WELCOMED THREAT

 

Good morning.

I hope you all had a good January. I was going to say a brilliant January, a magical, mysterious January—until I remembered all the weirdness going on in the world since New Year’s Day and had to pull back from that idea.

I’ve been well, enjoying being around family like crazy after thirty years away. Also suffering being around family, of course—it’s part of the deal. But they’ve all been brilliant with us, and I know this is an opportunity most lower-end migrants don’t get in life, so I’m using it to the full.

I’m beginning to feel my English leaving me, which is bad news considering it was never that good to begin with. That, too, is part of the deal.

With the exception of two bad mornings—A lightning strike hit our house.(the longest seconds of my life; I thought it was an earthquake), another beginning with the screams of my mother upstairs… or so I thought. It turned out to be a crazy dog somewhere in the valley, really—both events got me out of bed in a complete state, unable to, even, find my socks—

I’m a lot calmer now. I went for walks… the one day it didn’t rain a whole year’s worth of water in a few hours. I 've done yoga every day—I’ve advanced more in three months than in thirty years. I meditated daily too, and I think I’m finally getting the hang of it. I remained semi-civilised. My hair looks a lot better now, and that, trust me, is a very good sign. First real step towards securing a new job.

What else? What else?

I found this old draft of a post abandoned in the Blogger loft and thought it was appropriate now catastrophe did indeed hit, with everything that’s going on. Pieces of land collapsing everywhere due to horrendous rainfalls; madmen running the most powerful countries in the world; a horrid historical déjà vu of one of the worst times in history; a continuous typhoon everywhere (we’re running out of names for storms lately—we should just call them F**er 16th of Jan, F**er 18th of Jan, and so on, me says).

Anyway—gosh, I’ve got verbal diarrhea today. To the old post we go.

Back when I wrote that, not even a year ago, I was getting so very ill on my days off that we thought I might be seriously sick. As soon as I left the job, I left the sickness behind. It went as if it had never been here. That should remind me how good a decision it was not to stay.

Little did I know, though, when I wrote it, that my life was about to do a dramatic U-turn a couple of months later.

I leave you with it.

Happy February, earthlings. Remember—life’s short. Don’t waste it.

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Yes, still alive… barely. Feeling wonderful today after another day literally sicker than I ever was during pregnancy. The best thing about feeling that sick? How wonderful life looks the next day, even when at work.

Keeping upbeat thanks to lines like the following, read in between calls:

“What can be better,” said Max, “than the threat of catastrophe?”
“Peace, you imbecile, peace.”
“I didn’t say catastrophe, but the threat of catastrophe. Perhaps politics can ultimately be reduced to aesthetics, just like science. Perhaps the ultimate criterion in the world isn’t truth, but beauty.”  Mulisch's  The Discovery of Heaven

How I would love to read the book Mr Mulisch would write in these times of ours, with lines like that one coming at us from the 90s…