The Irreverent Mr Black
15th January 2009, 11:12 PM
Welcome back, soap fans!
With the job upheaval (including a hefty salary cut, as I'd been Acting, Unconfirmed, well above my "real" level for years), the change of residence (I missed having my Pensioner Security Alarm with Small Yappy Dog Option to guard my stuff during the day) and the various stuff that was messing with my mind...
to wit:
* substances taken for chronic pain;
* a small-scale, temporary, mental health condition;
* lastly and worstly, Ye Religion.
... things were in a less-than-stable state.
The optimist might say that this is a fine place in which to exercise faith, and miracles would happen. A pessimist, looking at the same setup, would remark that there would be the usual tendency toward entropy, and things would become Rather Fucked Up. I tend toward the pessimist's POV these days: the benefit is that I can only be pleasantly surprised.
Both of the above viewpoints leave out a factor which, egotistical prick that I am, I will not have ignored or treated as minor: my intelligence and adaptability. I may not have been the most cunningly-handled knife in the block, but I'm sharp enough to do precise work or a shitload of damage: it all depends on how I'm balanced at the time.
A month or so after getting converted, I was walking around the very untended, leaf- and waterbug-infested, swimming pool, in the backyard of the Canberra house I shared with the Renfaire Magpie. Between us, we rented a five-bedroom place. I had two of the bedrooms: the rest of the house, garages and yard was Renfaire Magpie territory: SCA (http://www.sca.org/)-looking weapons and armour of varying degrees of authenticity, the detritus of a dozen abandoned hobbies (most of which involved chemicals, greasy residues, sharp metal offcuts and piles of wet, mouldy cloth or leather) combined with yard-sale purchases which Magpie might find a use for one day.
*****[flashback in tight focus]*****
I won't go into the horrors of finding out AFTER I'd added coffee and had my first gulp, that my favourite mug still held an inch of brass etching solution.
Let's gloss over the dozen BIG jars of pickled duck eggs that hadn't sold at the folk-fest of one or two years ago. You never know when you're going to want a pickled duck egg... well, okay, *I* know: NEVER!
It was a madhouse, and I fight right in. Does that give a picture of my mental state at the time?
***********
Now if I'd had the luck to be John The Divine, it would have gone "I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day" (http://bible.cc/revelation/1-10.htm). Seeing as John got the good excuse, let's just say I was on the 'erb, and anyhow it was Saturday. Although newly-converted, I had no conscious plan to start doing the Go To Church thing. After all, I'd had my conversion experience among a loose coalition of independent Christian yuppies, and young Black *is* a bit of a misanthrope.
My subconscious had other ideas. (Now at this point I probably lose all credibility with some people, but for the purpose of completing this narrative, helping readers who have been lucky enough to duck the Jeebus Bullet, and perhaps as evidence of mitigating circumstances, because Stupid Things have been done, I've got to tell it like it happened... Anyhow, I'm here, writing a reasonably coherent narrative, so I must be doing something ok!)
I heard a voice. The voice told me I should go to church on Sunday evening.
(Perhaps if I'd been wearing one of the Magpie's items of Smiting Attire, to wit a helmet, containing enough thick metal, the tale would be different.)
Despite my addled state, some critical-thinking resource remained. I thought a reply, "Hey, good stunt. Now where's the candid camera?" (Of course I'd *think* a reply: it would be inconsistent to *talk* to an internal voice. Sheesh!)
The voice said to look down. I did, and at my feet was a four-leaf clover.
*****[intrusion]*****
While we're deep in Nutjob Country, let me reaffirm a few things. First, I have pattern recognition skills that would scare you. Here's a link (http://sharebee.com/389c7a81) to a scan of my four-leaf clover collection: - it's about a 185Kb JPG file. I just find these things without even looking. I find dropped money and other items regularly too.
Secondly, my internal dialogue would probably have gone the same without the dramatic stuff. Drugs are bad, m'kaay?
***********
Voice in the head? Like that young lass from Domremy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_of_Arc), I would sooner have blamed it on God than on some malfunction of my own internal workings. It's highly likely my mother had nagged me about getting into a church, and preferably one of her charismatic type. I vaguely remember her rabbiting on about how I "must be under authority".
Voices? Yuck. I prefer the (pre-accident) Cossack dancing I used to be able to do when I had sufficient vodka inside.
Anyway, a voice-tormented loonie's gotta do what a voice-tormented loonie's gotta do. I got on pretty well with one of the helpdesk guys from work, who was a Christian. I got in touch, and Sunday evening I was off to his church meeting, in the assembly hall of a local high school.
A pentecostal service was something I had witnessed before, as the Reluctant Young Man bravely chasing after a girl who had joined one of the happy-clapper churches. (She eventually moved on to one of those really odd, patriarch-with-a-compound types of groups, and I'm told she had a baby to the Glorious Leader. I hope she's found some kind of escape and safety since. Best of wishes, AJC, if you're reading!)
I was to meet some interesting people, with interesting views, intriguing variations on the Christian core beliefs, and live to tell the tale. Word-count dictates I break off here, but come back next time for: A BOX OF FROGS.
