Transformation

Morphology


I was in a popular fast-food restaurant recently with R&B. I can offer no excuse for this. We were out, it seemed like a treat and after 11 years of French baguette and croissant breakfasts, I craved bacon and eggs. Yes, it’s that simple to corrupt me. But we transformed the situation!

That day, a collection of plastic characters was being marketed to our children. We decided to take a long hard look at them.

The girls were invited to drool over a choice of four ‘animals’ (I use this word loosely as they do not resemble anything that ever lived on the planet earth) from ‘The Littlest Pet Shop’. We know that cartoon characters always have distorted body and facial proportions, and we had a look at the morphology to see what message was there for us. These little cuties were mostly head, and the head was mostly eye, and the eyes were mostly gaping black pupils gagging for love, gleaming disturbingly with at least three light points. These heartless gutless legless eyes in heads said ‘settle for pretend love’, they said ‘vacuous’, they said ‘hypnotise’, they said (and I didn’t say it to R&B) ‘hallucinogenic drug’ and…worse. I invite you to try this, look deep into the eyes of one of these beasts, and see what you find there.

B, who is now 11 and very lofty about such things, was quite in agreement - even though not so very long ago he was buying such effigies from jumble sales. R also, was quick to abandon the sinister side of cute.

‘But I like these!’ he said, pointing to the boys’ option: alien robots which ‘transform’ into cars – I know it’s not much of a transformation but there it is. As one Mom put it on her ‘coloring for kids’ site: 'If you want to know what’s hot for kids right now, it’s Transformers!’ Yeah! Swallow that PR! But, hold on a minute…

The biggest things about these guys, due to some outrageous foreshortening, are their weapons. One character is not much else but a giant fist in your eye. When I looked closer I saw that their hands, organs of sensitivity, are mutated into hammers, balls on chains, and 3-pronged metal claws. They have wretched little heads. They are so wretched and little that with my failing eyesight, they are barely discernible above the grotesquely huge shoulders, biceps and upper torsos and machinery. They have no guts, spindly legs and hoofy projections from the knee down.

‘Yes’ I said to R, ‘You like this sort of thing because you are 7, and you like fighting and bashing’. I put my arm round him and he grinned, safe in the knowledge that he is loved, despite his appalling taste. ‘But you don’t really know what this is. You haven’t finished developing yet. I hope when you are older, you will see things differently’. (R took note, he really did take note).

Together, we unwrapped the message of morphology.

I asked R&B to give me their observations.

‘Yes, they have very small heads’ I agreed, ‘so I don’t think they do much thinking do you?’ (R laughed delightedly, and started thinking, with his normally proportioned head).

‘Look, this one even has a dog head, what kind of person has a dog head?’ (Squeals and peals).

‘They aren’t people Mummy, they are machines!’ R pointed out.

‘So, human boy, you admire a machine with a dog head?’ (More delighted laughter)

I gave a little lecture on how a boy transforms into a man, how the shoulders enlarge and the muscles develop, R is very interested in muscles. Then we went back to the cartoon and wondered what it means when such things are SO exaggerated, could we be getting things out of proportion?

‘And look at the eyes!’ I exclaim, ‘Did you know that the eyes are said to be the windows of the soul? Look R, look into my eyes, look at what you see there’ and R dutifully did so, and our souls rejoiced in one another as they always do

‘And look at this, their eyes are EMPTY WINDOWS! You can’t get much more obvious than that!’ We are really having a good time now. (Of course I’m thinking atrocities of war here, which isn’t funny is it, but I didn’t talk about that to R&B).
B has practised karate. He can understand from karate, that we can be rooted and stable from the ‘hara’, the lower gut, and these human machines don’t have a hara to speak of, perhaps that is why they need machine hoofs to keep their balance, to trample relentlessly, without feeling their way. And we wonder, as some of them do have extra-large chests, whether they could have an extra-large loving heart in there, but to make sure there is no doubt, the creators of these monster machines have painted a little demoniaic red head over the heart , the ensign of the goodies apparently. ‘It doesn’t look very nice to me, I said, ‘Does it to you?’. ‘No’ agreed R&B. (The picture on the right is the emblem the 'goodies' wear on their breast).

‘So, these creatures are the opposite of all we hold dear, all our values, all it is to be human. Why do we admire these things?’ I asked, hoping to engage R’s head, heart and hara in a final overthrowing of the hold these things have on him.

‘But they are the goodies!’ said R, grinning, one tooth missing.

(Isn’t this amazing? I’m noticing more and more in childrens’ cartoons and films, that good and bad is getting very muddled up. The other day R came back from the neighbours after watching a film called ‘Hellboy’, a harmless little number where Russian occultists and some leftover Nazis create a devil…which goes on to be employed by the American Government to fight…evil?. In R’s 7-year old opinion, the hero, the goody, is the aforementioned Hellboy, a little red devil complete with horns, tail and trident! With a secenario like this, how do we know where we stand?. ) The message of the picture on the left is obvious, the head less so.

