglected or abandoned.

It can show itself in many way, either as an inhibited disorder (kid doesn't relate to anyone, very antisocial, never seeks comfort, or help, or support etc) OR the opposite way (kid is overly familiar and amazingly sweet and charming with strangers, but at home, is exceptionally abusive and in facts hates the person who is now the primary caregiver, no matter how loving that person is.)

Both conditions are as a result of failure to develop TRUST in the first year of life and both come from the fact that basically, the kid's heart as been broken. They can't accept love because they have learnt that when you reach out for love, you don't get it or it hurts or you get it and then it gets taken away again, so they build huge defensive walls around their hearts and protect themselves against all attempts by anyone to really love them.

I won’t go into the therapy and prognosis here; suffice it to say that the road is heart-breakingly long and often ends in failure anyway.

Anyway. The point of this post is that today I was reading an article on RAD and the use of neurofeedback

and came across these two snippets:

“Attachment is the fundamental drive in human beings. It is a drive that brings aggression and sexuality to its defense and to its enhancement, and it is the precursor to human love. It is gained through the delicate interplay of vocal tone and facial expression, through body to body communication, through the dyadic system of care that develops when the mother attunes to her baby.”

It occurred to me that this is also basically what happens when we make friends, build relationships, and fall in love. We want to build a connection to the other person and we use all the tools at our disposal to grow that attachment: along with verbal communication, we use eye contact, body language, mirroring, tonal inflection and so much more. Remember being best friends with someone at school who really ‘got you’? Remember flirting? Remember falling in love?

Then, this:

“I am reminded of a film I saw in graduate school titled "Ben". In it, for purposes of the experiment, an emotionally attuned mother agrees not to respond to the smile of her well bonded six month old son. When he smiled, she made no expression. He looked momentarily bewildered and smiled again. She still did not respond. His face clouded and he began to look agitated but he tried again. This time when his mother failed to smile in return he looked alarmed and anxious and began to cry. His mother, who has been valiantly cooperative with the researchers up to that point, could stand it no longer. She picked him up and comforted him, holding and rocking him, cooing and mirroring his facial expressions. His equilibrium was rapidly restored. This entire interaction, as I recall, unfolded in less than two minutes.

Imagine, then, what it must be like for the child of a depressed or addicted or narcissistically absent mother who cannot provide this attunement and emotional repair. This child, too, will attempt to engage her mother; it is her nature. These attempts to recruit the mother could go on intermittently for weeks, months or even years. I am suggesting that, as was true for Ben, each failure heightens negative affect. The child experiences increasing levels of distress that, without predictable maternal intervention escalate into disorganizing anxiety until, finally, the baby gives up, affectively “burning out” and collapsing into a state of deep despair. Her initial distress becomes fear that mounts into terror and then implodes into nothingness, a state beyond hopelessness, a state of no other and no self, a state too diffuse, too cellular, too absolute and too horrifying to any longer be recognized as fear.”

Is it stretching a point to see this as a picture of what happens to those of us who have spent years trying (and failing) to attach to God? We attempt to engage him and he seems not to respond …each failure heightens the negative affect … leading to increasing levels of distress (existential anxiety) … finally, we burn out and give up, collapsing into a state of deep despair and fear….

Attachment fails. So we get vitriolic and yell at God, screaming out our hate and fear and disappointment, driven by the need to generate a reaction, any reaction at all. When still nothing happens, we retreat into intellectualism. We find a thousand ways to ‘prove’ that God doesn’t exist, that its all self-deception, that religion is just a conditioned societal response and as we evolve further, as we mature, we can let go of that need to be attached to something greater than ourselves… we can manage without God’s love which has proved, over and over again, to be illusory and disappointing.

Finally, we put up walls of disillusionment, skepticism, cynicism and despair. We protect ourselves against hope. We grow cold and hard and we sneer and smirk when people say things like ‘The Lord told me …” and “If it’s God’s will, then …”

It would seem that attachment to God has failed. But these days I'm thinking that just maybe the way forward isn't to stay mired in my failure to find God, nor is it to retreat into atheism or cyncism. Maybe, for now, all I need to do is to keep seeking a new paradigm of who 'God' is. Maybe all these years I've been looking in all the wrong places for the wrong God. Because underneath all my disappointment and pain, I can't seem to shake the sense that somewhere, somehow ... God IS.

All about Heath.

2007-09-02T21:25:00.000+02:00

Time to come out of the closet in another area, lol.

Last year, for the first time ever, I fell in love with a movie star. I became a fan. A Heath fan. A Heath Ledger fan, to be precise, although I much prefer the word "admirer" - fan makes me sound about 16 years old... which isn't altogether a bad thing! :-)

For those who don't know, Heath has starred in, amongst other films, The Patriot, Brokeback Mountain, Casanova and Candy and is currently filming the upcoming Batman sequel, The Dark Knight, in which he plays The Joker. I hang out now and then at Heath Ledger Central, which is run by my friend Theresa, who is a close friend of Heath's. I had the pleasure earlier this year of exchanging PM's with Heath, who is an supremely talented actor as well as a decent, sincere, funny and genuinely nice man.

So this weekend in Heath-world, there was good news and bad news. The good news was that my friend Amy was on holiday in NYC for a few days and when she stepped out of the door one day, who should be standing a few feet away but the man himself! (She recognized him by his tattoos first of all, as he was mostly incognito behind red Ray Bans and a rather odd hat!) So she went and introduced herself and got a wonderful picture on her camera phone. She says this about him:

"But he is so very softspoken and polite and nervous -- he giggled a bit as I was trying to maintain my composure while saying stupid things blah blah blah. I still cannot believe it happened -- I actually met Heath!!!"

But the sad news is that Heath and his partner Michelle Williams, whom he met on the set of Brokeback Mountain, are now officially separated. Their baby girl Matilda is only 23 months old. My little daughter was just short of two when I got divorced and in hindsight, if you have to have a break up, it is much better to make the break when the kids are still young. My son, who was five at the time, had a much harder time of it--my daughter seemed to just go with the flow.... but still, I'm sad for him that it had to happen at all. I wish him lots of peace and strength .

Heath and Matilda at Disneyland a few weeks ago.
Pic from Celebrity Baby Blog

Such a fool ...

2007-08-31T23:14:00.000+02:00

I can't believe I am still such a fool. Even now, after all this time, there is a part of me that still yearns for God, still longs to find him, to experience him as real.

Yesterday, I started a new writing project, the first one in a long, long time. I was excited, gave it my all for almost the whole day, and it felt good. So tonight, after a long day of work, coffee with my dearest friend, take-out for dinner blah blah, I opened up yesterday's document to carry on writing. And I re-read it. And it was all crap. It sucked. All the pleasure and excitement I'd felt yesterday, all the dreaming and scene-planning just fell away in a heart beat. I used to be able to write, now I'm not sure I have a usable talent any more. It all feels wooden, contrived, cliched. And that tipped me into deep sadness and despair. Writing is the only area I have ever felt I had a chance of making good in, of perhaps doing something of worthwhile, lasting value. Now, along with all the other losses that come with middle-age, I'm facing the loss of the only real talent I have ever had.

So I took myself off for a bath, knowing I needed to weep, to somehow release this sadness from my spirit. And as I soaked and cried, I found that my grief extended far beyond the simple fact that maybe I'll never be any good as a writer. Yes, I grieved for that. But in the depths of the despair and pain, I found a deeper grief. It's hard to explain, but comes down to one simple and utterly unanswerable question:

Even if I was a good writer, what would be the point of it, anyway? It seems to me that life is essentially meaningless. What, I ask, is the Meaning of Life?

I'm NOT talking about what gives my life or your life individual meaning, like maybe I write good stories that move people emotionally. I'm talking about meaning on a global scale. On an individual level, I may feel good for a while about my achievement, and my readers may either laugh, or cry, and maybe they'll learn a little more about something. But in the end, life comes down to a seventy-something- year cycle in which we eat, we drink, we reproduce, and eventually, we die. Just like plants, or animals, or algae, or tapeworms. And when we're gone, we may be remembered by a few for a short while, but most of us will be forgotten within a decade or two unless we happen to be Hitler or Churchill or Ghandi or Mandela.

No, my question is what is the point of human beings as a species existing on this planet?

If the only point to our lives is simply to reproduce ourselves so that the species is perpetuated, then I really don't get it. If there is no higher purpose to human life as a whole on this planet, then what is the friggin' point of us existing at all? Some may say that we exist to help and serve others. Fine. So what are all the 'others' doing that is so important then? Why, like us, they're basically just getting through each day, doing what they need to do to stay alive and making sure that they to manage to reproduce themselves, so that they can leave more people behind who then have to do what they need to do to get through life themselves until they die, leaving behind yet more people ...and round and round it goes.

If that's all there is, it seems extremely pointless to me, even for those of us who do manage to have a nice time while we're on the planet.

So as I lay in the bath and wept and contemplated the awful emptiness of the existential abyss, I once again realized that what I wanted above all else--above my need to be able to write properly, above my need to get all my problems solved, above my need to be loved--what I yearned for most deeply of all was, shamefully, still 'God'. Meaning someone or something who exists beyond the limitations of this physical life, to show me that there IS life beyond birth and death, and that that life--whatever form it may take--is meaningful and eternal. I was horrified to discover that even after multiple disappointments, even after countless nights spent weeping and begging God to 'help me' know the reality of himself, even after at last making a start on the deconstruction of the faith that has proved so impossible to sustain over more than 25 years, after all this, I still hope for 'God'.

About a year ago, when talking to one of my dearest friends in all the world, I said to her that even though my faith had taken a huge knock, I wasn't going anywhere. If God wanted to find me, he knew where I was, and if he wanted me, he needed to come get me because I have spent almost all my adult life running after God, and never finding him in a way that allowed me to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he is REAL.

And yet, I still cry, yearning and longing for something I'll never have. It's pathetic, really. How the hell do I get past this? Does one ever?

It's very sad.

Burnout in Progress...

2007-08-25T14:12:00.000+02:00

Having just got over my second bout of flu this winter (and I never usually even get sick!) and feeling very flat and wiped out, I was trying to figure out why I was proving so susceptible to passing viruses all of a sudden, and why this bout of illness had also left me all depressed and lethargic too.

So I stopped mentally and looked at what was going on in my life at the moment and that was when the "Aha!" moment happened.

