Curious lost lines

Brain hurricane season is still present; I have had more ideas in the past few days than I knew what to do with.

This appears to be a long one and I blame it all down to the “Bluewater technique” I spoke about in a previous post.

I really did try to force myself to write something every day whether it’s going to be published or not, whether it’s more than a sentence or not and I got thinking about some very wacky things!

You’ll see them as posts such as “If I were a fairy” or “life of a mermaid” though the latter is due in the first week of June, so you won’t see that just yet.

Somethings I consider unpublishable or are unfinished poems or plays.

I don’t like to leave poems unfinished but it is a habit I am trying to get out of because a book I’ve been reading called “How to grow your own poem” by Kate Clanchy says, it is easy to lose a good line, never delete the line when you don’t know where its taking you, store them in a folder called “lost lines” and come back to them later, a poem doesn’t need to be rushed.

So I’ve done that and have accumulated approximately twenty unfinished and would be deleted poems in just a week!

They don’t even have to be poems actually; they could be good prose lines for a short story or a novel.

Who knows where those lost lines will lead us?

There is a whole paragraph which seems exciting, but I don’t know why yet.  But it’s very intriguing and it’s called “The Masters of Dream”.

I haven’t been able to add more to it yet, because in all honesty I was busy with other things today and working on those things with a raging head and ear ache.

But I could not ignore that paragraph, which started like that.

I hope I have time tomorrow to think about it and see what this is!

Thanks for reading!

Emotionally depleted

I’m trying something incredibly counterintuitive right now.

I am suffering in a lot of areas in my life, I am hugely stressed and growing in apathy for almost everything and I am finding it hard to get the get up and go.

I am losing my fight.

So, usually, when under so much tension and uncertainty and sickness, people tell me to rest, take it easy, don’t overthink things, don’t do this and don’t do that and most certainly don’t start anything new – you need to calm down and rest up.

It would be natural to think I am crazy because I am going to do the opposite.

It’s based on an idea by Mel Robbins called “Bluewater”.

She took a glass of water and filled it to the brim and put dirt in the cup, lots of dirt and she mixed it up to show how a person looks when they’re feeling overloaded and stressed out.

She then explained how people then try to deal with each individual problem they have at a time, to try and lessen the load, she did this by demonstrating how people try to spoon out the dirt little by little and over a time, their cup gets emptier and emptier and this emptiness is representing the persons emotional health. 

Over a time, as you’re spooning out the dirt, you are becoming more and more emotionally depleted and burned out and the idea of doing anything becomes so exhausting you just can’t bear to do anything anymore and you lose yourself and you feel that you might never be happy again.

A dangerous situation for anyone!

She said the simplest thing to do at a time like this is to make yourself do something for yourself, something that you think you’d enjoy or if your apathy is so bad, go back to something you once enjoyed – force yourself to have some time in the week to yourself to do it and gradually ease more and more things that you like into your life – make the time to do some self-care and find yourself again!

So she showed what happens when you start adding more water into the dirty cup, it eventually cleans up, not entirely, there will always be a little bit of dirt, but as you add more and more back into your life that you enjoy, that makes you feel like you have some kind of purpose or soul again, your cup is going to get cleaner and cleaner and you will stop feeling so depleted in yourself and you will be stronger and healthier in the long run for it.

I’m trying to force myself right now into going into autopilot and doing some of the things I used to enjoy from the past, whether I am tired or not, whether I feel like it or not, whether I am currently enjoying it or not and no matter how bad the physical pains are in my body – I must do them. 

Because, maybe that’s what I am missing right now?

I’ve been encouraged to take it easy, stop and relax so much over the years that I have come to a virtual stop and any notion of doing anything makes me have this kind of feeling of MEH!

I’ve allowed peoples advice to make me lazy and I don’t like it!

I actually started about a couple of weeks ago.

I started to force myself to read 30 pages of a book again per day, like I used to a year back. 

I am forcing myself to write anything, no matter what it is, whether it intends to be published or not.

I am forcing myself to do some kind of exercise again.

I am practising art at least once every couple of days. 