‘WHAT?’ I exclaim to the delight of the crowd, ‘If these are the goodies, what are the baddies like for goodness sake?’

‘He is a big um sort of a guy with loads of metal things sticking out, and he is the BIGGEST of the transformers. He has a mane on his head, made of metal. And he can turn into a space ship, and he can throw missiles from here,’ he points at his chest, dare I say, to his heart, ‘he is trying to destroy the world – with some other baddies.’

‘What makes him worse than the goodies?’ I asked, looking very unconvinced.

‘He is all dark blue and he looks all horrible.’

‘But don’t the other guys look just as horrible?’

‘No, they look better, yellow, red, normal.’

Well, I sigh to myself, obviously we
have some way to go. Can you tell which of the above is the goodie, and which the baddie? Below is the Hero in Chief, cuddly isn't it?

I would like to meet the people who came up with this idea – what on earth possessed them to conceive of such a thing? I find myself reflecting on this very phrase, what on earth possessed them? When I look into these things on the internet, they always seem to have a crude debased occult content, for example, the ‘goodie’ alien robot machine suffers visions following the release of the Matrix’ energy, foretelling a great transformation, orchestrated by a mega-computer, to restore Cybertron’s Golden Age. Oh Please. Beast raging against beast.

Well listen, you creators of devil-seeds in our childrens’ souls, I am onto you. Your devils are out there, proud, very very loud, shaking their little tushes on the catwalk. They are saying ‘Look at me, I’m a devil, here I am, catch me if you can, aren’t you going to STOP ME?’. Are we all half- asleep in the listless sweaty queue at Toys Arse?

It’s no good either, standing in the sidelines pointing the finger at the baddies. We need to keep our heads, if we are to educate ourselves and our children to understand and choose to reject this horror. We need guts, we need, above all, our hearts full of love. And we need humour (I’m not sure where that’s located). We need to shape up because our children are exposed to this, whether we like it or not. We might try to protect them from such images, but we can be sure a cousin, a neighbour, a friend of a friend, a television advert, a free magazine, a hoarding will get to them. PR people are paid very good money to make sure they do.

The question is, how do we deal with it? Or put another way, what must we learn from these things?

We could use this invasion of demons to transform ourselves and our world. The ultimate 'what not to do' educational tool. Will we?

19 December 2008

My best friend has moved to England, her son L is B's best friend.

On the last day that L came round to play I waited until he and his dad had gone before having a cry. R came over and put his arms round me and said 'Don't worry Mummy, we will see them even more' and B said 'Don't worry Mummy, I am English and I will be your best friend'. They have great good hearts and are a wellspring of love.

Knights

When I pass my fellow Mummy pilgrims on the school run, we exchange limp greetings in the bleak black wetness of December and say, ‘Thank goodness it will soon be the Christmas holidays!’ After three days of the Christmas holidays, our children unfettered, unstructured and over-endowed with energy mostly of the noise and mess-making type, we will be filled with regret that we did not buy their teachers a bigger Christmas present, and we will be overcome with the urge to embrace their teachers and kiss the apples of their cheeks in an outpouring of gratitude.

I certainly need to be shut inside for the Christmas holidays. I have to drive our children to school, much against my will, and I’ve had enough of French driving, I’ve had over 10 years enough, as illustrated by a recent incident.

Just one more male French driver made just one more life-endangering discourteous manoeuvre, which almost resulted in the death of an oncoming cyclist (who was dressed in the French style of black on a black bike with no lights) or at the very least, almost resulting in the re-skinning of my side panels.

Only this one didn’t get away, heh heh heh. He too was forced to brake and pull in, which left me right behind him, staring in through his back windscreen, pounding my horn and flashing my lights.

I chased him. When I think back on this incident, I am astounded to feel quite clearly the movement of the horse beneath me and the lance in my hand. I charged after him, I matched and met him at every bend. ‘See you how like it, see how you like it’ I shouted victoriously, ‘Someone behind you, getting at you, pushing you, niggling you, get out of my damning you, criticising your every move, determined to get ahead of you SEE HOW YOU LIKE IT!’ As we rounded the bend to the river I had my quarry in my sights in full silhouette, and I saw him finger his collar nervously and I experienced a rush of glorious, unfettered – satisfaction. With a hurrump I let him go and turned off into my favourite parking space.