If I step back and look at my life objectively, there is a heck of a lot of stressful change going on right now. And Stress leads to Burnout, which often brings with it a Depressed Immune System. Which explains why I'm getting sick and why I feel like I'm just not coping as efficiently as I usually manage to do.

I did an online stress / burnout questionnaire: The key said:
36 - 50 = Candidate for Burnout
51 - 65 = You are Burning Out
Over 66 = You Are In A Dangerous Place!!

My score is 69.

Guess some emergency stress management is called for! :-) At least I can identify most of the sources of stress, now I just need to figure out how to prioritize and then deal with all of them!

Two weeks holiday sounds like a good start.....

Mother Theresa's Crisis of Faith

2007-08-24T13:53:00.000+02:00

Mother Theresa, according to a new innocuously titled book, Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light (Doubleday), was a woman whose soul was divided in two. Her public face wore a smile of spiritual content and joy that hid the "dryness," "darkness," "loneliness" and "torture" inside her: a spiritual aridity that began in 1948 and persisted, with a break in 1959 of only five weeks, until her death in 1997. Fifty years of pretending to the world that all was well with her soul... of never feeling or knowing God's presence, and at times, even doubting the existence of Heaven and God himself.

Read the FULL ARTICLE HERE.

But there's more. After reading the article, I became curious about this woman who could live with such cognitive dissonance for so long. What drove her? What kind of a personality was she? What made her the Sainted Mother so many came to see her as? Was she in fact a spiritual giant, or did she suffer from a personality disorder of some sort?

I found very little about her personality or personal life beyond that which is known already. There was much that venerated the work she did, but disturbingly, I also found much that raised hard-to-answer questions about aspects of the work too. HERE is a reprint from the conservative German magazine STERN, published in 1998, that calls both her ministry and its financial management into question--questions that remain unanswered until today....

Coming Out of the Closet

2007-08-19T10:18:00.000+02:00

For weeks I have been wanting to post here about the journey I am currently on. So now I'm going to do it, probably in a series of posts over the next months as the journey continues.

At the age of 13, I became a born-again, water-baptized, spirit-filled Christian - a believer in God and a follower of His Son, Jesus. That tag has been my core identity, in one way or another, since that time. But that's no longer a core truth in my life--and may not even be a truth at all.

I'm not sure I have a tag to describe what I'd call me right now. Agnostic is probably the closest, but even that doesn't cover it - there's no easy label for what you become when your faith life falls apart and you find yourself adrift on a sea of existential doubt, despair and confusion. I've learnt that this is a well-documented process however and I'm far from the first person to have undertaken this particular journey, which btw, has a name.

It's called Deconversion.

Conversion, I read in a scholarly article somewhere online, is usually a sudden, rapid, emotional transformation. Deconversion, however, is a long, slow cognitive process, which is exactly what it's been for me. I have no idea where the journey will end, no specific goal or destination in sight except to find out the Truth about what we think of as "God" for myself, as best I can. So far, its been heartbreaking, challenging, scary, difficult and very, very lonely. But once you set foot on the road, there's no turning back--you can't undo the thoughts that have been thought, the books that have been read, the online conversations that have been held.

And some of those online conversations have become a lifeline of hope in my sea of despair! In particular, I'm relishing the conversation at Julie Unplugged (Falling Away From Faith series of posts).

I've also been reading a lot:

A History of God, by Karen Armstrong.
Leaving the Fold, by Marlene Winnell.
From Missionary Bible Translator to Agnostic, by Ken Daniels (which was one of the first things I read that helped me realize I truly wasn't mad, heretical, backslidden, unhinged or any of the above)

TBC.

Our Lives, Controlled From Some Guy’s Couch

2007-08-18T14:44:00.000+02:00

This article, in the NY Times of 14th August, postulates a fascinating theory regarding the nature of the universe ...."There's a 20% chance" says Nick Bostrom, philosopher and the director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford, "that we might be living in someone else's computer simulation. "

What, he says, if some futuristic computer geeks, using advanced computing power, were running ancestor simulations to explore their evolutionary history, or were maybe even just having fun, the way today's kids play The Sims, Warcraft etc? It could mean that nothing we see, hear, feel, taste, touch, or experience is real. Its all virtual. WE are all virtual. Which would go a long way to supporting the idea of multiple or parallel universes

He explores the concept in some depth, wondering whether in fact those futuristic computer geeks might not be computer simulations themselves, with layer upon layer of simulations until you get all the way back to the Prime Designer....

But here's the most interesting aspect. He says: "It’s unsettling to think of the world being run by a futuristic computer geek, although we might at last dispose of that of classic theological question: How could God allow so much evil in the world? For the same reason there are plagues and earthquakes and battles in games like World of Warcraft. Peace is boring, Dude."

Read the whole article HERE.

They wrote back - kinda .....

2007-03-15T21:28:00.000+01:00

Today I received a reply to the email I sent to John Eldredge (see previous post). Whoop de doop, I thought!

Then I read it, which didn't take long.....

All is not lost. We still hold out hope for you. He is coming…

the RH team

Ransomed Heart Ministries
www.ransomedheart.com

Hmmmmm............

2007-03-07T10:11:00.000+01:00

Last week, Infuze Magazine ran an interview with John Eldredge who is the founder of Ransomed Heart Ministries in Colorado Springs and the author of several books, such as Epic, Wild At Heart and Journey of Desire. Overall, he has sold over six million books.

He writes well, poetically and with passion, insight and (I guess) the truth as he knows it. I've read many of them... His site says very clearly that they do not do one-on-one counselling but they do encourage people to send them emails called "My Story' which they share with the staff to encourage them.... well, in response to his article, I sent them a 'My Story' email. I don't expect to hear back from them.

In many ways, this email is the continuation of a (long ago) post I made in this blog called Open Letter to God.

Dear RHMinistries,

In 2004, I read John Eldredge's first two books and found them deeply moving and inspirational. When I read the interview in InFuze Magazine last week, I was reminded of that. But, I'm getting ahead of myself ....

In brief, I was born again at 13, baptized at 14, filled with the Spirit at 15. After some spiritual ups and downs, I recommitted to the Lord at 23, went back to church where I met and married my husband at 25. Two children and ten years later, we divorced. Again, a few very bumpy years accompanied by a severe illness, financial reverses and much emotional distress until 1998 I said to God, I have no where else to go, I have very little trust left in either You or your people but I'm going to give Christianity one last shot. Slowly life turned around and I made a new start at age 40 in terms of my health, where I lived, the work I did, the church I attended, my relationship with God, everything. Even though I was still single, life was very good.

Throughout my life, rejection from men has been a constant. From an emotionally absent father (who wanted a son and got me instead), through some teen and twenties relationships that were unhealthy, to a marriage that ended in divorce and two post-divorce relationships which were both brief and disastrous, my experience of being nurtured, cherished and desired by men has basically been non-existent. So when I came back to God at age 40, I looked at this. Over the next few years, I read a lot - Jeanne Guyon, Larry Crabb, Richard Foster, John Eldredge amongst others - and I reached the point of understanding and embracing the truth that no relationship, no matter how wonderful or full of good things, will ever fully meet my deepest yearnings to be loved, valued, cherished and nurtured. I needed to look to God for that fulfilment, needed to keep Him at the centre of my life. According to Larry Crabb, God allows our most cherished dreams to be shattered so that we might find our highest good, our deepest fulfilment in Him, in a personal, experiential relationship with Himself - which is what He created us for. Yes, I said, I can see that and I accept that.

Ceremonially one day, I took time off to go to the beach where I collected a bunch of small rocks, each representing some aspect of my life that held a dream - career, children, creativity, love ... and threw each one out into the ocean, releasing everything I had ever hoped for and dreamed of finding, into God's hands. And as a result, my yearning for God himself grew deeper and deeper. I longed for Him, for His presence with a longing that almost hurt, it was so intense. When things got rough, and my heart was sore, I turned to Him, affirming my commitment time and time again. The love I felt for Him was greater by far than the love I felt for anything else. And 'feeling' love for God was an area that I had struggled with in the past, so this was a 'big thing' for me.

But as time went by, I became aware that each time I sought God, the only one at the party was - me. In my spirit, when I reached out for God, all I could 'see' was the granite of His back - hard, silent, unyielding. This went on for weeks, months. Until one day, in the depths of my need and my distress, I fell on my face (in the upstairs hallway of my house), buried my nose in the carpet and literally cried my heart out at His feet, begging and pleading with Him to meet me, to touch me, to comfort me... to love me. Somehow. Anyhow. I have never forgotten that day, its like a brand burned into my flesh.

Because in my moment of deepest need, God did nothing.

Why? I don't know. Here I am, nearly two years later, still with nothing from Him. This wound is very deep, far deeper than any other rejection. I don't know how it will ever be mended. I don't even know if I can really call myself a Christian any more. All I know is that God was and is silent. I continue to cry for Him at times, but am aware that disillusionment and cynicism are layering over that wound, stopping it from bleeding out all over the place. I keep it hidden when my daughter shares her joy in worshipping God, when my son tells me he got closer to God at the church camp. I smile at them, hug them and say nothing that might be destructive to their spiritual growth.

But I don't attend church anymore - it would be dishonesty of the worst kind to go through the motions of worship when my heart is cold and sad and tired. I'm not stupid, (IQ of 140), I'm not unattractive, I'm not emotionally unintelligent, and I'm not psychiatrically disturbed. I'm self-employed, creative, honest, empathic, care about my friends, and love my children very much. But nowdays I find it very hard to imagine really loving anyone else, let alone making myself vulnerable to God again. I have spoken of this with very few people as, quite honestly, they don't know what to say.

So, the reason for this letter is that when I read your interview in Infuze Magazine last week, I really wanted to let you know that despite what you say, not every Christian who desires a deep walk with God actually finds it.

Thank you for reading this.

Elleann

Epiphany of sorts ...

2006-08-01T15:17:00.000+02:00

Yesterday I had an epiphany concerning an aspect of myself that has long puzzled me. I often experience unexpectedly deep rage reactions to something basically very insignificant – like having to wait three or four months for new movies to be released, or TV shows to be broadcast, or when a smooth, well-groomed woman in a large shiny car cuts in front of me on the road. At these times, when things like this happen, I get so angry, I feel like screaming and crying and climbing the walls with frustration and rage.

On the surface, it seems absurd, doesn’t it?

