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

How I Turned into an Acorn.

....in the beginning. I came to England directly from China where I'd been Lecturing for 7 years. A chap who contacted me while I was there & said he was doing so because he was a friend of a friend of mine at the British Council,, suggested we work together: he had the premises for a school in Eton and I would bring over a couple of teachers & contacts from China to help teach at the school. It was all lined up & I saw this as a kind of Wonder-Job: I couldn't wait to get started. (And the plate glass windowed flat high up at tree level was all blonde wood & brushed-steel kitchen appliances.) The fourth day of being in England my putative "partner" declared bankruptcy. And I also discovered t...

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...

BENEFITS STREET: - BRIGHTON. I've been getting good mileage out of my angst for the past couple of years. But it's time now to put it to one side and start talking out. It's not that I need to be heard because I have tidings of great joy or or nuggets of invaluable wisdom to impart. Nor because I have devised a plan to save the world; or discovered a wonder-herb that will cure all the ills of humans everywhere. Neither do I have any proselytising zeal. But I can communicate. I have, by now, lost just about everything I ever had in life – my possessions, my future, my dignity. But one thing I still haven't lost is the ability to communicate. In times BB (Before Brighton) I used this ability on behalf of the battered, the marginalised, the homeless, the mentally unstable. Because I knew that all the talks I gave, and the things I wrote, were reaching out to touch people. I was getting somewhere. Yet, once I became part of the proble...

Benefit Street, Brighton.

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