Yes well, moving swiftly along. Today I went to our local shopping mall, to buy R a knight’s costume for Christmas. R was born and baptised a knight, in nappies he charged about on a wheeled horse, one arm raised as a lance. It is the Mummy’s job of course to chanel this fighting energy for The Good. The marble mall was filled with echoey ghostly Chrismash musak, and as I passed through the entrance arches of our local supermarket Carrefour, a dreadful sight met my eyes. A twice life-sized blue plastic fiend which might once have been loosely based on a cartoon cat, was caught in mid frenzied jump, its claws over its head. The message above it read: ALL THE MAGIC OF PRESENTS. The blue fiend was raised up on a mountain of electronic games in cardboard boxes. Is this what Christmas is about, All the Occult Pleasure of Getting Electronic Stuff?

Ducking my head and averting my eyes I made my way to the toy section, boys’ aisle. No sign of costumes. I spotted two youths with wearing alarming red tabards with ‘can I help you?’ written on their backs. It’s the right place to write it, because you only ever see their backs as they hurry away from you. I hurried after them and shouted HALLO so loudly that they turned round in shock and faced me. Victory.

‘Hallo there! Do you sell childrens dressing-up costumes?’

‘Ouer, ah only spiderman over there, I think...’ said Youth One

‘Yer, or batman…over there, I think’ said Youth Two as he peered into the distance.

‘I wanted a simple knight’s costume, (not a commercially marketed cartoon character)’

‘Ah na we don’t do that.’ Said Youth One, relieved.

‘But you might find some accessories – er, you know, that could go with a costume’ said Youth Two in his nicest tone, he was really trying.

My eye roved reluctantly over the ‘accessories’ for commercially marketed cartoon characters, and my eye was met by rows of evil ones, and black skulls, jagged scimitars, wands, pervy red masks, balls on chains, batons, leering hate-filled faces, fire, dark skies, and killer machines.

‘Working here,’ I said to Youth two, ‘Do you ever get the impression that you are in hell, surrounded by demons?’

Youth Two jumped. He hadn’t thought of it like that. His grandma was buying him just that sort of stuff a few years ago.

I clutched my heart, raised myself up and said ‘I’m sorry, this is appalling, I can’t stay in this shop a moment longer’. Youth Two turned back to his shelf-stacking.

I walked right out of that shop, I took back my shopping trolley and I retrieved my plastic token. I did not buy a toy, I did not buy lunch, I did not even buy my fair trade Rooibosch tea bags. And who do you think I went to see, who do you think would understand? Why Senhor H. of course. I had to go anyway, because I’d left my cheque book behind.

‘Yes yes’ he cried ‘and every one of those cardboard boxes will be SNAPPED UP!’

I spent as much time mulling over the evils of the world with him as I would have spent trailing my trolley around Carrefour, and saved the 200 Euros I would have spent, and probably my soul while I was at it.

Ironing

The thing about being a haus frau is that you can sometimes be free to, for example, have extraordinary encounters. However, if you do, nobody will cover for you. If you do not work 14 hours a day 7 days a week you will soon accumulate an insurmountable backlog. We women know this. I am still trying to catch up on the backlog caused by the birth of our first child in 1997. Last week I would have described my ironing backlog as ‘Mount Vesuvius', and this week, it is an entire Himalayan mountain range.

My husband J-C has learned not to say anything about this, as he does not want his ears buffeted by a storm of verbal abuse. He has other methods. This morning he asked me to help him affix the cufflinks of his dress shirt.

‘Special occasion sir?’ I murmured, slipping into role as his personal manservant.

‘No no, nothing special, this is the only shirt left in the wardrobe…’

‘Oh dear. But I did replenish your buckwheat’.

For the past ten years my husband has eaten raw buckwheat for breakfast, part of an ancient Tibetan recipe for health and longevity. He’s amazing.

Extraordinary Encounter

Thank you Emm from the USA for encouraging me and letting me know it is okay to talk to myself, although of course Emm, if you were listening, I wasn't talking to myself was I? Thank you for being a good fairy at the birth of this blog.

Today I had an encounter, an extraordinary encounter, and I must write about it, although I hesitate. Senhor H said he told me his story after I used the word 'soul'.

'And I used the word soul with soul' I replied and he nodded, tears in his eyes. (In French it's even better, because the word for soul is 'âme', try saying it, with a good ahh and an mmmm, it's delicious.

JC and I want to finish some work in our bathroom, and I went to order a decorative border. Sometimes beginnings are banal.

Senhor H, who has run the tile shop with his wife for over 30 years, was there to greet me. He is an irritable little man, and I am an irritable big woman, and we've already had one spat. It was over the phone, when his shop failed to order the desired decorative border and managed to order the wrong sort of white tile, causing a 6 week delay in our building works, much consternation among the building workers and a downgrading of my artistic vision. (The truth is, I can admit now, I like the wrong white tiles better than the ones I chose). When I phoned up to re-order the decorative border, he was nasty and I slammed the phone down: perhaps he doesn't remember that. With hindsight, I would say that he didn't have his heart in the selling of decorative borders and I didn't have my heart in the buying of them. I had sworn NEVER to go this shop again, but I wanted a matching border and I couldn’t get one anywhere else, so I had to swallow my pride.