But, in talking to my daughter yesterday, I wondered out loud what it was all about, and I said, Gee, it feels like a child throwing a temper tantrum because it feels all deprived. And that was it! That is exactly how I was feeling and that is exactly where it was coming from.

I grew up eldest in a family of four kids. Dad worked long hours at a stressful job for less than wonderful pay and Mom was a SAHM. Money was tight, and while we never went without, luxuries were for Christmas and birthdays. My best friend in junior school was the youngest of four in a well-off family, and whenever I came home from visiting her, home seemed most unsatisfactory. Kids are so horribly mercenary, aren’t they? Our family wasn’t perfect, and neither was hers, but they had more money! On top of that, I was a shy, clever, non-sporty child, severely lacking in confidence and very introverted, and I always felt like I never quite fitted in. Like there’d be trials for the netball team. I’d persuade my friend to stay with me after school and try-out; she’d get in, I wouldn’t. Picking sides for games – I’d be amongst the last to be picked. A party was on, and I wasn’t invited.

Very early in life, I learnt to feel envy, and a failure, and what it was like to be not wanted.

In my teens and twenties, relationships were few and far between – mostly never-go-anywhere connections with friends of boyfriends of more popular girls, plus two relationships based solely on lust, accompanied in one instance by emotional abuse, which I, in my ignorance, thought was just ‘how he was’. And because he was also intellectual, physically appealing and liked sleeping with me, I thought I was in love with him.

(Speaking of love, my baby sister fell in love and got married long before I did – they’re about to celebrate their twenty-fifth anniversary. They live in a great house, both kids are at varsity, she earned her degree along the way and teaches high school now, and they’re all active in church life. I married later, divorced within ten years, am still alone and have nothing except my house as security for my ‘old age’. My kids, however, are fabulous and I’m doing my best to make sure they don’t inherit an emotional legacy of envy, failure and regret.)

All this helps me to understand why, when something makes me feel like I’m being overlooked, left out or in some way ‘deprived’, I get these insane reactions that are completely over the top… reactions that make me want to scream ‘unfair, unfair’. It’s that damned unhappy little girl still battling with the emotions of yesterday. Shit! How do you get rid of stuff like that?

All this relates to some degree to what my next post is going to be about – a continuation of that Open Letter to God I posted awhile back …

Tbc

Elleann.

Doctor Doc

2006-07-24T19:37:00.000+02:00

Today I have a guest blogger, my beautiful daughter!

Her entry is a sad one, though. This is her memorial tribute to her beloved cat, Doc.

“My cat was one of the most annoying, self-absorbed, fussy cats that I have met on this planet. If he wanted something, nothing would deter him (especially if it was chicken!). He drove my mom up the wall with his meowing! He had a supercat power of always being exactly where your foot was about to go, causing you to step on him. When stepped on, he would give you this reproachful look, which always made you feel guilty and take the blame (well, it made me anyway).

My brother (though he loved Doc) could not help teasing him. With my love for him and firm belief that animals have feelings, I appointed myself Doc’s protector against the combined forces known as mother and brother. In return, he decided he liked my lap best and sat there whenever he could, whether I wanted him there or not- like when I was “trying” to do my homework!

This of course played havoc with my allergies, but I loved it all the same.

Being the runt of the litter, he has always had problems with his health. However, last week, he got worse. We took him to the vet and found out that “he was a very sick cat”. The vet told us that it would be very expensive to do the tests and easier on Doc to put him down.

So we said goodbye and put him down.

I had gotten used to protecting him (though my brother had mostly gotten over it and mom by this time had succumbed to his charms and loved him) and to having him on my lap, so it is hard to accept that he is gone.

I’ll miss him and you can be sure that he made sure we would never forget him. His going-away present – peeing on mom’s laptop case!

I love you, Doc, and I’ll always miss you!”

Ten good reasons to emigrate

2006-07-23T13:22:00.000+02:00

Yesterday I met with Dave, the guy who runs the agency handling my proposed emigration to the US. Before my one-on-one meet with him, he had a general info session for prospective emigrants and he revisited all the reasons one might have for deciding to emigrate. These, he reminded us, are what you hang on to when the process gets tough.

I am so glad he did that. I’d lost sight of a lot of them, of all those things that first persuaded me to start this process.

Education:

He referred mainly to the school his own kids (11 and 17) attend in Irvine, CA, which is an upmarket area. Kids get an astounding education compared to here. In school, a lot of work is project-based, meaning own research and submission of paper / model / etc. His kids come home, log onto the school website, find the homework the teacher has posted for them, complete it and return it via the net. It is assumed that everyone has high-speed internet at home …Travel opportunities for all disciplines – study Spanish and you could find yourself on a trip to Spain. Travel with the school choir to festivals nationwide. The drama dept has a fully-equipped theatre, not just a school hall shared with sports activities. Backstage crew has a room full of power tools and equipment to build sets, etc. Community sport facilities are in abundance and are well-maintained - tax payers money being put to good use!

Work:

Who you are doesn’t limit what work you can do. Grannies serve you at McDonalds, for e.g. White women clean houses. Nothing is considered a demeaning job if it earns you a good wage. Jobs are not given on the basis of your age, race, sex or similar. Kids work summer jobs and earn good money – minimum wage is $7.00 ph. Babysitters get between $7 – 10.00 ph and more after midnight.

Security: This is a BIGGIE for South Africans!!

The houses have no fences, no security doors, no burglar bars, no alarm systems.
Post gets dropped in unlocked mailboxes, both delivery and to go.
Parcel deliveries are left on your doorstep if there is no one home and they don’t get stolen.
Kids can walk all over the neighborhood in safety and with freedom. (Here, I used to escort my child just to go next door, make sure she was safely inside with the gate locked before I’d go!)
Cars get left on the street, unlocked and no one worries ..
Houses get left unlocked, and no one worries …
If you are a pedestrian, the motorists stop instantly if you step into the road …

All this I know to be true, btw, from my last two visits to the US. Even in NY, when people cross the road, the traffic waits.

Cars:

A big fancy car which costs around R250 000.00 here sells for maybe $25 000.00 there – monthly repayments are around $500.00 max.

Salaries:

Most nurses earn around $30.00 average, not including benefits and overtime. Nurses are well-paid compared with the general population and live good lifestyles. Obviously, if you work in Podunk, Arkansas, you won’t earn as well, but then your cost of living is going to be much lower!

All in all, I was reminded of a million good reasons why I want to do this.

In our meeting thereafter, he told me that the INS processing time, which used to be around a year, is now down to 2 - 3 months. The paperwork for the VisaScreen credentialing goes forward simultaneously, taking also 2 – 3 months. Then, with the INS paperwork and the VisaScreen certificate in place, you request a green card interview with the US Consulate in Johannesburg. This can take 3 - 6 months to get done, depends on them. An estimated min of 6 months, max of 9 months once the paperwork is done. Yikes!!!

Hospitals are not taking on new RNs so far in advance anymore, like FRHG did. So what he is doing is sending out resumes once you are 4 - 5 months from the completion of the process, so that by the time you have your green card, you also have a good job offer with a good relocation allowance etc.

If I elect to go with the present flow, meaning we'd be there within the next 6 - 9 months, his agency will sponsor me and carry initial costs, recouping these from the sponsoring hospital later on. If I wait and go at say the end of next year, I have the option of temporarily halting the process, but that could lead to a longer wait as there is a strong possibility that with all the new emigration stuff and amnesties and whatnot, if those Bills are passed, the INS is going to be snowed under and things could get looooong and drawn out again. Or, I could elect to fund it myself, go ahead now and then make the actual move when we are ready to do so - you get six months from the time you get your green card to make the actual move.

I pitched to him the possibility of finding a position in LTC - long-term care as opposed to acute care hospitals - as I do have a lot more recent experience in this field and it is one I am comfortable working in. A good idea and viable, as this is also an area where staff are needed. I needed to revamp my resume and send it to him – he can then market me closer to D-Day.

Lots of decisions to be made … and I need to move on this soon.

More about the ambivalence

2006-07-19T12:05:00.000+02:00

One of the hardest parts of being a single parent is making life-changing decisions alone. Hence my real need to look to God for help and guidance, and the real anguish I experience when I ‘think’ I hear from Him and then it all goes wrong, or doesn’t happen.

How do you trust when God seems to be either absent, or not interested, or simply doesn’t do what you thought He said he was going to do? How do you know the difference between God’s guidance and things in life just happening?

I blogged about this in relation to singleness and remarriage earlier on. The other area of huge concern to me right now is our proposed emigration plan.

Moving to the US is a dream I have had for about five years now. Where do our dreams come from, how do our desires take root in our hearts? If the Bible is to be believed, God says: “Seek the Lord in all that you do and He will give you the desires of your heart.” I thought I was being pretty smart when I interpreted that to mean if you put God first in life, then HE will place within your heart those desires that are within His will and plan for your life, and not that it meant: Love God and He’ll give you everything you want.

Earlier this year, I had a dream. I was high up in the mountains of California and there was an earthquake warning. Cars were pulling off the roads, so I stopped and expressed my fear to a woman, telling her my kids were down in the Valley, we hadn’t been in CA very long. She reassured me, and showed me where people were taking shelter in specially-built earthquake shelters in the mountainside. Huge bunkers with thick concrete and dense glass windows, they were literally earthquake proof. We all survived. I wondered if it wasn’t maybe God’s way of saying – take the plunge, I’ll take care of you even if everything seems to be going wrong around you. Take a chance.

Considering and praying further, I asked for prayer at church and a trusted friend and church leader who prayed with me shared a ‘word’ that seemed to confirm that stepping forward while trusting God to carry me was indeed the way to go. Other things fell into place as previously discussed in Life Choices and Changes Part Two. And the process got underway.

I’m battling with ambivalence right now. While my father supports this move intellectually, I can see and hear that neither he nor my dear mom are happy about us living so far away, and of course I can understand that. These are two of their precious grandchildren I’m proposing to remove from their lives. My folks are in their seventies, health is an issue and we’ll be very far away. My best friend in SA is very, very unhappy about it and is doing her best to find ways of keeping us here. My kids’ dad is now starting to express his sadness at losing regular contact with them and of course, I understand and empathize with that too! On the other side, my freelance writing and editing business seems to be taking off after two plus years of struggle. But the likelihood is that in order to secure a new contract position in the US, I’m going to have to go back into nursing fulltime here, to get current experience, either now or next year. Honestly? I have no desire to do that. Nursing is a means to an end, not an end in itself.

