10th June 2000

It's 10.30pm. It's dusk, fast approaching nightfall. Somewhere on the horizon, down the street from where I live there's a tiny window on the sunset, the last dregs of the golds and yellows that were filling the sky just now. You can literally frame it with a thumb and forefinger of each hand. The rest of the sky's a uniform dark blue, so smooth and unblemished it looks like a huge canopy spread out across the world. There's just one star in the sky that I can see, it's still too light to make out the others. It looks a little odd set against such a perfect night sky, as if someone had taken a pin and pricked a hole in the dome of our World and let in the light from without. Is that Jupiter? I don't remember any of the little astronomy I once knew.

It's been gloriously warm these past few days; London in summer is simply perfect. Warm but not too hot, sunny, old buildings admixed with new. It's all rather surreal. I've spent the last two days drowsing on my back in the grass of several parks with my surgery textbook. Haven't got much reading done, and I'd best get some done tonight if I know what's good for me, but it's been simply wonderful soaking up warmth and sunshine on my back; it's like having a warm bath only without water. And I'm slightly tanned too; everyone in London ends up looking rather pale and sallow after winter.

I haven't really got much to write about. Maybe just a little about self-centredness, yet again.

I was really ill last week. For those interested, symptoms included a sore throat, fever, abdominal pain, headaches, cough with no haemoptysis but productive of green sputum and severe shortness of breath, and a cold. I caught myself feeling sorry for myself whilst complaining to a friend for sympathy, and realised I was being self-centred. For all the miserable-ness I was going through, there were at least a hundred other people in hospital far worse off than I and battling for their lives. Me, I just had a bad cold thingie, probably viral. It'll wear off soon. For them, well they might not be so lucky. Someone else has gone through some horrific experience, she won't tell me what it is but it's been bad enough for her to cast aside God and say He's never there for her when she needs him to be, that the few times she's really needed Him and prayed to Him nothing's happened, that she needs a miracle and unless she gets it she won't believe in Him anymore. I can't empathise - she won't tell me what the problem is, and perhaps that's why I'm being as unsympathetic as to say, whatever the problem is, someone else out there has one far worse. I've heard horrific tales of abuse and pain and suffering over the years, I've heard stories that have left me feeling sick at heart or completely shocked. And those someone else's still believe in God, somehow, someway. They still place their faith in Him. They know better than to demand a miracle. I call it demanding the bicycle; rather like demanding a Christmas gift from Santa Claus. Over the years I've come to believe that He doesn't work that way. We shouldn't, and mustn't pray to him for specific things, worldy things, objects in mind. Some ministers at the various churches I've attended have prayed for prosperity for the country, for material gain. It's left me feeling rather odd each time. That's not what God is to me, and I'd like to hope that's not what he is to most Christians and Catholics. He's not an ATM. He doesn't dispense miracles, unless it is His will. Not ours. I think what He does give is love and forgiveness when we deserve none, and an example to follow; that He strengthens our courage and bolsters our strength, if we let Him. Only if. Perhaps if we are to pray for anything, it's guidance, strength, hope and courage.

And to cast him out because we're messing up our lives? It just seems so unfair.

Lucian wrote a few days back that he'd been criticised for being too rose-tinted and happy. I have received criticism as well, for writing dispassionately (apparently) and making it sound like I'm a passive observer all the time, that I don't write like I'm passionately involved in the issues I write about. I don't really know how to respond to my criticism because it doesn't really bother me at all. Perhaps I am writing dispassionately, perhaps I'm not? The simple fact is that I'm writing them. I don't even think I'm writing them for an audience per se, just for myself and perhaps a few good friends. Keen audiences are an added bonus. Doesn't that sound awful? I don't care what you think about my page! lol. As for Lucian's though, I do know how to respond to that. I have read a million angst-filled pages now, if not more. I have read attitude-filled pages about being punk, gothic, alternative, different and unique, me me me. I have fallen prey to the same sometimes and written rather angsty or melancholic pieces. Lucian's page is a refreshing change from the norm for me. I check his pages daily to see if anything new has appeared, because after I read them I feel somehow rejuvenated. That he chooses to write about the wonderful rather than the seamy, about the spectacular rather than the mundane is his choice; it's his page. Perhaps if you think he writes too happily, then... don't read his page. Perhaps you'd be better off reading the normal I am a satanist pages, the ones that write I was abused as a child, my parents never loved me and my trek into darkness began when I got a paper cut filing my parents' divorce papers.

I think I would like to follow Lucian's lead; one of my strengths that I perceive in myself (one of the very few lol) is my sense of humour, which tides me, and my friends through mini-tragedies. It's been wearing thin of late, but I'd like to try to inject that infamous humour into these pages, and into my life again. The exams in 6 weeks aren't helping much, but God willing, I will.

Be well.