We went in to his office to fill in the order form, he wasn’t happy because his wife deals with all the details and she wasn’t there. He begrudgingly allowed me to write my name down on a post-it pad for her to contact me. I asked, as I do, if the financial crisis was affecting his business, and he said a little, but his business was diversified enough, so there was always something which worked, but the worst thing for France was the Gulf War. I expressed surprise and said I hadn’t noticed the same effect in England… somehow Senhor H rolled into a rant. He said it was about time the English got rid of the Queen. He said Princess Diana had done more for the world than the entire English population. I was struggling with his Portuguese accent and wasn't quite sure I followed.

''The English are asleep!' he raged.

Most people would have smiled politely, made excuses and left at this point, but last time I went to England I also had the strong sensation that the English were asleep, so I was interested. I didn't want the conversation to go into hateful political and national condemnation, so I said,

'I agree with you, but we can't condemn a whole country, we must remember the individual souls, the people who try to help.'

At this Senhor H fixed me with a powerful stare and said,

‘Do you have faith?’

I hesitated, ‘Yes – but not in the way most people would understand’

(in French the question is are you ‘croyante’, ‘are you a believer’, and I always hesitate when asked this because you can’t believe in something you don’t believe in can you?).

At precisely this moment Senhor H decided to stop being irritable and to reveal to me that he is a man unlike any other. Well, he didn’t entirely stop being irritable.
Senhor H shook his head in agreement, spread out the fingers of his left hand, and said, 'I am not Catholic,’ he counted off one finger, ‘Not Islamic, not Jewish, not Buddhist, and not...Protestant!’ (people in France have a tendency to think of Protestantism as a religion in its own right, quite separate from Christianity).

‘Not Hindu!’ I added.

He nodded. ‘We are all asleep! Everybody, we know nothing! I am full of energy, like a man who is 20 – and I’m 67!’

‘You wouldn’t know it!’ I said.

‘I have no more pain, not from here’ he touched his head, ‘to here’, he touched the point of his dapper shoe. ‘For five years I have been glowing with health. I never go to the doctor; I never need to take any medicine.’

He reached behind him to a rack of files, and pulled out a newspaper in Portuguese. He showed me a picture of a religious dignitary in robes,

‘This is my cousin – and this is me – and I wrote this piece’, he tapped it vigorously. ‘This is read by the people in power. I have messages to pass on to the most powerful people in the world! I have to reach them. I have to pass on the messages, that – God’ he pointed above, ‘sends me’. All the time! My mind is full of thoughts and ideas, I hardly sleep, I don’t need to, I feel well, and I have so much to do’

He waved the newspaper in my direction.

‘If you know someone who can translate this, I will give it to you!’

‘You know, I do have Portuguese neighbours but I’m afraid they're too busy to translate…’

He laughed, ‘I know, I know you can’t translate it. This – This’ he said ‘would have to be translated by someone who really knew how to translate the subtle meaning behind each word, or it would be worthless!’

At this point I went from calculating mentally: I am 20 years younger than him and twice his height and that if he turns nasty I should be alright unless he has a concealed weapon, to calculating mentally that this man really knows something about the power of words!

‘This is marvellous. You have a great responsibility. But what you are doing is very tiring for the body and the spirit, it’s an incredible work. You need to take great care of yourself, you need to make sure that you are always centred in…love.’

Senhor H shook his head in agreement and reached inside his shirt and pulled out a cross.

‘This is no ordinary cross. I carved it myself – from olive wood. This cross has been blessed by the Pope’. He didn’t much hold with the role of Pope, but he showed me a press cutting of the blessing, by Pope John-Paul. He sent the cross to Jean-Paul as a present, via his cousin, and John-Paul blessed it and gave it back, multiplied in love, saying, ‘Give this back to your cousin, he has more need of it than I’.

He went on: ‘If only you knew that in the Lord’s Prayer, the Ave Maria and the Santa Maria…everything is contained. I pray every night, every night…’

‘I do too, I say the Lord’s Prayer every night to my children, and every time I say it, something different unfolds!...’

‘Good, good, keep on!’

We were both very happy now, the spiritual equivalent of two drunks who find each other in a bar and slap one another on the back.

I said, ‘The English have pretty much done away with Mary in religion’ and I asked him again the name of the other two prayers and wrote them down on a post-it pad.

I was really curious now. ‘And how does this affect your family, those close to you?’

Senhor H heaved a great sight. ‘I read the Bible every night’

‘You must understand it differently now?’

