I am not a person who ever could believe that birthdays are nothing speial. Whether celebrated by any one else, they remain a day dedicated to the simple fact of your being, of your being on this earth, having arrived on a specific day and a specific time, and having been given a specific name.
It is not gifts but surely when you see a person or are in the same house as a person, is it not positively churlish not to wish him or her a happy birthday or many happy returns or somehow give a message of goodwill? Otheriwse, in my view, you are going out of your way to make that person miserable and to make that person feel small and insignificant. I would not do that to my worst enemy on his/her birthday. I think that the chivalrous thing to do, nurtured as I was on 'The Three Musketees' and other 19th century books of that nature, to wish that person a very Happy Birthday before I ran him through with my sword.
Well, that is the old-fashioned code of chivalry or, dare I say it, simple common courtesy or good manners. I wonder sometimes how I ended up here with these stoic people who lack those common good manner. Odd how the landscape and land itself feels almost homelike to me, so much like England, and yet how the people are an almost alien race, and especially the men.
When I first moved here and was invited to some one's Thanksgiving dinner, I was absolutely horrified the their custom of feeding the men first, seating the men together and the women separately, women endlessly SERVING the menfolk and scurrying about to serve them better. Not the way I was raised! I tried to laugh it off to some extent, but it still strikes me as utterly wrong and utterly uncivilised. This is the land of beer amd sports, where women are silent when men are watching some sort of game or another on the telly... only seen when a beer or snack is commanded.
I suppose then I should not be surprised at this birthday of mine. If I am very determined, I should be able to shut my eyes and will myself elsewhere. i imagine one of my favourite cathedrals first or even a small jewel of a Church. Take me to St. Mary's Church near Cadogan Square in London or the Miracoli in Venezia.
Oddly enough,, it is not what I see when my eyes are open when I am in one of these sacred places dear to my soul but the very essence of it, the rather dusty perfume, the sense of lightness of being, ages in layers upon layers as light as a feather and yet redolent of time's passing and of history.
I love the smell of those old churches of Europe. The churches in the States do not possess it, possibly because they do not burn candles and incense from century to century or they simply are not old enough. The old California Missions probably are the oldest churches in the States and they possess a little of the soul of an ancient church of Europe.
I could go farther back in time to Ravenna, to the mosaic-clad Churches there. Such glittering glory, like being inside a begemmed casket. I was awestruck when I first saw them as a young girl. And the Christ of Ravenna, blonde and cleanshaven, handsome... much more to my taste than the dour, dark bearded representations on which I had been raised. He was a Greek God, the Christ of Ravenna, a flawless Sacrifice in the tradition of Dionysos.
If i had any guts, I would leave this body now and travel the secret paths to other realms and other realities... One of my favourite books as a child was 'The Story of the Amulet'. I loved the way the children could walk through the half of the Amulet and find themselves in another time and place, in ancient Egypt or Britain at the time of Julius Caesar. The irony here is that the time they wished to escape is now the romantic past itself for us!
Of course, it all went wrong for them as it usually does in tales by the wonderful E. Nesbit, but then adventures really aren't about things gong right, but rather about having exciting new experiences, whether good or bad.
A little selfish prayer now: Gods grant me a better ending to this day than its beginning or middle... at the very least, please let me spend a little time with my cats, whom I miss so terribly.
My feet are numb and my ankles are swollen. It is the medication, and I dreaded to take it from the start, but the alternative could have been far worse. I do not worship doctors and I fully am aware of the fact that once you are older than 30 really, you are nothing more than grist to their mills of experimentation. After all, no one lived much longer than 30 in past eras... so we are all on borrowed time guinea pigs who should be grateful for the chance to gasp out a few more decades in comparative passable health. So what if you cannot walk! Give the person an artificial limb and some blood thinners and see what happens. If the heart acts up? Clear the blockages and try more new medications. Sink or swim...