I am forcing myself to take an interest in thinking about my future again and start planning things and maybe even start thinking about chasing dreams again, because around four years ago I gave them up.

So I am thinking about creating an inspiration or dream board again, I used to be a big fan of those but got out of the habit of it because Paul started pinning his things onto MY board!  He wouldn’t get his own.

I completely forsook any dream because I was convinced I was about to die at any moment!

Along with this I have been trying to remember to do the “High five habit” Mel Robbins also spoke about, but I need more practise with that and I am also trying to remember to count down from five when I am about to go back into a negative habit.

My memory has issues because I have been on survival mode and doing practically nothing with my life for the last eight years, because I have been recovering from bed bound sickness.

I have also had a scare recently.

I know as I am getting older, certain health problems, particularly mental health problems are getting much worse.

I came across a video online purely by accident, I wasn’t looking for anything in particular when I came across a video titled “loneliness is dangerous for your physical health”.

I knew it was dangerous for mental health, but not physical health.

It turns out people who have been isolated or lonely most of their lives have a hugely high risk of developing auto-immunity issues as well as memory loss.  Now that woke me up, because my memory is unreliable and scary at times and I have four different types of auto-immune disease.

Much of the abuse and neglect I had as a child was due to isolation, my mum refusing for me to socialise outside of tight family and friendship circles, even home educating me most of the time!

So I never really had a healthy social life that lasted, it always came in dribs and drabs.

Knowing this and knowing that people who have lived in isolation a lot are more likely to develop Alzheimer’s or dementia before they are 60yrs old, worried me a lot!

They did say though that reversing this can be very quickly done actually and socialising for at least 30 minutes week outside of your home regularly or more can put you back on the right track in not getting that type of dementia, as it’s a specific type apparently.

So there is a lot going on in my life and according to the Bluewater technique there really should be a lot more going on too.

But right now, I am trying to concentrate on solving a mystery in my life and getting my passion for writing back.  Because I haven’t felt passionate about anything for a long time!

Tell a white lie, I have, but then I quickly felt, what’s the point someone will ruin it…

So, yeah, that’s what’s up lately!

Thanks for reading!

Top of the wheel

I’m not setting goals anymore in regards to novel writing, they get done when they get done but I haven’t given up; Yes I’ve had a respite since September 2022 and that is a long time, unreasonably long, but I had to have it due to mental health healing.  I had a hard time, there were lots of things happening in my life I had to think about – think a lot.

Lots of things in fact, lots of different problems to solve and many of them just needed me to try and calm myself enough to allow myself to think, then once I had managed to do that, I needed to calm myself again and stop thinking in order to heal from it all.

There was grief, death of a relative, a revelation I wasn’t sure was a trick or not, an announcement, an opportunity, a break up, a diagnosis and so many things all rolled into one major thing for me – that I could not cope.

Ultimately my entire life has been turned upside down and I am still in the situation of not really knowing if it is a good or bad thing just yet, I am still teetering on the edge of trying to determine which – it could be either!

It’s a strange situation to be in.

I feel at the moment I am standing on top of a wheel and if I fall backwards I will land in shark filled waters and if I fall forwards I will fall safe into someone’s arms.

At present I am still on top of the wheel.

It’s like sitting on a bomb really.

My mind has been so preoccupied with all these things that I haven’t been able to keep to my reading goals, my writing or practising of my art.  I haven’t even been able to hold a conversation without my mind wandering off, worrying about things.

It’s only been this past week I have manage to slowly and surely restart my habits.  I have started to write a little again, I have started to read a little again and I have even done some art.

Not as much as I would normally do in a day, in fact, I am doing less than ten paragraphs every couple of days towards anything, my one poem a day has become three or four again; my art practises are happening every couple of days.  It’s more than what has happened between September 2022 to March 2023 in any case and I am proud it’s coming back together again.

The frustrating thing is this – my typing speed has got extremely slow and I can’t seem to speed it up again.  I used to write 90 to 120 words per minute and now I struggle to get above 40.

I am making a lot of spelling mistakes and errors, cognitively I am suffering a lot and I don’t know what to make of it.

