hopper, dreams, white people, thirty, happytriggers

Date: 14 February 2006 18:41:00

Recent Notes

I seem to be spending a lot of time in buildings with Edward Hopper pictures hanging on the walls. They're showing up everywhere. Is this a sign that I'm still in liminal alley? Or more likely a sign that CILIP and SLIC just bought a job-lot of Hopper prints eighteen months ago? Anyway, none of them are his liminal spaces work. Which is a shame because that would tie things up much more neatly.
For a long, long time, I could remember none of my dreams. But suddenly I've been overwhelmed with weird dreams of war every night. It's a strange war, it feels like a monumental clash between civilisations, not just countries. Between worlds. Inevitably I start spotting references to war everywhere now that I'm awake, too (and I swear I'd thought nothing of this when I changed my blog biography to a 'war of the worlds' pastiche!)
Pressed to start trying new things and not fear new experiences, we went to St George's church at the Tron on Sunday night. Everybody was white. It took me about twenty minutes to work out why I couldn't relax :-). This may say more about our church than it does about the Tron... or then again, it may not...
It's funny how people look different once you get to know them. Doncha think? Huh? No? Never mind.
Being thirty actually feels a little roomier. I do feel older but more than anything I feel it gives me permission to be myself. Perhaps I've always been older. I feel a lot stronger these days because I'm allowing myself to think like a father.

Updated List of HappyTriggers (a HappyTrigger is a moment of true clarity. True clarity is often experienced in the moment when one realises one has had walls around one's mind all along, and then suddenly knows that they are gone. It can be a frightening feeling but I am resisting that now. I'm letting it excite me. I cannot conjure these moments at will, but I can remember them. I can also go out hunting for them. The following are the best hunting grounds.)

Deliberately expanding my reading habits
Sung prayer
Exercise
Music
Being Daddy
Fasting (e.g. proper, intercessory fasting, with a beginning, a middle and an end.)
Seeing people grow
Behaving contrary to my feelings. Happy when I'm sad, confident when I'm not, etc.
Soft play areas which I'm allowed into!
deliberately reaching out in genuine friendship to people I simply don't care for! (a.k.a. "messing with the system")