Sue Vincent's Blog: Echoes of Life, page 1047
February 18, 2015
February 17, 2015
Dear Wen XVI
… and the response to Dear Don XVI…
Originally posted on Stuart France:
Dear Wen,
Well done!
We should have enough there to keep us occupied for a while.
The jaunt seems to have captured the imagination of a fair few folk… will they show as much interest in the book when it emerges I wonder…
The hairy anchorite made me laugh, again… He, if it is a ‘he’, looks like a Yeti.
There is an extension to the inner and outer symbolism we first flagged up in, ‘The Heart of Albion’ deserving of mention.
Cerne Abbas church if I recall correctly…
The grotesques’ on the roof bosses although inside the church act as supports to the roof ‘of heaven’.
Similarly, the statues of the dignitaries ‘tread’ various ‘sins’ or calumnies underfoot… a little like St Michael ‘quelling’ the dragon or the Beast…
Although, not at all like Lao Tsu riding on his ox…
Of course, it is an ideal.
I wonder how…
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New Knickers
Image source Antigoni
Gentlemen, you may wish to look away now. Be warned. Consider it a ‘spoiler alert’ …
Ladies, I have a hankering for new knickers. In fact, you could say I have a need for them. Gone are the days when knicker elastic could be purchased by the yard and, with the deft application of a safety pin, be threaded through to replace elastic so tired it had given up and gone to sleep… frequently causing embarrassment or severe contortionism as you tried to unobtrusively hitch the offending garment back into place whilst smiling in sweet unconcern. No, these days the elastication is part of said garment and once it has given up the ghost there is little that can be done. It is either part of the garment itself… at which point the whole thing just sags … or is ‘bonded’ to the waistband… at which point you may end up going involuntarily commando.
In the early stages of its demise you may feel a certain freedom as the elastic relaxes… or even, for a brief and glorious moment, be convinced that the diet is working… but after a few such encounters with the loosening ties of decency, you have the awful realisation that something is about to give. The other option, where the elastic is bonded to the top hem, is all well and good… unless you pull a little hastily…and the stretchy stuff simply parts company with the body of the drawers.
Because, of course, we are not talking lingerie here…. Those fragile flimsies you need only breathe on to have disintegrate. I used to have a drawer… nay several drawers… full of the stuff. Insignificant scraps of satin and lace… tangas, thongs, shorts and silk confections à la parisienne… I even had G-strings (which I am sure must have been invented by a dentist, given their resemblance to floss) and something called a C string which looked more like an Alice-band to me… Would I choose to wear the stuff? Very seldom. I prefer something that a) actually fits the real curves of the female form and b) doesn’t make whatever I’m wearing look like a badly tied sausage.
Most of the lingerie was acquired as gifts. The first time one’s partner comes home with a tissue wrapped and perfumed box of silky gorgeousness, you are pleased… delighted… you may even be proud of him for going in there and actually buying it (even if the sizing is unrealistic). Rare and occasional gifts of this nature can be rather nice. Especially when his fantasies have been adjusted to your actual size. When, however, they become an occurrence so frequent as to be predictable, you begin to wonder… If he needs you gift wrapped …? Something other than the elastic has to go… and most of the lingerie went with him.
That was a long time ago and these days I buy my own. Now don’t misunderstand me, I like lace, silk and pretty things as much as the next woman… but…there appears to be an exponential price increase in direct disproportion to the amount of fabric used and to this my frugal soul objects. Nevertheless, a compromise can be reached whereby we find something both attractive and comfortable which doesn’t require a mortgage.
But, you see, I got to thinking… as you do… Knickers are important. And whether you wear briefs, thongs or full-blown bloomers, you need them to have certain characteristics. They are the foundation upon which any outfit is built and in order to look right you have to feel right first. Should we wrestle our forms into something designed for a sylph merely to please someone other than ourselves? Should we follow a fashion designed with starved models in mind in pursuit of the prevailing fashion? Or should we choose to create a foundation that feels right for us… one that fits our skin, suits both our shape and our taste; moves with our activities, changes with our mood and forms a suitable canvas upon which we can build the outer form with which we face the day?