My Easter Project and Project AD has hopes to be finished before Midsummer, but I am not going to force myself, it’s still early days for me, I still haven’t fully healed.

In reality, I need a holiday – get out of this environment, get out into nature and remember how to laugh and play again – playfully scream – wash my hair with the rays of the sun – chase faeries – hug trees – and try to learn how to feel happy again.  Because happiness is a distant memory, one I am not sure I can remember how it feels anymore.  Strange as that sounds…

I also need to learn to trust again.

Trust in the process, trust to love again, trust that I have self-worth, that I am someone deserving and someone who can be free to laugh without someone complaining about the noise or worrying I am going to get over excited and hurt myself.

Because a couple of years ago I was bedbound sick and laughing really did hurt me, because it would cause a coughing fit and my spleen was swollen and so it genuinely was rather painful to laugh – but those things are behind me now.  But still, out of habit I have people trying to calm me down, because they’ve forgotten how much I have healed.

I need to lose myself in feelings that are opposite to negative ones – I need to, because I don’t feel very human anymore.

There are times I have sat back and realised all the negativity around me, all the bitterness, envy, jealousy, contempt and discomfort and I wonder what am I becoming exactly?  Am I becoming a demon?  Because the only things I can feel are variations of darkness…

It’s a scary place to be – see, there – fear – another negative emotion… but you see, I try to remember something a motivational speaker called Mel Robbins once said – that fear is the exact same chemical in the brain to excitement and that you have to change your perspective and realise when you fear something that you might actually need to try and tell yourself it’s exciting, rather than something to fear.

Odd… but I am trying this trick.

I am on the cusp of something amazing which is about to happen in my life and all I can think about is how scary it is – I know there are wonderful things coming with it, especially a lot of love and tenderness and protection – but I still can’t help but focus on that one major problem.  I have like 30 pros and only around five cons to this chance, yet it’s the cons that are taking up brain space!

When you see it like that, you realise there is something seriously wrong with how you are wired!

Wired might not be correct actually… trained is perhaps the best way to describe it.   Because I used to be such a Positive Pollyanna and it has only really been in the past decade that the Pollyanna in me has started to die.

I need to do what happened in the book Pollyanna – I need to find my tribe to help resuscitate me, bring me back to the light.

Although saying that, I think I don’t need to, I think – if I am reading things correctly, my tribe has come to find me and all I need to do is wait a little while longer, then reach out my hand fearlessly and say to myself – I am excited to be a part of your life!

Thanks for reading!

Art & poetry books

I really miss doing art.

I am glad I am getting supplies again, but it’s not just the supplies that is the problem, it’s the where I can do art that is.

I’ve mentioned before my private spaces are just not respected in this house, my art table is getting messier and messier over time with other people’s junk and nobody is making effort to tidy up after themselves so I can use my art table for what it supposed to be used for – ART!

Henry has been given a project at school to complete by his birthday in May – this is to complete a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle on his own at home to then take to the school to show the teacher his project has been completed – this is entirely doable, however, this means I have to dismantle my puzzle for him to start a new one so he can do this and this means that he will now need to use the art table to do it.

We used to have a decorating table for my puzzle, but the piles of junk around the house have hidden it and we can’t find it.

Life here is getting above a blooming joke now.

Instead, I am contemplating making a cushion fort in the corner of my bedroom to sit on the floor cross-legged with my pooh board covered in cling film so I can use that as an art table and paint in the bedroom – not ideal, because water and paints on a carpet protected only by old magazines is not ideal and my position will be behind a door. 

Whenever people come into the room to tell me anything they literally bust into the room and the door usually bounces off whatever is behind it, which when I do my art fort will be me and the jar of water no doubt!

I want to start painting some covers for my poetry books I am going to start making to sell on Amazon.

I am desperate to compile several anthologies of my poetic works as eBooks and paperbacks through Amazon publishers.

I also wanted to start my self-employment before Easter and a major part of that was selling my artwork in various formats and selling things via SquareSpace.

Some of my previous artworks I wanted to find a way to send the images to a company in order to create toys from the characters I’ve made.  I don’t know how to do that yet, but I am learning as I go along.

I’ve always wanted to design toys like this; I have a big love for soft toys.