I’ll be meeting with the agency director this coming Saturday, and will find out where I stand in terms of jobs, process and financial commitments. Much depends on that too.

Oh, groan!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Elleann

Open letter to God.

2006-07-19T10:27:00.000+02:00

I can lose myself in writing, or in reading, or in watching a DVD, in emailing with friends, or in endless, fascinating web-surfing … I can talk about moving to America or not moving, I can talk about great new job opportunities, I can talk about my wonderful kids and my hopes for them, but none of this addresses the real questions that are buried deep in my heart at the moment.

Is God really real?

Does He actually care about us individually?

And if so, is there anyway to really, really, REALLY hear from him?

I have such skepticism about this right now, such doubt, and such a need to KNOW!

I had an experience several years ago (Oct 2003, to be exact) where I ‘thought’ I heard God speak to me. Now, I’m definitely not given to mystical experiences. I don’t hear voices or see visions. I have, like many others, done my time on my knees with the Bible open before, seeking guidance or at least a ‘word’ from God. I’ve even opened the Bible at random and stuck a finger in! What a joke!

Once before, I believed I ‘heard’ God speaking to me. Back in 1984, I was a shy, unconfident twenty-something, with a track record of few romantic relationships. I’d made a recommitment to Christianity and found my way to a nice church. I met a nice enough guy, we went out a few times, he seemed interested, but I didn’t really know … then in church one Sunday night, this ‘voice’ sounds in my head: “You have met your future husband and he is XXXX.”  Zing!

I married that guy within 6 months and divorced him ten years later. Now, did I marry him because I was madly in love, or because I saw a good father for my future children, or because I couldn’t live without him? No, no and no. More like I was afraid of never marrying at all, several of my friends were also getting married, here was someone who was interested enough to propose (albeit not very romantically), and I believed God had told me he was to be my husband.

So, jump forward to 2003. Single again, I’d just read a brilliant, brilliant book by Larry Crabb called Shattered Dreams and had walked thru an experience of truly accepting that if God intended for me to stay alone forever more, that was fine with me.  I would look to Him to meet all my needs for love, nurturing, provision, and so. After all, doesn’t He promise in the Bible to care for widows and orphans (and presumably divorcees too)? In fact, it was a time in my life when I was deeply, deeply in love with God

So, I’m driving my daughter somewhere and we see a procession of wedding cars go by, festooned with ribbons and whatnot. My usual, cynical, knee-jerk reaction kicked in:

        Poor things! Such optimism, such hope, such fools to believe it can work out!
Next thing, I ‘hear’ somewhere inside me: “By this time next year, you will be married again.” Zing! Just like that, a promise, I thought, from God. I was a turbulent mix of emotions, but above all, my response was “ … only if this is Your will for me, Lord.”

I diarized the date, recorded the experience, sought confirmation in a sign, was given that sign the same day—and then I waited, with the prayer continually on my lips that God would enable me to continue looking to Him first, not to some guy I had yet to meet. I really focused on keeping God first, in seeking Him in all things. I even shared it with my minister’s wife, who said that God had told her that he was answering my prayer for remarriage in the affirmative.

Well, the year came and went, and another one, and another one … and I’m not married. At this point, I don’t even know any eligible, available men that I’d want to marry.

So, what do I make of that? Was it God? If so, did He change his mind? Was it a test of my faith to see if I will still trust in God even if He appears to be breaking His promise to me? Or did He answer my prayer by NOT letting it happen because it wasn’t His will and he wanted to see if I meant what I said by “… only if its Your will? Was it not God at all, but the Devil, attempting to deceive me? Or was it just me, indulging in some heavy wishful thinking and God had absolutely nothing to do with it?

How the heck can I ever know? All I DO know, for an absolute fact, is that nowadays I am deeply mistrustful of ‘words from God’, whether they come into my head or thru someone else’s lips.

Tbc

Elleann

Ambivalence

2006-07-17T16:31:00.000+02:00

Today I got what felt like a real kick in the stomach.

My ex sent me an email in which he first complained about how much money all the kids' stuff is costing him. Now in fairness, not once in twelve years has he ever defaulted on paying anything for the kids. He is very, very committed to them, is as involved in their lives as he can be, and loves them dearly. Ten out of ten for being a good dad!

But actually, the money thing wasn’t the kick in the stomach. He went on to say:

I am feeling quite sore about the kids right now. The holiday was a very sad one for me, looking at them each day, thinking this is probably the last time we'll go on such a holiday and that soon I'll only be seeing them once a year, if that, depending on their timetables. Whatever, it is just rather emotional and the possibility of either of them ever living in my home for a while slips away as the plans for moving to the USA fall into place and the day draws closer. It has cost me a lot to stay in touch with them over the years, emotionally and financially but progressively they have been moved further and further away and it requires more and more to keep up the contact!!!

I can empathize with the emotional pain he feels. I really can. And the last few blog entries have revealed my ambivalence re the whole moving to America thing from my side. But the last part (in bold) was a real kicker. He makes it sound as if I have deliberately kept moving them further and further away from him, which is totally untrue.

After we separated back in 1994, we lived round the corner from him for three and a half years. Then, after discussing it with him, the kids and I moved away from that upmarket suburban area to a more rural environment. As a single working mom, I didn’t think I could keep up with the lifestyles they would see around them in that part of town, and I didn’t want them to grow up feel deprived, or less-than just because we couldn’t afford all the latest gadgets and cars and stuff. And it was the right choice to make for them, I think. They have happy lives and good friends, are well-adjusted, have both committed their lives to God, and they are both doing pretty well in school too. Financially it has been nip-and-tuck, but on the whole, we are doing well – on the pro side: I bought the house we live in five years ago. On the con side: I drive a crappy old clunky car.

But moving here was a bad choice for me, in terms of my staying single, though. This area is full of happy little families and retirees – eligible singles can be counted on one hand. Now, if this were a movie, there’d be someone like Viggo Mortensen running the local bookshop – sorry, Vig – artshop! and after some ups and downs, we’d fall madly in love and live happily ever after. But my life is more like one of those dark, dreary art movies where nothing is ever resolved and you come out of the movie house going “Huh? What the f--- was that all about?!!?”

I digress. I’ve responded to his email, expressed my hurt and acknowledged the pain he feels. Leave it at that.

Update: He responded to my mail, said sorry for "passing on my upheaval over money and all that stuff onto you. It's how I feel, not a statement of fact."

I figured as much, but I guess my ambivalence and worries got to me as well, hence my overreaction. Back to my art movie life ...

Writer's Paralysis ...

2006-07-16T11:25:00.000+02:00

… is what I think I've got.

Writer’s Paralysis worse than Writer’s Block, ‘cos WB usually means you don’t quite know where to go next in your story, but WP means you can’t even get that story going because you don’t know what the story is about; you don’t know what you want it to be about; you don’t know what genre it’s supposed to be; you don’t know who the characters are, or where they live, or why they may or may not do any or all or none of the things you might ask them to do. You have serious doubts, and I mean really serious doubts, about whether you will ever be able to be the writer you always dreamed of being.

Writer’s Paralysis is hell.

Throughout the last six to nine months I’ve dreamed of the moment when my exam would be behind me and I would be free to write again. That time is here and thank you very much, I now have Writer’s Paralysis!! I sit and gaze at the bright, blank screen of my lovely new notebook computer and feel nothing but weakness and despair. I lie in a steaming hot bath, a place which usually unleashes ideas, connections, insights and understanding, and all I get is hot and sweaty and prune-textured finger tips. Instead of walking along the beach getting invigorated and inspired, I moulder away the hours in aimless net-surfing and dvd-watching and food cupboard-visiting.

This morning, searching for inspiration, I read an excerpt from an article that appeared in the NY Times online edition of Book News, about author Kim Edwards (48) and her debut novel ‘The Memory Keeper’s Daughter’ which is apparently zooming up the trade paperback best seller charts. “With the ethical dilemma and family drama at its heart, “The Memory Keeper’s Daughter” is appealing to readers who want a literary page turner…” Ah! A new novelist my age, writing the kind of book I’d most like to write! So I went and checked her out, hoping to maybe uncover a secret or two, a trick to breaking out of WP, and breaking into good writing (not to mention bestsellerdom!). The excerpt from the novel on Amazon looked really, really good – beautiful word flow, characterization, everything … so on to her bio:

Kim Edwards is the author of a short story collection, The Secrets of a Fire King, which was an alternate for the 1998 PEN/Hemingway Award, and has won both a Whiting Award and the Nelson Algren Award. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, she currently teaches writing at the University of Kentucky.

Despair. How can a South African-born and raised woman with no education in literature or writing ever hope to write that way? I just don’t have the grounding, the education, the understanding, or the way with words that people like Kim Edwards, Sue Monk Kidder, Marilynne Robinson and Ann Patchett have. I don’t have the flow of ideas and gift for dialogue and characterization that my talented and prolific writing friend Pat has. All I have right now is the fear that if I don’t get past this, I may never, ever become a writer of any description at all. And if I am not a writer, then what am I?

Nothing?

Maybe this is part of the paralysis – the fear that if I don’t succeed as a writer, then my life will have been meaningless. After all, as a divorcee in her late forties with a minor weight problem and braces, as a freelancer who lives from job to job, as a single who has had no ‘relationship’ for nearly ten years, there’s a large part of me that feels like a hideous failure. Yes, I have wonderful kids and yes, I have a few dear friends, and yes, I am relatively healthy, and yes, for the moment I’m surviving financially. But is that enough for me to call my life ‘successful’? If so, why do I feel this pressing need to move to the US? Why do I feel that if I don’t get writing again very soon, I’ll be sinking into some kind of pit of mediocrity and loss from which I may never emerge?

There are other factors that contribute to this paralysis, I know, that I need to face up to and smash down, if I am to move past this. It feels very much like the fight I sometimes have to keep hold of my faith in God, the fight I sometimes have to keep depression at bay, the fight I often have to not give in to the feelings of loneliness that being single generates. When it feels like there’s a rock in my gut, and all I can see is mud and slime and darkness, and all I feel like doing is crying. And therein lies a clue …

Because I have come to see that crying is a safe place for me. When I cry, I’m giving in to the feelings. I’m giving up, I’m saying ‘I can’t do anything about this, whatever it may be’. I can be passive, and bitter, and feel sorry for myself. And while that’s uncomfortable, it’s also safe. No scary changing-of-attitude needed. No scary ‘I’m going to get past this’ decision.