My mother, always an attractive and elegant woman, gave me a superb piece of advice when I was young… go to the ballroom in warm boots; you don’t look attractive if you are blue with cold. The same thing applies to underwear…though I am not advocating thermals here. Just comfort. Unless you feel right, you won’t look right.
But it applies equally to the way we see ourselves… to the foundation we create for our personality and the way we often try and shape ourselves to meet the ideals, needs and desires of others. We can be really adept at fooling ourselves that we are that person too… just as we can convince ourselves we will fit in that little lacy number without looking like an overstuffed haggis… But if our own taste really runs to the simplicity of pristine white cotton and soft lace, why would we wear anything else? If we have a penchant for whalebone and lacing, why should we wear silk and ribbons? In the same way that we choose the right foundation for an outfit, we need to find the comfort and compatibility with life in our own skin. Working, you might say, from the bottom up.
…And By Opposing End Them
Originally posted on The Silent Eye:
“To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer t
he slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, o
r to take arms against a sea of troubles, a
nd by opposing end them?” Wm. Shakespeare, Hamlet.
That really is the question, isn’t it?
There is a huge amount of stuff out there purporting to tell us how to come to full consciousness. Some of it valuable, some less so. No school, however, can confer or guarantee the gift of Being. That is for the student to find within themselves and in this we are all students. All any school or system can ever do is open a door and show a way, arming the student with the tools of the quest we have found to be of use, a map lovingly crafted by those who have walked this way before…
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February 16, 2015
Notes from a small dog (LIII)
Well, hellooo!
Frankly, it is about time that she got herself out of my seat and let me back at the keyboard… first she goes away for ages… then comes back, smelling of really interesting things… and writes about it for ages… Then she says she’s off again. “Won’t be long, girlie,” she says. Yeah, right. Heard it all before. She says it every morning and she’s always ‘long’ Prob’ly the nearest to ‘tall’ she’ll ever get… and she has the cheek to call me small…
She needn’t think she can bribe me with cheese or that ham stuff either! Well, she can try…as often as she likes for me! But it’s not going to work… Not even the new tennis balls….
Still, I did have a great time with Gooch and the boys… I never mind playing with them for a few days… But I have her right where I want her now…feeling guilty… all poorly and needing cuddles. That’ll teach her for abandoning me while she goes off gallivanting.
I mean, she looked like a mole when she finally came home. Her eyes were all weird. That was bad enough. Now she looks like a hamster… No, not that one.Nothing to do with me….
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Not all cute and fluffy either…
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Though if you saw her in the mornings with the wild hair these days….
Image Source
And my lips are sealed as far as this one is concerned…
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No, she looks like this one. Minus the carrot… but with the cheek.
Image source
She’s been moaning about it for days. She looks better now than she did… but even so… she keeps wandering round with ice on her face. And she thinks that entitles her to share my sofa! Cheek! (oops!)
Still, it’s no use kidding myself is it? She only has to look at me with those sad brown eyes and I can’t help it…She looks so pathetic I can’t help giving her a cuddle. I am a dog after all, we don’t hold grudges… not silly ones.
But don’t tell her I said so.
In fact, you’d better not tell her I’ve been on here at all…
Not if she sees the pictures…
Much love,
Ani
xxx
A family affair
The 12th century church looked awfully quiet considering around eighty people were supposed to be there. Sort of … shut, in fact.
“You sure this is the right place?”
“Long Crendon church, they said. This is Long Crendon.”
“Didn’t you get the proper invitation?”