Thanks for reading…

About my poetry

This post is not about bragging.

But to those who will read it, no doubt you will have your suspicions that it is a sort of act of boasting.

However, it should be said.

No poem on this blog has ever been revised or made into second drafts etc. and no poem in this blog was pained over for hours on end.

There, said it.

Most of my poems are done in less than twenty five minutes, first draft, scheduled or published online immediately without a second thought and I can only recite one poem I have ever written.

Food for thought, isn’t it?

It’s one of those reasons why I am not a member of any poetic clubs; I am not welcomed because I can push out three to five poems an hour without aching over the words I should produce.

It just naturally flows.

I was astounded to find some poets online take weeks to finish a piece, I personally couldn’t do that and I think it goes to show who is more dedicated to their craft.  They are – I wouldn’t faff around like that over one poem.

I live for the current emotion, it is the current emotions that drive the poetry I don’t want to hang on most of those emotions for weeks on end, good Lord I really would commit suicide if that was the case and at the moment I am only tiptoeing at the edge of it.

It took me about an hour and a half to write one poem once, the longest ever.

I do delete poems never to share them, this happens about twice a week, so you’re losing around a hundred to a hundred and fifty per year, because I am embarrassed to share the depths of my emotions at times.

Sometimes I preschedule poems for months in advance whilst I think about deleting them – at the moment there are seven whose future is as obscure as mine.

Nobody believes I can write that fast until they see me in action, offline. 

Then they accuse me of boasting.

But they did challenge me!

I will sit there and ask them, pick a subject and I will think about it for two or three minutes, to get my mind into the zone of that subject and how I feel about it and then the words pour out and the poem is done within minutes.

I can write a poem about anything, so long as it doesn’t feel like a lie to my heart.  For example, I couldn’t write a poem which is supposed to be a love song for Hitler – I hate fascists!

So that’s not a poem I could write.

But I could write one about cutting his balls off and feeding them to him, no matter how disgraceful that would be and inelegant.

That’s not an invitation for requests by the way!

I find it hard to write more than three poems a day, though I have been known to do up to ten.

I try to force myself to do at least one per day, if I live to a hundred imagine a future publication of all my poetic works, how many volumes could that possibly be?

Thing is, I haven’t a clue what I am doing poetically.

I have never been formally educated about it, I can’t tell a poem from a rhyme to a sonnet etc. – for all I know they could be the same thing but fancy names!

I do know what a haiku is though and I used to write them.

In fact talking of sonnets, I have been seriously thinking about reading a book to learn about those.

One of my dreams is to be patient enough with my poetry that I could actually write a poem as long as Shakespeare, Christina Rossetti and Edmund Spenser.

I have often thought about creating a large poem which is a story like Edmund Spenser’s Fairy Queen – that would be amazing if I could do something like that.

That would take me months, could I do it on an emotional level? 

I have often thought about challenging myself to do it!

I originally wrote the first chapter of a fantasy story in rhyme, with that very intention; but I couldn’t hold it throughout the story – it’s still in progress after nine years, but I haven’t added a thing to the project since 2015.

It’s about gargoyles protecting the heart of a young maiden who lives in the house they protect.

It’s a dark fantasy and very macabre, it’s sort of like Edgar Allen Poe meets Hans Christian Andersen.

I have a couple of online friends who have made the suggestion that I should go on stage and read my poems out there, but I won’t do that.

Why?

Because hilariously as it sounds, I don’t actually regard myself a poet yet!

Yet this is probably what I am best known for.

At the moment I am having a very poetic night – I am thinking about poetry a lot and I am frustrated that a book I have ordered from EBay is two weeks late in the post and I had to put in a complaint about it.

I want to finish the book and do the essays in it to learn what I am doing.  Unfortunately the library is fed up with me re-borrowing that book, I’ve had it a total nine weeks this last borrowing session and it’s the second time in a year I did that, having it for about eighteen weeks in total for the whole year!

I wish it would come soon!

It’s where some of my poems I’ve posted on here has been inspired by, such as “Grief”, “Brent Cross Shopping Centre” and “Lessons from life”.