And that is why I’m back in Lord of the Rings territory (my all-time favorite movies). Partly Frodo making his decision to carry the ring at the Council of Elrond, partly Frodo staring up at the fires of Mount Doom, but mainly Aragorn at the entrance to Dimholt Road after Elrond says to him: “Put aside the ranger. Become who you were born to be.” Frodo had Sam by his side, but Aragorn stepped out alone, not even knowing whether he would survive but prepared to risk all to try and become who he was born to be.

The way to go? I think so…

Elleann.

Happy Birthday to Me!

2006-07-13T16:35:00.000+02:00

A week late, maybe, but today I gave myself a present that will (hopefully) be around for a long time. At the ripe old age of … pick a number … I was fitted with orthodontic braces. The bottom row is normal metallic-looking, but the top row includes what they call clear braces, the almost-not-there kind of braces. They’re going to be on for at least 16 months.

A dear friend who is my age had her bottom teeth done about a year ago. Her husband, who is a couple of years younger than both of us, wanted to know why we were bothering with teeth straightening. He didn’t actually come out and say ‘… at your age’, but you could kind of hear it echoing there anyway. She told him it’s because we can’t afford to go for facelifts. He looked blank. I guess it’s a girl thing ….

I asked the orthodontist how old his oldest patient ever was and he said: ‘A man in his eighties.’ Next oldest, he added, was a retired professor in his sixties. I quickly changed the subject before he could go on to say ‘…and then there’s you.’

My mouth feels truly weird, all tight and constrained and odd. 16 months of this? I can’t even chew yet – soup for lunch, soup for supper – even the bit of bread I made all soggy and squashed up felt impossible to eat.

Dear God, maybe I’ll end up skinny after all! Skinny with glasses and braces? Hurrah, I’ve always felt like I missed out on being a real teenager, maybe I’m getting a chance to relive those years after all. So, bring on the hot boys! But come to think of it, these braces probably mean death to any dreams of romance for this single. Who’d want to kiss a forty-something with a mouth full of metal?

What was I thinking?!?!

Happy birthday to me!

I haven't been there in the longest time ...

2006-07-11T11:49:00.000+02:00

Back in my youth, I was a Billy Joel fan. (Yeah, my kids laugh at me too … ) But lately, I’ve been listening to him again, after I downloaded some of his music to my laptop. And I mean really listening, to the point of going to websites to read the lyrics. And today, I was listening to yet another old, familiar favorite song when suddenly I started really listening. And this song stirred all those nameless longings in me again …

The Longest Time

Oh, oh, oh
For the longest time
Oh, oh, oh
For the longest time
If you said goodbye to me tonight
There would still be music left to write
What else could I do
I'm so inspired by you
That hasn't happened for the longest time

Once I thought my innocence was gone
Now I know that happiness goes on
That's where you found me
When you put your arms around me
I haven't been there for the longest time

Oh, oh, oh
For the longest time
Oh, oh, oh
For the longest
I'm that voice you're hearing in the hall
And the greatest miracle of all
Is how I need you
And how you needed me too
That hasn't happened for the longest time

Maybe this won't last very long
But you feel so right
And I could be wrong
Maybe I've been hoping too hard
But I've gone this far
And it's more than I hoped for

Who knows how much further we'll go on
Maybe I'll be sorry when you're gone
I'll take my chances
I forgot how nice romance is
I haven't been there for the longest time

I had second thoughts at the start
I said to myself
Hold on to your heart
Now I know the woman that you are
You're wonderful so far
And it's more than I hoped for

I don't care what consequence it brings
I have been a fool for lesser things
I want you so bad
I think you ought to know that
I intend to hold you for the longest time

(Thanks to Matt's Music Page for the lyrics. )

Elleann.

Life changes and choices - Part Two

2006-07-11T09:29:00.000+02:00

“More tomorrow” should have read “More Next Month!” Ha!

Back in the mid-1990s, I became aware that more and more companies were recruiting SA nurses for positions in the UK, Saudi, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US. Now, in my heart of hearts, I’ve never been ‘Proudly South African’! Yes, this country is beautiful and yes, my family all live here. But still I yearned to move somewhere – anywhere, really – that wasn’t crime-ridden, corrupt, full of white guilt and black anger, where jobs weren’t handed out on the basis of skin color, where my kids would have real opportunities to follow their dreams and live in relative peace and safety.

I wanted out.

But my kids were still young and needed their dad, and he needed them. So I put it to one side, all the time thinking – I could leave anytime, if I really wanted to. Until, in early 2005, I realized that time was ticking by and the possibility for me to emigrate wouldn’t be around forever. I did my research and honed in on a small company that specialized in placing nurses in the US – a girl I knew had made the move through them and she was very happy. I called them, and learned that the US director was in CT – a twice-yearly occurrence. I met with him the next day and within a week, things were underway.

The big plus of going with him was that he recruited for a hospital group that, unlike just about every other agency and group, did not require the prospective nurse-emigrant to be currently fulltime employed as a nurse. My part-time relief work was regarded as sufficient in the light of my CV. In July, I received an excellent job offer. The deal included a generous relocation allowance, plus the hospital would cover all the expenses related to licensing fees, visas, INS services, most of the flight costs etc, for my two kids and I. So I went for the medicals, and started studying for the NCLEX – the US nursing board exam which you have to pass to be licensed as an RN in the States.

Then, at the end of the year, the blow fell. The US hospital underwent an internal reshuffle and recruitment of foreign nurses got axed. I now had no guarantee of work or of financial support for the move. But I couldn’t give up. There had been so many ‘clear signs’ – a dream I’d had, words from a minister I respected, the timing of my meeting with the agency and so on. So I studied like crazy for the next six months and in June 2006, I flew to the UK, took the NCLEX exam in London—and passed it first time. So I am now officially licensed to practice in the USA!

So, now I stand at the door of my future. I’ll be meeting with my US agent in about ten days time and hope to learn from him what the job situation is, how the whole thing could play out. There are so many factors here, though. I’m not a specialist nurse, even though I have previous experience in ICU. So I’d probably need to find a basic med-surg position somewhere. Somewhere, of course, is a whole other story in itself.

But back here at home, my freelance writing and editing career is going from strength to strength. I just landed a contract position with an ad agency to write web copy for a major restaurant group, which has several websites that need weekly updating. Articles, stories, event coverage, educational stuff… interesting work and great experience for me as a freelance. I’m also part of a team pitching on a big tender project, which, if won, could mean several months’ steady work at a really good rate!

However, if current employment as an RN is an issue for a future employer in the US, this may mean I need to go back to nursing here and now, in SA, at miserable rates of pay.

What I’d really like, of course, is to find a job in the US that uses my writing and editing skills against a background of healthcare or nursing, meaning I don’t need to go into hospital work now. Best of both worlds, see?

It’s a dream. A dream I can only leave in God’s hands, cos He’s the one who made me the way I am, gave me the skills, talents, yearnings and desires that I have. So, it’s over to Him.

Elleann.

Life changes and choices - Part One

2006-06-03T22:09:00.000+02:00

One of my all-time favorite sci-fi novels is Robert Heinlein’s The Number of the Beast, published in 1980. (This wonderful book parodies the pulp fiction novels of the 30s, as well as paying homage to the Martian novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs.) In this story however, the biblical “number of the beast” turns out to be, not 666, but 6 to the power of 6 to the power of 6 or 10314424798490535546171949056, which equals the number of parallel universes that Zeb, Deety, Jake and Hilda could have visited if they’d had the time…

Parallel universes fascinate me… all those what-if worlds of the past, present and future – I’ve often wished I had a way of finding out what might-have-been in my life, if only I’d chosen a different path to the one I did…

When I was 17, way back in the Dark Ages, there was no such thing as career guidance. I was the oldest child, first of four, and I hadn’t a clue as to what I wanted to do with my life. I knew I liked literature, writing, film, drama, English – but somehow, choosing a career that started with a university education just never came up for discussion. Maybe my parents couldn’t afford it? Maybe we thought I didn’t have the brains for it? I can’t remember. What I do remember is that in the middle of my matric year, my grandmother got sick. I visited her in the state hospital and I remember light, bright airy wards, where the sun shone in through big windows and the gardens outside were dominated by oak trees, squirrels, lilies and agapanthus. The nurses were sweet-smiling, calm, moving round the wards in their starched white uniforms with starched white caps and shiny laced-up shoes. It felt magical to me.

I applied, got accepted and six months later, started my training at that same hospital. My ‘A’ for English, my love for literature and words, my interest in drama—ended up submerged in the nursing world for the next twenty years. The closest I got to literature was reading books like The Magus (John Fowles), The World according to Garp (John Irving) and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (the fabulous and late-lamented Douglas Adams). The closest I got to writing was documenting the bowel actions, aches, pains and pills of my patient’s in the nursing Kardex. The closest I got to drama was seeing Saturday Night Fever and Grease at the flicks!

I’ve worked in nursing almost non-stop since then. Sometimes fulltime, sometimes part time, sometimes day, sometimes night, through singleness and marriage, though my ex-husband’s three years at bible college, through two pregnancies when we subsisted on my income and the good graces of his parents, through the drawn-out months of the divorce, through the two and a half years of my post-divorce health breakdown, through croup and bronchitis, through temper tantrums, childhood depressions and tonsillectomies, through the good and the bad times … I worked.

I have to say, though, that there were times when I really, really liked being a nurse. I like caring for people, relieving pain, advising, helping, counseling, supporting … I liked my years in psychiatry, I liked understanding what makes people tick, I liked learning … but I didn’t like the boring, repetitive nature of most days on the wards. I didn’t like getting up at 5.30 to be at work by 6:45am, I didn’t like leaving my babies with the nanny or the day mother or the crèche.

And during that time, I forgot that I used to like to write. I forgot that I had a vivid imagination. I forgot the joy of the printed word. Movies were for the weekends when the kids went to their dad, books were limited to Danielle Steele . I was in survival mode. Creativity showed up now and then in dreams about starting a business that would earn millions, in dreams of winning the Lotto, in dreams of meeting the real Mr. Right-for-me …

But in 2000, God put me through a bit of spiritual surgery, removing from my heart a dream that I’d clung to for several years. And in the aftermath, as I contemplated the aridity of my life-minus-the-fantasy, I started fiddling around with writing again. Puerile, imperfect scribblings littered my hard drive, words filled my mind, dreams fired up my imagination. I started a writers group, went to a couple of Christian writing conferences in the States (huge, unlooked-for blessings, both!) and moved out of the clinical field into working as a case manager / report writer and editor for a managed healthcare company. Retrenchment followed in early 2004 and I lived on UIF and a small redundancy package for six months before deciding to pursue a freelance writing / editing career.