‘Oh yes. But only the New Testament. And it is written that the Disciples never managed to convince their own people. I have changed so much. My friends don’t know me…’

‘But surely you are more loving with your family?'

‘No!’

‘You mean you are nastier?’

‘Yes and no. I can no longer support injustice, not in my family, not in the world. There is so much injustice, so much that needs to be done; I cannot simply carry on as I was before. I have to act. Another example, I can’t watch television with my family any more. These little cartoons and programmes for children, everyone thinks they’re fine for children, but just listen to what they say, just listen to what they are saying!’

I'm excited now, this is my kind of subject.

‘It must have turned your life upside down’ I said.

‘Nothing is the same as before! But, now, after five years, they are beginning to believe. But my wife does not want me to talk about it to customers! I want to talk about it. I have to talk about it.

‘I understand that. You talked about it to me because you knew I would be able to listen.

He nodded, and I went on: ‘You spoke to me because I gave you signs I would understand, you can’t talk about these things to people who don’t understand! He nodded and nodded, so I said, ‘I’m very happy you spoke to me, so surely she wouldn’t mind?’

‘None of that makes any difference to her! She doesn’t want me to talk about it and that’s all!’

‘When did this – great change – occur?’ I said.

‘It was in 2000, when my mother died’.

His mother was 90 when she died and in good health. 3 days previously she had gone round to her friends for coffee and a chat as was her custom. She got up to leave, set off, paused, and then came back. 'Have you forgotten something?' her friends said.'No, I have not forgotten anything at all. But I am going to die in 3 days'.The friends said come come now, don’t say that, and they embraced once more and took their leave of each other.

She was perfectly well, but three days later she was at home with Senhor H’s brother and Senhor H’s wife, and she turned to the brother and said she felt unwell, that she really didn’t feel well at all. They called an ambulance. After they had travelled 5 miles to the next village she said to her son, if you could sit me up, perhaps I would feel a little better. By the time she reached the hospital she was dead. Mr H came over from France and buried her himself.
‘Ever since then, I only had to talk about my mother, I only had to think about my mother, and all the hairs rose on my arms and my whole body tingled. She knew she was going to die. She had a vision. That is when I changed, when everything changed, after the death of my mother’.

‘She’s helping you?’

‘Yes yes, and there are others, don't worry, I have lots of helpers over there’

‘Lots of people said it was such a tragedy that Barack Obama’s grandmother died before he became president, but perhaps she had it all planned, and she’s chosen just the right moment to go over to help him.’

‘We must have hope for Barack, yes.’

He reached round behind him again and took down another folder. He told me the story of how he had an audience with the foreign minister of Portugal in the Algarve last August. He showed me photos of the minister, the embraces, the minister’s wife and their grandchildren, and the body guard who got him in, standing proud on the beach.

‘I must talk to all the world leaders. I have to.’

‘Do you have the same message for all of them?’

‘I’m given different words for all of them. The world leaders don’t know what to do. They don’t understand that this financial crisis, it signifies the END’.

‘The end of the system, of this way of doing things?

‘YES! It must be broken!

‘But this world economy, this capitalist construction that we have made, we hold it above us, it’s a terrible burden, but if we just let it drop, if we break it, it will fall on us and destroy us! We have to deconstruct it very carefully!’

‘You are right; it has to be broken carefully, bit by bit’.

He showed me some more folders, one for Jacques Chirac, of whom he had a very low opinion.

He showed me the registered post receipts of the carved olive wood crosses he sent to those who expressed an interest.

One yellow folder for José Bové.

I reacted ‘Oh, he’s wonderful, he gives his whole life to help us, it’s his mission. He is helping to save our daily bread, what could be more vital?’

Senhor H. could not agree more.

‘I have a burning question’ I said. ‘Have you changed the way you eat?’

At this Senhor H rose from his chair and took something off the windowsill, he held it out to me, it was a white paper napkin.

‘This’ he said, ‘is my evening meal’ and he opened it. Inside was a solitary apple. I understood immediately. I too rose from my seat and shook him by the hand and congratulated him, and he spread his arms wide and cried. He cried because for once somebody understood, and somebody understood how hard it is to be different in a world which doesn’t understand, and how lonely.

‘Can you get organic food around here?’ I said.

‘I don’t need organic’.

‘Do you eat meat?’

‘Once a week’.

He took down another folder, ‘It’s all in here, what I must eat’

‘The instructions were given to you?’

‘Yes: I won’t show it to you, I won’t show it to anyone’.

‘Of course’.

‘A while ago I saw my neighbour come out of his house. He was walking like this’ he got up and slid his feet slowly one in front of the other, ‘He could barely make it to the end of the path. I said to my wife, what is wrong?. She told me he had cancer. The next time I saw him I rushed out, we got talking, I showed him my cross, and he looked interested. So I made him one, and he was very happy. Now, he walks with a spring in his step. He plays with the grandchildren. He has painted the house! And last week, he went hunting. Hunting, yes!’