Anyway, if that’s bragging I apologise!

Thanks for reading…

A little disappointed

There is nothing sadder than realising you’ve worked hard on a project for nearly two years only to find it so similar to a recent movie or a book that has only just been released and you realise that if you were to continue your project, you could be blamed for being a rip off of that successful project of another person!

This has happened for me this week, I recently learned that there is a new horror coming out and it looked brilliant but then I realised there was a lot of things in that movie which seems almost identical to my project called Horror 17 – yes I have in excess of seventeen horror projects on the go!

It’s a little sad but it is OK, I am not giving up the project, I am still going to write it, but I will be cautious about giving it to anyone to publish.  It may end up being published on my blog, then trolls can tell me how much of a rip off it is – when in actuality it is just a coincidence!

For your information I have over seventy projects on the go but I try to primarily work on just three at a time.

I have a long list of things I am currently doing and I put their genre next to the title of the stories I am doing along with the pseudonyms I use on my blog for that project. 

My main genre is fantasy of its various descriptions including dark fantasy it would seem, horror being a close second (specifically vampire horror) and dystopian the third.

It helps me keep track of what I am as an author primarily.

Thanks for reading! 

Until…

Crystals hang around the window illuminating the room with lightning flashes of rainbows

A little shard of sunlight breaks through the crack in the curtain creeping closer to me as I read

The crow caws loudly in a nearby oak

I am snuggled up with my book, ashamed that I woke

Life is peaceful here

Until…

Anthropomorphised animals

Since a child I have loved anything that anthropomorphised animals, I got into this after seriously becoming a mega fan of “The animals of Farthing Wood” TV series and being an avid collector of their magazine and other merchandise; it wasn’t until I was an adult that I discovered that “The animals of Farthing Wood” was actually and originally a novel. 

I think I was one of the first children in this country to fully understand the impact humanity has on the environment and the animal kingdom, because I remember being commended in one of my schools for a poem I did about pollution and its effects on animals when I was just seven (that’s 1989).  I was a child, who was raised in the suburbs of North London, but I was often shipped out to other relatives around the country who lived rurally and on farms, so being a natures child in every sense of the word, I saw the massive changes humanity did to the world.

Every other month as I grew up my heart broke time and time again as more and more of my favourite outdoor places became new housing estates or had a railway track inserted through it and the dead animals that lined the tracks were heart wrenchingly numerous.

As a mostly isolated child who was ignored unless needed, I was often made to play in the large gardens with the pets I had, usually dogs and a rabbit, but squirrels and various birds became very tame around me as I was growing up that they became extended outdoor living pets.  I grew to empathise more with animals than with people.

To me, the animals seem to speak to me and we had an understanding, I learned their habits as much as they learned mine and we respected each other and each other’s ways.  This is why I found it easy to fall into shamanism, because it wasn’t so much as I wanted to be a shaman, rather than, I flowed into it without realising and it wasn’t until a high school friend said to me she thinks I am a shaman because of my ways, that I accepted that maybe she was right and I am that. 

So I read some books on the subject and I was laughing at how basic the training was in it, been there, done that was my response to a lot of it.  It was just so natural to me, that it seemed ludicrous to think people need courses on these things – whereas if they weren’t so involved in being human and doing modern human things, they’d all be like this too – it’s natural.

I know as I was growing up, cousins and even my own mother would be frustrated at how the squirrels and the crows won’t go near them, when they wanted to pet them right then and there like I could… I would tell them, you need to do this and do that before they come to you, you need to respect them and do it like this because they see it as impolite if you don’t – “you’re mad” was often the response as they grumpily slump off back inside, hating nature for rejecting them!

“The Animals of Farthing Wood” were not the only inspirations however, there were many others such as “Blinky Bill”, various Disney movies, “Rude dog and the dweebs” and so much more! 

So animals in some way or another are a regular feature in my stories.

Happy reading!

My brain takes me here…

They say that the books you love to read, the movies you love to watch and the things that stick with you the most can be seen in your own writing. 