“No… did you?” My son rummaged for his phone and pulled up the image of the requisite document. That explained a lot. Right village, wrong denomination. Being so familiar with the medieval church there it hadn’t even occurred to me to check…
“Just as well that we’re early…” I put the car in gear and we went in search of the Church of Our Lady of Light. My younger son, her father, had evidently not considered there might be more than one church in the village… and to be fair, although I knew there were three, I had simply made an assumption which proved to be wrong. I was still going to wring his neck have words though.
It just goes to show how many problems are caused by unquestioned preconceptions.
I liked the name of the church; Our Lady of Light. It immediately evokes an image… and the interior of the church… this one happily full of familiar faces… was indeed full of light. We had not visited this one on our travels; it is a very modern affair, a good five hundred years younger than the later churches we are used to. I can find no information about it, I have to say; none of my usual sources are obliging. It is an unusual place… twelve sided with an altar ‘in the round’. The walls are almost entirely stained glass with a plain clerestory to flood it with light. Behind the altar a symbolic representation of the tomb of Jesus with the image of a Cup where the entrance should be. Over the door a replica of the shroud of Turin, while around the walls an old set of images depict the Stations of the Cross looking rather dark and incongruous against the bright backdrop…
My elder son shook his head in despair… we were here for the baptism after all… I put the camera away… Well, sort of. I pointed it at people instead, thinking how smart my sons were and how pretty the young mother looked… and realising I had been just her age when my eldest son was baptised. We were sitting with friends of my sons … some of whom I have known since their teens and who were now watching their own children grow. “Where do the years go?” asked one of the great-grandmothers later…
The Catholic rite of baptism is not dissimilar from the Anglican with which I am more familiar. It seems odd that so much intolerance should have raged between branches of the same faith over the years. Their father being Catholic… and there not being too many Anglican churches in rural France… my own sons had been baptised in Catholic churches. The name on the door has never mattered to me, it has always been the Light from which all faiths stream like multi-coloured ribbons that has drawn me.
The priest, in a lovely touch, recognising that many present might not share his faith or indeed subscribe to any particular belief at all, included everyone as witness to the baptism in love and respect… which surely, is how it should be. My little granddaughter, untroubled by the artificial divisions of history, politics and dogma, and surrounded by the warmth of a family gathered in love, slept peacefully through it all.
February 15, 2015
Dear Don XVI
Dear Don,
Well, that’s it. I’ve finally managed to finish the journal of our last jaunt we have a reasonable record now as well as the four thousand visual reminders in my photo files… For all I have scribbled down so much about the trip I left such a lot out too. I’m hoping what is there will remind us. I still can’t quite believe how much we managed to see, you know! I am so grateful.
Even harder to encompass is the sheer scale of the ‘coincidences’ that appear to have wandered the road with us. Right down to Kentigern’s association with both Aberlady and our hairy anchorite… or the same masons working on three Norman churches 250 miles apart. There is a lot to take in and digest. I wonder where it will lead?
I’ve tried to allude to some of the stuff that cropped up in the journal so that it is there when we are ready, though goodness knows what will come of it all… except that next book, of course! You really do have to have a look at the carvings on the crosses we missed at Middleton though…
The weirdest thing is how the things we found tie in with the beginning so neatly, except we are revisiting the ideas now with greater knowledge and a better understanding, so we are seeing even more. Makes you wonder what we would get from a revisit of the little churches down my way or around your area… I wouldn’t mind betting we’d kick ourselves for the stuff we missed first time round.
Yet, it isn’t all that weird… that spiral is just the way these things go, isn’t it? We couldn’t have seen the things we missed, because we weren’t ready… still not equipped to see them. That learning curve just keeps on spiralling ever wider… which is such a delight.
…Unless it involves tennis balls. Then the learning curve spirals out of control. I am being taught the new rules by the Black Beast., which include being brought the ball to throw the moment I, erm, sit down in the bathroom…
I think you are going to have to have a quiet word with that dog again…
See you soon,
Love,
Wendolina and the bête noir x