Two and a half years later, we’re still living from hand to mouth, as I mix freelance work with occasional nursing shifts. Most of the work comes via a friend who runs a very successful graphic design studio, so I write and edit ads, brochures, folder inserts, directories and so on. When the work is there, the pay is great. When there’s no work, I do transcription (long hours, low pay but it’s at home) or nursing (long hours, mediocre pay, away from home). With some serious marketing, (not my strongest point), I reckon I could make a go of this, and still keep on writing fiction on my own time.

BUT … isn’t there always a ‘but’? BUT, there’s another dream in the pipeline. A good dream, a wonderful dream, a life-changing dream. A dream that will upset my current career applecart completely.

More tomorrow …

Anna Quindlen said ...

2006-06-02T22:19:00.000+02:00

“… I read and walked for miles at night along the beach, writing bad blank verse and searching endlessly for someone wonderful who would step out of the darkness and change my life. It never crossed my mind that that person could be me.”

This quote intrigues me. As a Christian, I learned that I need to let go, abandon my life to God, to leave all my hopes and dreams and desires in his hands. I also learned that no man could ever be that ‘wonderful person’ for me, because men are just as human and needy and imperfect as women—as I am--and no one man can ever meet my every need. So all I can do is leave my needs in God's hands, look to him for fulfilment, contentment, and love.

Reading Anna Q gives me pause for thought, though… and it's not a comfortable pause, either.

Unravelling my life

2006-05-31T21:48:00.000+02:00

I started reading Richard Foster’s book on prayer a few days ago, hoping to find my way back to the time when to breathe was to pray, and to pray was to know with unshakeable knowing that God IS and IS GOOD. Chapter One was Simple Prayer. ‘Dear God, help me! Bless me! Feed me!’ and so on. Prayer 101, so to speak. But Chapter Two is called The Prayer of the Forsaken and when I read it, something clicked deep inside.

"We know theologically that God is always with us, but theological niceties are little help when we enter the Sahara of the heart, when we experience real spiritual desolation ... we feel abandoned by God. Every hope evaporates the moment we reach for it. Every dream dies the moment we try to realize it. We question, we doubt, we struggle. We pray and the words seem empty... etc."

He goes on to explain what a blessing the dark night can be, as God uses it to strip us of dependence on outward things, like church and liturgy and control - and also strips us of dependence on inward things, like our superficial drives and human strivings and needs. I groaned in recognition of some of the things he said, like: "...we become tentative and unsure of ourselves. The nagging questions become relentless 'Is prayer only a psychological trick? Is there any real meaning in the universe? Does God really exist and if he does, is he good and intent on our goodness, or not?'” Yes and amen! Those are my questions! And yet, I feel so afraid and so guilty when they come spilling out of me, swooshing out on tides of tears and bitterness and desperation.

I recognize this place. I’ve been here before. The wasteland is familiar, full of pain and doubt and yearning. Two years ago, I spent nearly nine months in this place, and when I left it, I hoped it was for good. But it seems that for some reason, I’m back here again. Am I just depressed? It doesn’t feel that way. Am I stressed out? Maybe – but then, as a good Christian, shouldn’t I be clinging to God to get thru the stress, not standing here wondering if He’s real, or if He cares. But that’s exactly how I’ve been feeling of late.

Richard Foster goes on to say that through our barrenness of soul, God is producing detachment, humility, patience and perseverance. And he concludes this particular chapter with the words quoted above, spoken first by Bernard of Clairvaux: O my God, deep calls unto deep. The deep of my profound misery calls to the deep of your infinite mercy.

There are several areas that trouble me at present and that are so interwoven in my mind that it’s going to take a while to unravel them all. Things like our proposed emigration and related issues of what kind of work am I going to do for the next twenty years and where will I be doing it. Will I be spending the rest of my life alone, unloved and undesired by a man? Will I ever find contentment in God alone?

One thing at a time. Starting tomorrow….

Elleann.
Skating warily over thin ice.

God? Where are you?

2006-05-31T09:54:00.000+02:00

“O my God, deep calls unto deep. The deep of my profound misery calls to the deep of your infinite mercy.” Bernard of Clairvaux

“God, where are you!?

What have I done to make you hide from me? Are you playing cat and mouse with me or are your purposes larger than my perceptions? I feel alone, lost, forsaken.

You are the God who specializes in revealing yourself. You showed yourself to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. When Moses wanted to know what you looked like, you obliged him. Why them—and not me?
I am tired of praying.
I am tired of asking.
I am tired of waiting.

But I will keep on praying and asking and waiting because I have nowhere else to go.”

Taken from Richard Foster’s book Prayer – finding the heart’s true home

I’m walking in a fog at present, living somewhere between hope and despair. There is too much in life for me to cope with right now, and God seems absent. Stone cold, granite-faced, not-there … and the only way I know to deal with it is to try and write it down. I barely have the energy to do even this, so when I read the above this morning, I thought it would at least be a place to start.

Caitlin gone home.

2006-03-23T21:29:00.000+01:00

Sweet Caitlin went home to be with the Lord this morning at 11:00.

RIP.

Caitlin

2006-03-23T09:08:00.000+01:00

My sister's niece Caitlin (12) was involved in a near-drowning last Saturday morning. Read the story here. Prayers from around the world are being offered up for her and her family. For those of who joining with us in prayer support, here is a picture of the little girl you are praying for - taken about a year ago.

Caitlin is still comatose and on life support, but her physical condition is stabilizing. We continue to trust God for her emotional, mental and spiritual healing.

Thanks to all for love, support and prayers.

Elleann

Tell me a Story!

2005-11-13T11:12:00.000+01:00

My contribution to the November 'Writers Craft Fair' edition of the Celebration of New Christian Fiction blog carnival. To visit other stalls, call in at Violet Nesdoly's blog for directions!

When I flew back to Cape Town after attending the Mt Hermon Christian Writers Conference in California last year, I ended up bent double beneath a backpack crammed with books! The darn thing even set off the sensors at LAX and I had to unpack it, ending up with a bunch of novels and inspirational books, and a collossal pile of 'how-to-write' tomes strewn across the counter. The bemused security person stared at the books and then at me, before saying: ‘You expecting a boring ride, lady?’

In South Africa, good books on writing are often hard to find (and even more expensive to import) hence my toting home multiple orders for friends, fresh fodder for the book club, as well as a selection of new books on writing techniques for myself, which included Self Editing for Fiction Writers (Browne and King), Getting into Character (Brandilyn Collins) and The First Five Pages (Noah Lukeman).

But oddly enough, the book that has since become my personal writing bible wasn’t even in that backpack, despite that fact that it was on one editor’s 'Most Recommended' list at Mt Hermon! I’d looked at it in the bookshop, scanned the first few hard-to-read pages, checked out the price, performed the dollars to rands conversion, let out a silent screech—and returned it to the shelf.

But as the months went by and my critique partners started raving about it, quoting from it, and writing better as a result of reading it, I realized I had to get hold of the thing. None of our local bookshops carried it, so I turned to the library and after an eternity of a wait, I received the one and only copy in the whole provincial library system.

I devoured it. Breathed it, ate it, slept it and dreamt it until I reached the end, then started all over again. I was completely and utterly hooked. I learned about …

… The love of story—the belief that your vision can be expressed only through story, that characters can be more real than people, that the fictional world can be more profound than the concrete.

… The love of truth—the belief that lies cripple the artist, that every truth in life must be questioned, down to one’s own secret motive

... The love of humanity—a willingness to empathize with suffering souls, to crawl inside their skins and see the world through their eyes.

… The love of dreaming—the pleasure in taking leisurely rides on your imagination just to see where it leads.

… The love of language—the delight in sound and sense, syntax and semantics.

… The love of duality—a feel for life’s hidden contradictions, a healthy suspicion that things are not what they seem.

… The love of perfection—the passion to write and rewrite in pursuit of the perfect moment.

… And finally, the love of self—a strength that doesn’t need to be constantly reassured, than never doubts that you are indeed a writer …

But that was just the start. This author took me deep into the world of storytelling. He taught me about the elements of story—the structure spectrum and its relationship to setting, genre, character and meaning. About story design—from the inciting incident to resolution. About the principles of antagonism, exposition, characters, problems and solutions.

By now, however, the library was petulantly wanting to know when they could get their copy back—didn’t I think four months was a little long to keep a book? With extreme reluctance I returned it. And then (bless his heart!) my brother in the UK sourced a paperback edition and mailed it to me as a belated birthday present!

Happy, happy, happy birthday to me!

So this, now, is the book on writing I will recommend first and foremost to anyone who wants to dive in deep and really get to grips with the craft of storytelling.

STORY – Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee.

This book arose, btw, from McKee's highly respected Story Seminars - and his graduate list includes such luminaries as the writers of the movies LOTR, A Beautiful Mind, Shrek, Phantom of the Opera, Law & Order, CSI plus a whole ream of Emmy, Academy, DGA and WGA award winners. Don't be put off by the 'screenwriting' aspect - the input applies equally well to novelists!

In his introduction, McKee says (see, now even I’m quoting him!) that his book Story is about …

'... principles, not rules; about eternal, universal forms, not formulas; about archetypes, not stereotypes; about thoroughness, not shortcuts, about the realities not the mysteries of writing; about mastering the art, not second-guessing the marketplace; about respect, not disdain, for the audience; and about originality, not duplication.’

It’s a winner!

Elleann.

Unraveling life … one word at a time.

Embracing the mystery

2005-11-08T19:44:00.000+01:00

It's become something of a catch phrase, hasn't it?

"Embrace the Mystery ... "

I made a comment on a friend's blog a few days ago, about what it is like being a post-modern, emergent and often confused Christian these day and how part of our growth as followers of Jesus includes "an increasing ability to tolerate uncertainty, to live with mystery - embrace it, in fact."

Today, as I drove across the beautiful mountains that separate our small, rural community from the big city of Cape Town, I found myself talking to God, as I often do when driving. And I wondered what on earth He sees in us miserable, mixed-up, weak, messy humans that makes Him want to love us? I mean, here's a Being who created universes and atoms and angels and thought and light and sunrises - with all His power and creative ability, why did He bother with us?