What you love is often reflected in your writing and once you know yourself well enough you write better.  Once you throw yourself into all of your passions and are writing things based on your passions or similar to your passions unashamedly, you will develop your style and you will therefore come across as unique and fresh in the genres you write.

As long as you stay true only to yourself, do not write for the market, write for you!

I hope this is true.  If it is, then you can more or less guess from my likes and dislikes what could end up being in my novels.

I don’t like to be predictable though, but it is true that there is a little of what I love in everything that I do

Below is a list of stories, books or movies in which I mentally visit and live in a lot, for some reason or another, I am dragged back there to relive scenes or add new ones in my mind.  However, I never write those reimagining’s down through fear of becoming a fraud!  Though I have sometimes thought about doing fanfiction!

1922 By Stephen king – this story in particular has actually influenced a horror I am writing, which is based around a well in a garden too, funnily enough.  But the story concept is poles apart besides the setting of a well. 

Spider By Hanns Heinz Ewers – Every time I see a spider I remember the story.  Every time I see a woman working at a loom or spinning yarn, I think of this story.  You would think that wouldn’t be very often then, but I know a lot of prepper, homesteading type ladies who do this regularly.  I have wanted to do this myself; I have always wanted to make my own felt too. 

The complete collection of The Wizard of Oz By Frank L Baum – So many imaginative things in all the stories, living china dolls, servant monkeys, it’s absolute joy!  The landscape descriptions, oh my word, they are divine, I just can’t help but bring myself back to those scenes. 

Smoke and Mirrors By Neil Gaiman – So many lovely stories and poems in this book, I presume they are poems in any case?  I see them as such, I love the prose, I just love the way he writes!  It is very soulful writing. 

The man in the picture By Susan Hill – This is the only book in my entire reading history, of such length, that I have read and could not put down even for a toilet break!  It is just so gripping and I loved it, it had a similar air to Dorian Grey, but in my opinion much better executed.  I love Venice, never been, but still, always wanted to, love with a passion masquerades and carnival life. 

Matilda By Roald Dahl – Ever since I was little, since Victoria Wood read this on TV I have loved this story and nagged my mum in buying me the book, but she never did.  I must have borrowed this book a hundred times from the library before I became an adult and bought it as part of a trilogy compilation.  How I wished that my soul got angry enough with the people in my life that I could play with the supernatural like she did!  It may have solved a lot of my childhood problems, or created worse ones, who knows? 

Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll – Very alike to Wizard of Oz, the scenes are great, but I also like crazy characters, madness or at least the descent into it ideas.  I love kooky takes on animal and plant life and this was such a joy to behold.  The artwork etc, I love everything about Alice in Wonderland and I have an addiction to collecting Alice in Wonderland novelties.  There were times I pranced around in life hoping I fell down a hole where things were very different too. 

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold – If you can actually manage to read the whole book and get past the awful main scene, you will actually find this book very deep on an emotional level that is not just traumatic, but beautiful too.  If you read deeply, push past the horrible stuff, it is very meaningful.  How the dead view the living, how the living cannot move on until the dead does, what dead children do in the heavens.  Living out their wildest imaginations; yes, a lot of it is weird and sickening, but I urge you to try and edit those horrible bits out of your mind and read it without those bits.  It takes strong stuff to do that, I know!  But honestly, it is a lovely book besides. Try to skim the nasties.   

Confessions of an ugly step-sister by Gregory Maguire – I love Cinderella anyway, but this plot was good and more to the way that I thought it was behind the scenes.  I love how I learned real history in this book too, the bit about the tulips in Holland.  By the way, that’s another addiction I have – tulips.

I.T By Stephen King – I used to be scared of clowns, big time, before I even learned about Pennywise, but it is funny to actually say that I loved the character Pennywise so much it lessened my fear of them.  Weird I know!  In the past two years in particular, I have lost my fear of clowns entirely and now enjoy them, in fact, they are becoming the main projects for my art!  I just hate the scene of little Georgie.

The Mad Max Movies – I have a thing for life on the road, roguish living, post-apocalyptic tribal societies and the general chaos of survival as whole societies descend into madness.  For this reason too, I think I like the next movie;

Reign of fire movie – I love subterranean settings and when you throw in dragons in a post-apocalyptic world I am in my element. 