Senhor H. leaned forward. ‘I know the secret of good health. It’s very simple. It’s all about…’

I’m afraid gentle reader, I cannot reveal the secret of good health, because at that very moment, the drama in which I had become involved took a new turn. Enter stage right, Senhora H.

‘Don’t let on what we’ve been talking about!’ hissed Senhor H.

‘I’m only here for the decorative border’ I said in a loud voice.

‘1 meter should to it, at four per meter...ah, my cherie’ he effused, ‘You have come at just the right time!’ he opened his arms, and then turned to me ‘You see Madame; you did well to wait, for here she is!’

Senhora H, beautifully and sensibly turned out with the uplifted posture of a dancer, turned her gaze upon me, and began a Queenly conversation with me, the sort that should be carried out with a gloved hand upon your wrist. Was she warmed by the charged atmosphere of the little office and what had passed between me and Senhor H, or was she fishing for information, trying to assess how much damage had been done? We had a lovely little chat, on loving subjects, children, their differences, how one never judges, but accepts each for what she and he has to give. How strange was this situation, here was a man receiving clear and detailed information from his mother, a host of angels and God himself, who was prostrate before his wife, quite practised at deceiving her and doing so without a qualm! I surpressed the urge to giggle, and shout out ‘Hallelujah’ and give the game away.

When she left to fetch something, Senhor H. said that if ever I and my husband wanted to come and see him, to tell our stories, to talk, he would be there Monday mornings, he was always here, but on Monday mornings the shop wasn’t open and he would be alone.

Senhora H. returned, we busied ourselves with the order. Suddenly Senhor H decided to call on his wife as a witness.

‘We were talking about our sick neighbour, who had cancer. Tell her what happened!

‘Well, after seeing Senor H, our neighbour’s morale was raised, he felt much better. He wasn’t cured of course…’

‘I didn’t ask you to comment on that, I want to you tell us what he did!’

‘Well, he walked well, he played with the grandchildren…’

‘And, and?’

‘He painted the house…’

‘He painted the house, exactly!, and what else, what else?’

‘He went hunting!’

‘There you see, he went hunting!’.

‘His morale was raised, he felt so much better. He wasn’t cured of course’ said Senhora H kindly. Senhor H growled. I had the impression that Senhora H was not so much the power behind the throne as the Queen herself, and under her noble reign Senhor H found protection.

Senhora H turned to me, ‘And would you believe it, next Monday, Monsieur H is going to start English lessons’

‘Marvellous’ I said.

‘He’s been saying he wants to for some time’

‘And music lessons’ said Senhor H

‘What instrument?

‘Guitar. And accordion’. And so we chatted about the wonder of music…

If you want to understand more, then read Gopi Krishna’s book, ‘Living with Kundalini’ (Shambhala Dragon Editions) - what a tale! Gopi was an Indian civil servant, who carried out his spiritual directives to the letter for over twenty years, until one day he was unexpectedly rocketed into enhanced state of consciousnessby the lopsided awakening of his kundalini energy. It nearly cost him his sanity, it nearly cost him his life, but in the end, in the end – well you will have to read the book to know what became of him. What touched me, is that he too had a wife who was his mainstay.

Our Daily Bread

Our Daily Bread
This summer we went on holiday to the Jura Mountains, and on the last day, the village where we were staying sprouted a glorious organic fair (foire bio), the organic producers all were there, and we had a lovely time.

I made my way to a stall selling bread.

‘Is this bread 100 percent spelt ?’ I said to the baker

‘That one, yes, it’s pure spelt ’

‘Now, does this happen in France?’ I said, ‘I know that many of us northern types and Anglophones suffer from problems digesting wheat, but we seem to be ok with spelt, but here, is it the same?’

‘It does happen in France’ he said with a deep twinkle in his eye, which I have learned to recognise as the sign I am talking to someone out of the ordinary, someone who has something to teach me. (A taste of his apple juice convinced me I was right, especially the lightly spiced sparkling one, divine! He only had one bottle left, and he only makes it once a year!).

‘Oh yes, it’s been around in France for a long time’ he continued. ‘The dieticians tell people to stop eating wheat. But it isn’t that. Since the 1940s we’ve been messing around with wheat, cross-breeding it, now we have wheat with a totally different genetic structure, and it has five times more gluten than the older varieties. This is good for commercial bakers, because they don’t need to work the bread so much, it rises more easily. But, it isn’t natural for us! Try and buy a variety of flour from before the 1940s. Try eating a little, you may find you have no problem with it.’

