Today I didn't have an Epiphany,

I utterly refuse to consider people other than Saul on the road to Damascus as having had epiphanies.

Neither Newton nor Archimedes claimed one and both of them knew of the concept. Nor can Joan of Arc reliably be credited with one, because she was in all probability schizophrenic.

An epiphany demands clouds parting, trumpets, and heralds at the very least. Plus a loud booming voice off-stage.

So I seriously question people who say they got all this action on the top of the No.5 bus on the way to the Pizza parlour.

It may be obvious by now that I did not have an epiphany this afternoon. But, having been so vehement about repudiating the tendency people have lately of having epiphanies on a semi-regular basis and without visible effects and cloud parting; I find myself bereft of a way to say what happened to me this afternoon.

Perhaps it was a revelation? But that still sounds faintly ecclesiastical – so...no. Yet I honestly felt like the deep fog around me was being cleaved As if the clouds really were parting. I’m not sure if they snapped back again like sturdy knicker elastic, or if they left a gap. But while they were parted I think I got my first full look outside in a long while.

And what I suddenly realised was that I have been living, foetus-like, all folded into myself, in an egg made of opaque, charcoal, grey. And in another blinding flash I realised I’d been living inside that shell now for 7 years. Seven!

And the reason I realised that was because I saw clearly again the person I had been before I slipped into my grey egg. Someone whom I haven’t seen in all that time, but who was suddenly as familiar and beckoning as an old pair of Uggs.

There was a voice. And it was off-stage. But it was mine – a voice from 7 years ago. And it said, in tones of exasperation: “You twat!”.

And lo! I looked and saw it was so.

So, I might not have burst out of my chrysalis completely yet. But I’ve seen through the cracks in the shell.

And I think I got my ‘Fuck you!’ back.

Comments

Don't Quote Me.......Failing our Children: Doesn't it Enrage You?

I subtitled a post "Don't quote me" a while back because I wanted to make it clear that what I was expressing was my own - vehement - opinion/idea which was not representative of any group or affiliation. Feel the need to to add this to the same category. One afternoon, in 2016, I saw on my Youtube page that there was a televised debate between two American contenders for the presidency. Needing a break from the piece I was writing, and with the realisation that my outlook was becoming rather insular as I struggled to understand the Homeland I'd recently settled in, I poised my mouse and clicked. I can still remember the shock of that introduction to contemporary America; in fact I was in a state of shock for the rest of the afternoon. The spectacle of two grown - in fact elderly - people shouting, yelling, talking over each other, using personal abuse (and, dear gods, one actually stalking the other around the podium!) horrified me. I was involved in a form of ...

Victorian Women. Period.

The first time I ever acted in an historical play we were coached in the ways of walking as women of yesteryear did. Which didn’t seem at all strange to me at the time: at convent boarding schools we had been taught to walk the nunly walk: which turned out to be exactly the same method. But sanctified. I didn’t really understand why women used to walk differently then, and neither did my mother; who told me that her mother had also instructed her that a woman’s footprints should always be in a straight line: — one foot directly in front the other, as we’d been taught on both stage and in convents. Yet it was only about 6 months ago that I suddenly had a lightbulb moment: women walked in that way because they menstruated! This thought didn’t arrive out of the blue; I had, by then, been researching the history of menstruation for months. With the help of the Brighton Museum I’d been able to start my research back in the Palaeolithic. Since then, I had become aware that apart ...

Flamin' Fernando and his flamin' Glamorous Assistant.

When I was 16 I was living a double life. During term-time I was a convent Boarder in a rather posh school in Australia. I was 'too young' for most things; I wore my hair in two skinny plaits; clumped about in sensible school-shoes; and and was condescended to by everyone in the world who was over 17. But during the long Summer Holidays and the shorter ones in between, I flew home to my tropical island in the sun and lived my real life. In this world I rarely wore shoes; my hair - which had never in my life been cut - flowed freely down my back and over my bum and I wore a frangipani or hibiscus behind one ear. In this world I had been driving for the past two years; smoked cigarettes socially, was rather knowledgeable about wines and whiskey, and was treated no differently to anyone else. It was in this world that my father, asked to do a spot in the annual Xmas Concert down at the Army barracks, airily informed all and sundry that he would be accompanied by his Glamorous As...

Benefit Street, Brighton.

Search This Blog