With the job upheaval (including a hefty salary cut, as I'd been Acting, Unconfirmed, well above my "real" level for years), the change of residence (I missed having my Pensioner Security Alarm with Small Yappy Dog Option to guard my stuff during the day) and the various stuff that was messing with my mind...
to wit:
* substances taken for chronic pain;
* a small-scale, temporary, mental health condition;
* lastly and worstly, Ye Religion.
... things were in a less-than-stable state.
The optimist might say that this is a fine place in which to exercise faith, and miracles would happen. A pessimist, looking at the same setup, would remark that there would be the usual tendency toward entropy, and things would become Rather Fucked Up. I tend toward the pessimist's POV these days: the benefit is that I can only be pleasantly surprised.
Both of the above viewpoints leave out a factor which, egotistical prick that I am, I will not have ignored or treated as minor: my intelligence and adaptability. I may not have been the most cunningly-handled knife in the block, but I'm sharp enough to do precise work or a shitload of damage: it all depends on how I'm balanced at the time.
A month or so after getting converted, I was walking around the very untended, leaf- and waterbug-infested, swimming pool, in the backyard of the Canberra house I shared with the Renfaire Magpie. Between us, we rented a five-bedroom place. I had two of the bedrooms: the rest of the house, garages and yard was Renfaire Magpie territory: SCA (http://www.sca.org/)-looking weapons and armour of varying degrees of authenticity, the detritus of a dozen abandoned hobbies (most of which involved chemicals, greasy residues, sharp metal offcuts and piles of wet, mouldy cloth or leather) combined with yard-sale purchases which Magpie might find a use for one day.
*****[flashback in tight focus]*****
I won't go into the horrors of finding out AFTER I'd added coffee and had my first gulp, that my favourite mug still held an inch of brass etching solution.
Let's gloss over the dozen BIG jars of pickled duck eggs that hadn't sold at the folk-fest of one or two years ago. You never know when you're going to want a pickled duck egg... well, okay, *I* know: NEVER!
It was a madhouse, and I fight right in. Does that give a picture of my mental state at the time?
***********
Now if I'd had the luck to be John The Divine, it would have gone "I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day" (http://bible.cc/revelation/1-10.htm). Seeing as John got the good excuse, let's just say I was on the 'erb, and anyhow it was Saturday. Although newly-converted, I had no conscious plan to start doing the Go To Church thing. After all, I'd had my conversion experience among a loose coalition of independent Christian yuppies, and young Black *is* a bit of a misanthrope.
My subconscious had other ideas. (Now at this point I probably lose all credibility with some people, but for the purpose of completing this narrative, helping readers who have been lucky enough to duck the Jeebus Bullet, and perhaps as evidence of mitigating circumstances, because Stupid Things have been done, I've got to tell it like it happened... Anyhow, I'm here, writing a reasonably coherent narrative, so I must be doing something ok!)
I heard a voice. The voice told me I should go to church on Sunday evening.
(Perhaps if I'd been wearing one of the Magpie's items of Smiting Attire, to wit a helmet, containing enough thick metal, the tale would be different.)
Despite my addled state, some critical-thinking resource remained. I thought a reply, "Hey, good stunt. Now where's the candid camera?" (Of course I'd *think* a reply: it would be inconsistent to *talk* to an internal voice. Sheesh!)
The voice said to look down. I did, and at my feet was a four-leaf clover.
*****[intrusion]*****
While we're deep in Nutjob Country, let me reaffirm a few things. First, I have pattern recognition skills that would scare you. Here's a link (http://sharebee.com/389c7a81) to a scan of my four-leaf clover collection: - it's about a 185Kb JPG file. I just find these things without even looking. I find dropped money and other items regularly too.
Secondly, my internal dialogue would probably have gone the same without the dramatic stuff. Drugs are bad, m'kaay?
***********
Voice in the head? Like that young lass from Domremy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_of_Arc), I would sooner have blamed it on God than on some malfunction of my own internal workings. It's highly likely my mother had nagged me about getting into a church, and preferably one of her charismatic type. I vaguely remember her rabbiting on about how I "must be under authority".
Voices? Yuck. I prefer the (pre-accident) Cossack dancing I used to be able to do when I had sufficient vodka inside.
Anyway, a voice-tormented loonie's gotta do what a voice-tormented loonie's gotta do. I got on pretty well with one of the helpdesk guys from work, who was a Christian. I got in touch, and Sunday evening I was off to his church meeting, in the assembly hall of a local high school.
A pentecostal service was something I had witnessed before, as the Reluctant Young Man bravely chasing after a girl who had joined one of the happy-clapper churches. (She eventually moved on to one of those really odd, patriarch-with-a-compound types of groups, and I'm told she had a baby to the Glorious Leader. I hope she's found some kind of escape and safety since. Best of wishes, AJC, if you're reading!)
I was to meet some interesting people, with interesting views, intriguing variations on the Christian core beliefs, and live to tell the tale. Word-count dictates I break off here, but come back next time for: A BOX OF FROGS.