‘That is very interesting. I didn’t know that! It makes me wonder if people like me, who are ‘sensitive’ or intolerant to things, are in fact indicators that things are going wrong. For example, my mother told me recently that the most prevalent allergy in the USA nowadays is soya. When you look into it, American soya is all genetically modified and relies on chemical fertiliser, pesticides and herbicides. Perhaps the ones who are allergic are the ones who are saved!’

He nodded as he wrapped the bread and handed it over, with a further twinkle.

I took the bread which was a pale malt colour, crusty and dense. I lifted it to my nose and took a deep sniff. Something very strange happened inside me, everything went sort of warped, tears came to my eyes. Richness and depth and nuttiness and sweetness sang together in a beautiful choir of smells. But there was something else, like a long lost memory, a delight experienced under an older sun, a truth forgotten. It is as if everything I’ve eaten which I convinced myself tasted good was based on a memory of what food should taste like, that for the most part I lived on food flavoured by a fantasy of what is good. Some time later I took another sniff, and was in tears again. I hate half of the loaf, alone, with dignity.
When we returned from holiday I found that my Panasonic bread maker had broken even though it is only 2 years old and I’ve always looked after it. It produced three sickly flat loaves the texture of toothpaste. I was very furious about this.

‘ This thing is only 2 years old!’ I ranted ‘How could it break down after only two years? Whatever is wrong with it it’s bound to be expensive and difficult, and I want to make bread NOW, I use it every day, this is our daily bread we are talking about!!’

I do try to listen to the underlying message when I am furious, because I have found there is usually a good underlying reason for my fury. It’s a bit like a psychic gift only much less agreeable for me and those around me. The message is clear

This is our daily bread we are talking about.

Yes, we must we must look into our daily bread. So I took time out of the daily bread-providing process and did some research, here is what I found:

It does seem that our daily bread has taken a bit of a battering since the 1940s:
The grain, the soilWheat grain not what it used to be, as a result of cross-breeding, soil depletion and the addition of chemicals.

Grains have been cross bred to increase yield, be resistant to farmer’s problems, and to fit in with new mechanised methods of mass bread production. Modern grains are less nutritious than the pre-40s varieties.
Soil has been depleted through the use of chemical fertilizers and lack of organic nourishment
Chemicals have been added to soil, grain and plant in the form of insecticides, herbicides and fungicides such as disulfoton (Di-syston), methyl parathion, chlorpyrifos, dimethoate, diamba and glyphosate…

Milling of the breadHigh heat milling smashes out the starch, quick and easy as part of mechanical production, but it distorts the properties of the wheat, some say making it less nutritious, even harmful to the human organism.

Making of the bread
Clive Lawther from Nourished Magazine has a passion for fermentation, ‘from a demon to a god in one fermentation’ he claims. Why don’t we ferment properly any more? Quickness and ease, ‘mechanised bread production has meant ‘quick’ bread making methods don’t allow glutens starches and malts are not given the fermentation time they need to become digestible and release their nutritional value. For quick bread you need more yeast (harder to digest) and chemical additives (accelerants and proving agents)’.Conclusions?We’ve changed our wheat, we’ve weakened the soil it grows in, poisoned the soil and the plant, smashed up the grain instead of milling it and rushed through its fermentation, taking the opportunity to add a few more chemicals along the way. Suddenly it doesn’t seem quite such a mystery that so many of us are having trouble with it. Maybe this sort of thing could explain some of our other modern malady mysteries?

We used to do it in the traditional way, goodness knows how we knew about that,it wasn't conscious I guess, it came into our traditions and was adhered to by successive generations, but it worked. Then we went into mass production, industry, money, power - but we were ignorant about the subtle mysteries of nutrition and health. Now we have more knowledge and choice, our challenge is to render our food wholesome again, without returning to the hardship of the old days, without undoing progress, but by making good progress. We have some work to do don't we?

Personally, I vowed to become old and slow where bread is concerned, finding ways to ferment properly, seeking out old varieties of wheat. Strangely, at this point, the bread in my bread machine began to rise, and the last one I made was pretty much a normal height.

Talking to myself

I'm going to have to hang wires from my ears and a little microphone under my chin, so that I can talk to myself without attracting suspicious stares. I talk to myself more and more often these days, with increasing vigour and volume. I am unashamed about this and intend to continue, as:

• It helps me to order my thoughts
• I find myself witty and eloquant, and frequently laugh out loud
• I am often struck with wonder and unable to contain myself
• I am often struck with rage and unable to contain myself
• I'd like to talk to others, but most people don't have time to listen
• I don't have time to listen, but I'm always around when I talk to myself
• I hope someone will join in, because there are so many things we need to talk about, aren't there?

This is a good blogger profile. What are we doing but writing to ourselves? I was always destined to become a blogger, even before I knew what one was (which was not that long ago).