I don't get it, God.

But as I considered the unfathomable nature of the Almighty, I realized anew that I am never, ever going to get my logical mind around concepts like eternity. Or infinity. Or omniscience and omnipresence. None of those things, ever! They are beyond my ability to understand in the same way that concepts like 'how is soil was formed, where does rain come from and what do dark and light mean?" are beyond the understanding of an earthworm who otherwise tunnels happily through lovely, loamy, moist soil. That worm will never know what it feels like to fall in love or why human males have a need to engage in battles!

But right now, that worm doesn't need to know. All it needs to do is to embrace the mystery of the magnificent world it lives in, and trust that the Creator will take care of it. But I'm not going to take the analogy any further- we are not defenseless worms, nor is a careless gardener with a sharp spade the equivalent of our Heavenly Father!

But thinking this way made me realize again that "not knowing" the answers to the questions about God gives me, oddly enough, an enormous amount of HOPE. Hope that there IS a God who is far greater than me, who has His finger on the pulse of the world, and even better than that, knows the end from the beginnning. (Or however it is He constructed that whole eternity thing ... )

Having grown up as a evangelical protestant with black-and-white religious rules, I find it a wee bit scary these days to be embracing the mystery, not only of the BIG questions, but also to be considering issues like - maybe it's not a sin to be gay? Maybe the Bible isn't the 'inerrant' Word of God? Maybe the Church isn't all it's cracked up to be?

I don't have many of the answers yet. It's all part of the mystery. As a follower of Jesus, all I can do is embrace the unfathomable mystery of His astonishing love for me.

Elleann.

Unravelling life ... one word at a time.

The second reason ...

2005-11-06T08:01:00.000+01:00

It's official. I am now a NaNoWriMo 2005 dropout.

Although I feel relieved to have made the decision, I hate the feeling that comes with having started something and then not completed it. My inner tape player starts spooling the same old tunes I've played time and time again over the years - no-good loser, weakling, drop-out ... failure. But having examined my reasons - second one coming up now - I can actually turn that tape off this time - woo hoo! And that's progress, big personal inner progress. I must also admit that I feel some regret, but that regret had nothing to do with my not writing! It's purely regret at not being a part of the 'team' any more, of not going every day to see how my word counts stacks up against my writing buddies' word counts - in other words, I'm missing not being in the competition anymore! So down, vile competitive spirit! Begone!

So, the other reason.

And maybe this is an even more important reason in terms of life. I gave up NaNo because I had to make a choice about my present priorities. I'm in the middle of a life-changing process right now. Having been born, bred and lived the last forty-plus years in South Africa, I'm attempting at last to fulfil a long-held dream of emigrating to the US!! Woo hoo again!!

It's quite a long process and can take two to two and a half years in total. I received a job offer from a hospital group in Northern California. But the next step is that I have to take an exam called the NCLEX , which will enable me to practice as an RN in the US. This is not an easy exam to pass - current stats reveal that only 75% of first timers pass the test, and only 42% of repeat takers get through. There is also a financial outlay as the test gets taken in the US and airfares are pricy. IF I pass, I will be reimbursed from my relocation allowance. If I fail, I will be deep in debt and my hopes and dreams will be in tatters and shreds.

So, with the exam looming in Feb next year, I have to study a lot more than I am doing right now. And at my 'advanced' age, it also takes more mental effort than it used to.

So, tied to my feeling discussed in yesterday's post, and that my evaluation test scores are only showing up at round 60% (you have to be hitting a regular 75% to be ready for the NCLEX), I don't feel bad anymore about being a NaNo dropout.

Elleann.

Unravelling life ... one word at a time.

Not this time ...

2005-11-05T07:00:00.000+01:00

Well. I just learned my short story for the FiF contest didn't make the final cut. Sad, sad, sad ... then I found a link to one of the finalist's stories in the comments section of Dave Long's blog. I read the story, to see what the 'competition' was like, why my story didn't make it. All I can say is - awesome writing! Congratulations, Mike!! If this a measure of the calibre of the entrants, then it's no wonder I'm not among them.

That set me thinking about the writing I am doing now, however. The NaNo stuff. As mentioned below, I got going - and then I got stuck! I have the outline, I have the characters, I know the conflicts, but still I got stuck. And so I've been stressed out for the last couple days, knowing I was falling way behind the daily word count. (By now I should be up at somewhere round 6680 words, and I'm only at about 1500!)

Why? Because I don't like what I'm writing and I don't like the way the characters are behaving. Under the pressure of just churning out masses of words, I'm losing sight of the nuances of the characters - their attitudes, their accents, their hearts - the small things that make them really real. They're starting to walk and talk like cardboard cutouts instead of real people. I find I'm writing scenes just to 'tell what happens' and I'm forgetting about things like 'the turn' (McKee), the scene and sequel structure (Dwight Swain), pacing and so much more. All the things I've spent such a long time learning.

So why am I pulverizing myself just to turn out a badly-written 50 K novel, when what I really want to do is learn how to write the way Mike does, to write prose that sings and stirs the heart?

So I guess I should thank Dave for not choosing my short story for the final cut! If something I labored long and hard over isn't good enough yet, then a 50K novel written under pressure is certainly not going to be something I will feel proud of. I already have 2 other unfinished, unpublished novels gathering moss on my hard drive - do I really want another?

Maybe not.

Elleann.

Just unravelling today ...

Day Two begins

2005-11-02T16:27:00.000+01:00

The first day of NaNoWriMo is over and I survived! But only just ...

After not having written anything for the last while, it was kinda scary to be faced with a crispy clean screen, but nevertheless I sat down, ready to go. I'd had a few ideas for a story, but hadn't done any serious preparation. So, guess what happened? I wrote and deleted, wrote and deleted, wrote and deleted .. and then it was nearly 10.30 pm and I had nothing to post to my word count.

The problem was I'd had this fantasy about 'just writing'. I'd sit down, pen in hand (so to speak!) and effortlessly pour out reams of deathless prose. I'd see this amazing, moving, award-winning novel take shape by itself, solely because I was 'doing NaNo'. Ha ha ha! So much for that fantasy! I realized that I was going to have to do something and do it pretty damn quick cos my NaNo writing buddies had already posted their first word counts - 1300 and 408 words respectively. What to do, what to do? I paced and thought and paced some more.

And I remembered that when I signed up, my esteemed writing partner and dear friend suggested I write the novel I'd just finished outlining, The Devil's Dust. I'd hesitated, then said no, because I like to write slowly, carefully, crafting every word, phrase and sentence. I like to take my time and write 'properly', and isn't NaNo all about writing with abandon, and daring, and carelessness? Yes, all of that, but it's also about writing with freedom--the freedom to make mistakes and make discoveries and make a mess and make it up and have fun! So could I write a book I really cared about that way? Wouldn't it 'ruin' it if I wrote it in 30 days, at top speed?

Did I have a choice?

If I wanted to do NaNo, I'd have to get going with something. In Devil's Dust, I have a story, I have characters, I have conflict, I have love and anguish and death and - I have a novel I could write!

So I sat down and started. And at 11:55 I posted my first word count - 862 words.

OKAY!!

Elleann.

If you're going to skate on thin ice ... you may as well dance!

NaNoWriMo

2005-11-01T20:43:00.000+01:00

Along with umpteen thousand other wannabe novelists, I signed up for NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month. The shortest cut to a nervous breakdown that I know of! Simply reset your priority clock and push novel writing to the top of the list, and then churn out 50K words within 30 days. Easy, ain't it?

The other things I'm pushing down the priority list are studying for the NCLEX, maintaining an income, keeping the kids and me fed, clothed, clean and sane ... just the usual stuff!

So wish me luck!

Elleann.

Unravelling life ... one day at a time.

October Celebration of New Christian Fiction

2005-10-18T20:54:00.000+02:00

It's very cool to finally be a part of the monthly Celebration of New Christian Fiction, which was founded some time ago by my dear friend and writing partner, Pat Loomis . This month's hostess is Dee Stewart - check out her website, where you will find links to the blogs (and other sites) of the 28 writers participating this month. The stories range from extracts from published novels, to flash fiction, to contest entries and much, much more. My contribution is my recent FiF contest enty, a short story called Mirry - see the post below this one! Happy reading!

Elleann.

Unravelling life one word at a time ...

Mirry: My FiF contest entry

2005-10-07T11:41:00.000+02:00

Mirry is sweating. Her salmon-pink dress encloses her as if she’s a plastic-wrapped chunk of fish; the straps of her high-heeled sandals are buried in the folds of flesh that conceal her ankles. Stealthily, she shifts her weight from one foot to the other, clinging to the handle of the wheelchair to steady herself. But she is not careful enough. Gus Chaplin turns faded blue eyes towards her, irritation evident in the quivering of his wrinkled mouth.

“Sit, Mirry.”

She shakes her head. She will not leave her spot to lumber three feet to the pew behind them. It is bad enough that she is trapped up front for the ceremony. She hopes that if she remains still, she will be blessed with invisibility for the duration.

“I’m fine,” she says, pitching her voice sharp and low. Let the old boy hear it and shut up.

But he refuses to let go. “Don’t be stupid, girl. If I know anything about Vi, she’ll be late. You should sit down, take a load off your feet.”

Gus Chaplin has many good qualities, but tactfulness is not one of them. This she knows, so she ignores his words and takes refuge behind the mask she has worn for the past three years: dedicated caregiver, hardworking nurse’s aide. Her elderly charges don’t mind what she looks like; in fact, she sometimes thinks they don’t really see her at all. She reaches over, pats his gnarly, paper-thin fingers.

“Don’t worry, Gus. She’ll be here soon enough.”

“It’s not her I’m worried about.” Gus straightens the bowtie at his neck for the third time in ten minutes. “It’s you. You’re red as a beet, girl. Can’t have my wedding ruined by you keeling over at the altar.” He works his mouth for a moment, as if he’s considering summoning an usher to have her removed. “It’s too damn hot in here. We should have waited for September.”

“I’ll be fine.” She stares ahead, examining the daisies and roses that litter the front of the chapel. Above them, framed within a stained-glass window, Jesus gazes down at her, his smile fixed, his halo gleaming in the afternoon light. She averts her gaze. She doesn’t want to feel the eyes of this translucent God upon her, judging her for what she has become—a fat, ugly, middle-aged failure of a woman.

