It

Ultimately I think that men are rather one dimensional.  They get stuck with one idea, one thing that drives them, and that’s it.  If you are planning to spend a life-time together, it’s best to find out what that one thing is.  Baseball?  Trains  ?   Or possibly their job ?

With women it’s different.  They only seem truly happy, if everyone around them is happy.  “Happy” means different things for different people and what it is that makes people happy is basically impossibe to know.  Food is usually a good guess, but then, I know quite a few people, who get annoyed with that kind of nurturing over-mother thing.  End result:  Everyone is unhappy.  

Seems to me, that we really should start cracking on that third gender, that perfect balance...it would make a lot of things a whole lot easier!

Spring 101

I have to admit that sunlight does help with a grim disposition – although I am wondering whether a prolongued onslaught of sinusitis may possibly be the sign of hay fever.  After postXmas clammies, onto taxtorture and now THIS !!

What is Spring tyring to teach me….?!!

This I believe

Humans are but animals that have awakened to the idea of finality.

Sleepless in bed...

Do you know the feeling?  You go to bed at midnight, tired and happy that you made it through another day without messing up the world too badly, only to wake up two hours later, knowing fair well, that you are toast. 

Nevertheless you go ahead and try to relax (because you know that’s your best bet): you focus on thinking soporific thoughts (does Rachel love Ross after all?), you imagine squirrels asleep in their nest, you feel your limbs seemingly getting heavier and you busily blot out anything that might make your heart rate speed up (chocolate consumption or account levels, software issues, lost stuff, and probably a large range of friends&family stuff as well) – until there is no way around accepting the fact that your bladder has slowly but surely been filling up and is now full to the rim so that you actually will have to get up. 

Lavishly cursing your lot, you get up and make your way down an underheated hallway and plop down on a chilly toilet seat with a sigh.

But sometimes, I have found, that that is actually a good thing to do.  Getting up.  It’s like a reboot.   Because when I eventually get back to bed, I actually want to be there to warm up my feet and give my wobbly circulation a break.

In fact it is much harder to go back to sleep at 5am.  But recently I didn’t have much need for that.

Did I say something?

"She is fourteen...,” he says, nodding affirmatively while sending out a slightly over-extended smile - I read: “...you know what I mean...!?” I smile compassionately and say,  “Oh yes."  

While I hear many stories, so far I had not that many to contribute.  Teenagehood has been relatively smooth on our end.  Doubtless there are lots of little moods and insecurities, but overall it has been a time of exciting firsts. 

It helps that we talk.  The relationship I have nurtured between family members is one of openness and sharing.  Everyone has their ups and downs, their doubts and disappointments and it helps to understand that parents are not that different in that.  

Trouble is, every child secretly holds on to the image of the super-parent, the one who tells off the bully in the playground, the one who pops out the magical pill when there is a bump and takes an interest in every little bit of their lives.  

Seeing parents struggle with their own relationships or with the role they are supposed to play as parents is anathema.  Parents should not question their purpose in life.  They are parents!

Recently I had to point out to my sixteen-year-old that the societal construct of “motherhood” is not an easy one to come to terms with.  Saint and satan in one.  

I am still waiting for her to resurface.

Christos Anesti

On a recent trip to Ephesus, the ancient capital of the Roman province Asia Minor (nowadays Turkey), it dawned on me that right there, in the Church of Mary, at the Council of Ephesus in 425AD, patriarchy put down its leaden food and declared its ultimate and indisputable  superiority because it was there and then that Mary was dethroned and declared a mere human, albeit mother of the Son of God (thereby himself a God).

For centuries before that, Ephesus had been the centre of worship of the Goddess Kybele and later, under Greek rule, the Goddess Artemis - the Virgin Goddess and sister of Apollo.  

Mary, too, was worshipped in the founding years of Christianity.  But the Pope and his regional bishops decreed that while de facto worshipping three entities, Father, Son and the Holy Spirit, it was inadmissible to worship a woman.

  

In fact, in the years to come they would burn thousands of women at the stake.

Welcome to Christianity!  But then, under Hinduism women continue to be burned, raped and beaten...and let me not start with Islam.  

Welcome to Patriarchy then.