Gregor the Overlander series by Suzanne Collins is another subterranean setting I love, full of gothic elements such as bats, rats, roaches and gore with an edge of the apocalypse feel to it. 

The Blue Bird starring Shirley Temple – this has been in my mind since I was a very small child, a lot of things about this movie can be seen in small snippets of some of my work.  I have mentioned Old father time and I have cats and dogs which can take on a human form, children trapped in dream time in a couple of my stories to date so far.  No Spoilers, because they were just passing things in the plot, not the actual plot at all.

The Karnstein Trilogy – I love this much more than Dracula, I love the movies and the books they were based on.  I loved it so much that I had been heavily influenced by this trilogy my whole life; I have had to be careful when writing my vampires in fear of coming off as a plagiarist.  You may see what I mean with what I mentioned in “The Blue Bird” paragraph.  I have had to learn to chop up everything I love and move them around genres and different stories, like some experimental stir fries. 

I shall write about the tropes and scenes and types of characters I like in future posts – keep eye out for those!

Happy reading! 

Researching religion to its core

In my previous post I mentioned a book that I am reading called “A History of Judaism” and some of you may be curious as to why I am reading such a book?  There are in fact two major reasons for me reading this book and both are to do with simple research.

Firstly I wanted to get to grips in understanding Judaism from its core because of a couple of specific themes I want to write and I don’t like to be ignorant when I am writing about culture.

Secondly, I want to find out why my ancestors left Judaism at the turn of the twentieth century just a decade before the Second World War.  Why some of the very oldest members of my family admit they were originally Jewish, but get rather aggressive about it and somewhat evasive.  I am also interested in finding any new books regarding this subject but set in Italy and Italian Jewish history in particular.

My son Henry absolutely loves learning anything at all about his family history and he has become less afraid of R.E at school since we have been learning the differences between what we know to be Evangelism, J-Witness and Judaism.  My family became Catholic and Evangelists when they left Judaism and part of that branch that left Judaism, also became J-Witnesses.

Part of my problems growing up was the cultural confusion my extended family had on supposed opposing ideas and therefore my understanding of religion was warped over the years; as literally my family would rage war on each other over their beliefs.  According to my grandmother, my great grandmother’s sister reacted so violently against her leaving Judaism for a Catholic man that she threw her into the fireplace and she escaped barely scarred.  Another incidence was that I was reminding an anti-Semitic evangelical relative of mine about how Jesus was a Jew and their response was to slap me across the face!

It astounds me how so many religions are at odds with each other when they all share the same core, corrupt the word of the core and kill each other in the name of the God that is the mainstay of the core.

However, as I am teaching my son, I am reminding him that you cannot hate anyone regarding this, because you cannot blame them for their ignorance.  Most people simply do not have the time on their hands to research as much as we do and therefore, you must always react to their violence with kindness if at all those people could make it possible for us to remain passive and kind that is.  Self-preservation kicks in for us all eventually.

The crucial thing to understand about all religions and cultures is that most people do not have time, they are too busy, they have other priorities and over the years many people have surrendered their personal research to trusted authoritive individuals who may or may not be corrupt within themselves, with the aims of controlling their particular congregations etc.  To be fair, everybody wants to try and honour their ancestors by keeping to what their parents believe and it wasn’t until the last century or so, that humanity in general were largely uneducated due to class differentiation and lack of opportunities.

There will be many updates in the future of my reading lists and there will be many different types of cultures and religions I will be study over the course of my life, because I have an insatiable yearning to understand humanity.  In fact in 2009 I signed up to the OU to do a Social Science degree, but I couldn’t cope with the demands of a new-born baby and running a house so went on extended leave, which is still ongoing!  The OU is lovely in that they have still left it opened for me to return whenever I want to, and I may eventually, as I miss it.

I feel I must apologise to some readers who may have found the tone of this post offensive, because no doubt, there are some who do.  But it is by no means an attack on religion, simply a passive eye opening, hoping that, with the tools of the modern age, that you will find time to research the roots of your beliefs to the very core and not just what your local parish tells you.

Thank you for reading.