I finally managed to set up the blog yesterday with the help of my husband J-C. He found the blogger site and brought the information up on the screen and then he left me to it. He claimed not to know the answer to any of my questions even though he works in computing, it's a Wife Management Technique I think. So I had to muddle through. Not all my artistic sensibilities were possible, not all my requirements were met. Squally rows passed overhead all afternoon until well into the evening.

I had all afternoon to concentrate because R&B (our children) had gone next door to celebrate the neighbour's 14th birthday. The theme of the party was shooting each other with elastic bands and bits of paper, and setting off crackers in one another's ears. B told me he found T's teenage friends a little rough, so he sat up on the stairs and watched them. R came charging home, put on his 'super thickest jumper and his super-thick fat coat' and charged back, after that he didn't feel a thing, so he tells me. This was reported to me as a truly excellent party. One lightbulb, one doorhandle and the table football was broken. There is no record of the parents' reaction. I have been trying to get a block of time to set up this blog for over one year, and just for once no meals, no demands, for 5 hours.

Then R came home and said 'I'm hungry'. I was forced to prepare pasta ribbons with some hollandaise sauce I found at the back of the fridge freezer. B complained that it tasted of fish. When I interrogated the rest of the family, they did not dare agree with him. It did taste of fish. But we do not seem to have food poisoning. I did fry some organic green peppers and cut up an organic avocado to go with it.

14 December 2008

My best friend is leaving.

Because I won't think about it, I woke crying in my dreams. It's Sunday, 5.55am. Many friends have populated my play and left the scene. I know all about it. But I also dreamed of soap. I can still smell it, I'm
infused with its smell. It's a very particular soap which I bought recently for my mother-in-law, at 'A Fleur de Bio', a shop near me. It's downstairs prettily wrapped in leaves and raffia, in a bag of similar presents. Well, it's very obviously not for me is it?

I'm going to have that soap. I'll slice the raffia tie carefully (don't worry about my mother in law, I'll replace the missing soap with Weleda shower cream, oooh the ecstacy of a wash in this, the smoothness of skin after a few months of doing so!). I'll cradle the box, ease out the tongue of the flap, and there it will be. You know when you make pastry, and you gather up all the cuttings and squash them into a ball, and wonder whether you'll get one more small pie out of it? The soap looks just like that. There's nothing nasty in it, you could eat it. And it smells of orange flower. I spent a long time with the owner of the shop choosing the smell that my mother in law would like, would she like jasmine? I did.

'She lived in Algeria, it was a very happy time, something perhaps which reminds her of that?' I said.

'Well, what about orange flower?' Said the owner of the shop, she opened the little box, her own nose rejoiced.

'Oh yes, those little crescent shaped biscuits, dusted in icing sugar, mmm'

She pointed out to me that my mother-in-law's package already contained a 'pâte de savon noir', a black ointment in a glass screw-lidded jar, for washing her face. She wouldn't need two soaps for her face. I agreed of course, and tried to choose something else. But the soap drew me back. Now I realise I bought the soap for me, I just didn't see it at the time, and I never would have done, what extravagance, 10 Euros for a soap, virgin olive oil!

I love those crescent-shaped biscuits. I've only ever eaten one really good one, which I bought from a stall at Feucherolles brocante, years ago. I've never been able to find the stall again, the stallholder mentioned that she was sometimes at Versailles market, I think. I can see the soap now in my mind's eye, a little buttery ball, dusted in icing sugar (it isn't of course) and the orange flower pervades my being, I'm all oil and orange flower. I even catch a glimpse of Lebanese hands squeezing it and patting it together. All this, contained in a soap.

I'm going to anoint myself with that soap. I'm not going to anoint myself just anywhere, I'm going to anoint myself in my boudoir, a name I have given to a minute annexe to our bedroom. When we moved in I didn't know what to do with this annexe, a sink and a cupboard, barely room to turn round and certainly no space to entertain a gentleman in a top hat. The sink was a 'willy sink', low enough to dip your willy in, and jutted out too much into the precious space and with horrid red taps. I've transformed the annexe into a boudoir, one wall a 'glacis' of the kind of blue the sky is as it transforms between night and day, day and night, the other rich, warm pink, all in breathable ecological paint. A touch of gold (less ecological, but uplifting). The sink is for sitting at now, on a little box stool, and it has a vast mirror above it. (It's indescribable really. I should show you a picture of it, but our digital camera lost its vision, suddenly, for no particular reason...and when I think that my Kodak Instamatic, a present at 14 years old, still functions...). The boudoir is a transformation of something ugly, all wrong, which itched at me every night when I turned my head to the right, into a marvel. I croon over it every time I see it, which is often.

The soap will oil and cream in my hands, I will put it down, I will circle the richness in my palms, and I will bring my palms to my face, and I will do what I have to do to make sure this is an anointment, not a simple wash.