Mirry blinks as the flowers shimmer and dance in the heat. The straps of her bra are cutting into her shoulders, and she’s sweating again; she can feel the beads forming on her upper lip. Dear God, have mercy on me and get that woman down the aisle quick, she prays. And then laughs at herself. How pathetic, praying to a God she no longer believes in.

But as if in answer to her prayer, the first blasts of Mendelssohn’s wedding march boom out with a ferocity that startles her and she turns her head. Violet Poole stands at the far end of the aisle, clinging to the arm of her grandson Michael. She’s a roly-poly blob of a woman, with a pale face and a large mole on the side of her nose. Her head hovers somewhere near the upper button of Michael’s vest, and Mirry gets her first look at the lanky grandson whose grainy college graduation picture adorns the bookshelf in Violet’s room. He is, Violet has told her with pride, in seminary now, learning to be a minister. Mirry expects a pallid pastoral type in glasses and a shabby suit.

But this boy is no pale-skinned, mealy-mouthed cleric. Michael Poole is a self-assured young man whose gray morning suit makes him look simultaneously elegant and tough as steel. His dark hair has been tamed with water and there are deep shadows beneath his eyes. As his gaze sweeps across the chapel, Mirry flushes. He exudes a tough masculinity that unsettles her, makes her wish she could crawl beneath the wheelchair.

She will not look at Violet, dare not look at Michael. Instead she looks at Gus, who will need her help to stand to his feet as he waits for his bride to totter down the aisle. She reaches out a hand in anticipation, but Gus is rising from his chair faster than a jack rabbit. She stares at him, surprised, but it is not his agility that shocks her.

It is the look on his face that takes her breath away.

With hands laced across his chest as if he is trying to still his heart, Gus Chaplin gazes up the aisle at Violet Poole. He is entranced. Tears puddle in the corners of his eyes, threatening to spill down whiskery, age-spotted cheeks. Mirry is stunned. As his bride shuffles down the aisle, Mirry sees Gus’s lips quiver, watches him bite down hard to keep the emotions in check. But he cannot. Tears and smiles make a mess of his face and he snorts aloud, fumbling in his pocket for a dark blue handkerchief. Mirry cannot move.

Oh God.

She struggles for control, fighting off the misery that threatens to choke her. How many times has she begged God to take away her fat, to make her beautiful? To make her loveable? But she doesn’t believe in God, she reminds herself, stifling the sobs. So she concentrates on her feet—ten stubby toes tipped with red and squashed into a pair of fancy sandals—and feels despair sinking like stone to the empty pit of her stomach.

Michael Poole and his grandmother have reached the far side of the wheelchair. The tiny chapel is filled with rustles and coughs as the elderly guests release walkers and canes and settle back into the pews. Gus and Violet join hands, their weathered fingers entwined like teenagers. Violet smiles shyly up at Gus and the minister is a beaming blur of black and white in front of them. From the window above, Jesus watches them with his unblinking eyes. Mirry stares at the ground.

“…gathered together in the Presence of God…” The sonorous voice rebounds off the walls and after a brief inner wrestle, Mirry sneaks a quick look at Michael. His grandmother still clings to his arm, and he covers her hand, absently stroking her fingers with his own. As if he feels her gaze on him, Michael looks up and catches Mirry peeking at him. Heat rushes up her neck and into her face, and she jerks her eyes away. As she does so, he smiles at her, but it’s a meaningless, all-purpose kind of smile. Hot with humiliation, Mirry longs to disappear, but she is glued to the floor by her bulk and her role in this ceremony.

Stupid, stupid, stupid! She tries to concentrate on what the minister is saying.

“… to have and to hold … in sickness and in health … to love and to cherish, till death us do part ...” As the service unfolds and the sun slants lower through the stained-glass window, Mirry feels dizzy and wonders if she is going to faint. But then Gus turns towards her and extends his hand. It is her moment. She reaches into her purse, steps forward and places the ring on his outstretched palm.

The old man smiles, and his hand trembles. The ring glitters in the sunlight, a seal of love to be given and received. Mirry relaxes, relieved. Her part is done. She steps back towards the pew where she can sit down and—

“Oh my—Mirry …”

Gus’s hands are empty, his mouth agape with bewilderment. Mirry turns her head, sees the band of gold skipping across the cold floor towards the foot of the heavy altar table.

Mirry looks up. Violet is wobbling, paler than ever, with both hands now welded to Michael’s arm. Gus is groping for his wheelchair, confusion creasing his face. The minister blinks and clutches his Bible to his breast like a shield.

Nobody moves.

Then, as one, they look at her. Mirry feels a nauseating surge of disbelief as she realizes she’s the one who’ll have to retrieve the ring. Slowly, she places her purse on the pew, knowing by the burn in her face that everyone is watching her.

As she faces the walk to the table, a sick tide of anger catches her unawares. She wants to grab Gus round his scrawny neck and curse him for his stupidity and clumsiness. It’s all his fault! She glances at Violet, sees her mouth hanging open like a codfish, and thinks she’d like to strangle her, too. What right has she to such happiness, at her age?

It’s not fair!

Mirry storms forward, sandals clacking on the tiles, pink dress rustling round her legs like grass in a hurricane. She reaches the table and peers behind it, but the ring has rolled deep in and she cannot see it. Humiliation swamps her as she lowers herself awkwardly to her knees. This is horrible, horrible. She swipes her hand beneath the table, aware of the eyes watching her, and prays for the touch of cool metal beneath her fingers. But there is nothing.

She will have to go lower to find the ring. Immediately she knows that if she does, the bridal party will be treated to the sight of her rear end swaying to and fro as she gropes beneath the table. And her rear end, swathed in yards of pink chiffon, is not a pretty sight. Waves of shame and rage sweep across her and she wants to run, screaming, from the chapel. But she is trapped, trapped by her fat, her faults and her failings, trapped in a life she hates …

The silence is broken by the tiny rustlings, muffled coughs. People are becoming restless. Mirry hesitates, her face burning.

What does she have to lose, that she hasn’t already lost? God has abandoned her to a life that is meaningless, a future that is empty. Felled by the black weight of hopelessness and despair, she goes down, flat on the floor, prostrated in front of the altar table. The smell of polish is in her nose and the floor is cool beneath her cheek. But she is barely aware of this.

God, just let me find this damn ring.

She wriggles forward, puffing, and sweeps her arm under the table, groping for it. Her fingers brush against something smooth and cold, and in amazement and relief she pulls her arm out, grateful that she’s been so quickly let off the hook.

But she’s not free yet. In her hand is a tiny glass, dust-smeared and stained with the dregs of communion wine.

She wants to scream. She wants to let rip with a string of epithets that will make elderly ears sizzle and force the clerics to adjust their plastic collars. Instead, hot pricking tears finally spill over, blinding her. In despair she turns her gaze upward, and goes back to trying to find the ring with her fingers, trying in vain to stop the humiliating tears. It feels like the end of everything.

High above her on the wall she sees another Jesus. But this Jesus wears neither halo nor translucent smile. This Jesus is gritty and real. He is trapped, nailed to a rough-hewn cross and his face is contorted with agony. Sweat drips from his brow and through her tears, it seems as if he is struggling to free himself.

Do you know how I feel? Mirry screams silently at him as her fingers trawl across the floor. Her body quivers with misery and she can taste the salty tears. Why did you make me like this? I hate you! she tells him…

…and feels something ripping open, because deep inside a voice is telling her it isn’t true. She wants to hate him, wants to blame him for the mess she’s made of everything, but she can’t anymore. Mirry teeters on the edge of the abyss, struggling with the ambivalent emotions that surge through her. She swipes at her eyes with her free hand and blinks, trying to see the sculptured Christ. Words pour from her, a silent hemorrhage of sorrow and longing and need.

I’m sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Please help me. I’ve made such a mess of it all…

She lets go at last. Now she is falling, plunging deep into the echoing void. As she falls, she feels as if she is being drained of everything, scrubbed and wrung out to dry. And she wants to cry again with the sheer, gut-wrenching relief of it.

Mirry’s still-questing fingers close upon a circle of cold metal. She pulls her arm free from beneath the table, sits up and wipes her eyes quickly with the back of her hand. She’s disorientated, as if she’s been flat on the floor for hours.

“Well done. You found it.” Michael Poole squats at her side and offers her his hand. His eyes are dark brown, and crease up at the corners as he smiles at her. “Let me help you.”

He slides an arm around her and lifts her to her feet as if she weighs no more than a kitten. Then he bends, retrieves the little glass from the floor and sets it on the table. She hears the squeak of his shoes, catches the scent of mint on his breath as he offers her his arm for the walk back. Minutes later, Gus and Vi are pronounced man and wife and the wedding ceremony is over. The organist launches into the recessional and Mirry’s moment of humiliation dissipates in a cloud of hubbub and chatter as the guests prepare to leave the chapel. It’s as if nothing happened.

Mirry sits down, blows her nose and wonders what she’s supposed to do next. She glances up, sees Michael enfolding his grandmother in a hug while the minister shakes Gus’s hand. Guests are heading down the aisle, smiles of congratulation on their lips. In a flurry of black and white, the minister turns and sweeps over to her.

“Well done, Mirry dear—thank you so much.” Mirry smiles, shy now, and sees Gus beckoning her over. He takes her hand and his eyes are apologetic.

“What a clumsy old fool you must think me, Mirry.” He reaches up and touches her face. “To put you through that when you’ve been nothing but kindness itself to me. I’m so very sorry.”

“It’s OK.” Mirry hugs him, almost overpowered by the camphorated scent of his moth-balled suit. “It was nothing.”

But she knows it was a lot more than just nothing. As she turns to wheel Gus up the aisle, she becomes aware of a swathe of colored sunlight falling across floor in front of them.

She looks up.

In the window high above them, his halo glowing in the late afternoon light, the stained-glass Jesus is smiling down at her.

Elleann

Unravelling life one word at a time ...

A place to start

2005-10-07T10:50:00.000+02:00

So, everyone and his dog has a blog these days. This is mine.

My second one, actually. The first one got neglected to death! My fault entirely...

So, number two, which has come to life primarily to give me a place to post my entry in the Faith in Fiction (FiF) short story contest. I guess I'll learn how to make all the blog thingummies work as time goes by, but in the mean while, forgive the bloopers and clangers and stuff!

Elleann

Unravelling life one word at a time.