Charles

Hey guys: can you please pray/have masses said for a friend of mine? I know it was years ago, but I was just re-reading the teaching on suicides and it brought it to mind. My friend took his own life a few years ago and I was shocked. There never was a jollier fellow, happily married and well respected. But he was heavily involved in a rather rough sport in which he sustained many head injuries over the years. I had an email from his wife who said that he had been very badly affected by this. What he and his family did not know was how severely. He suffered from bouts of depression so severe that he would be hospitalized. After he died, they were told that the head trauma had created a cumulative effect such that the only way to ensure his safety was inpatient treatment, though with brain damage they didn't know if there ever had been anything they could have done for him.

Chuck was one of those guys in high school who was constantly joking around and his good nature and prodigious musical talents always made him the centre of attention. I was a wallflower in high school and was terribly intimidated by him. But we had the same free period one semester and he always spent it in the cafeteria playing the piano they kept in the back. I would come and sit near by and listen while I read or worked on drawings. He always took requests and didn't mind me singing along. Those were the times I think the real Chuck peeped out, and it turned out that without an audience for his clowning, he was almost as shy as I was but also a kind and generous guy.

Years later we connected again in the SCA where he had rocketed to fame and fortune and become the head of a large household (don't laugh, non-nerds, this is a pretty big deal in this subculture, and quite real. He was a genuine leader of at least 40 people, all of whom very much looked up to him IRL as well as SCA context...we live in terrible times and people need a tribe, however goofy it might look on the outside.) In that period, I was pretty much a nobody and he was (literally) a king among men, and even so, he would take the time to invite me to things, make sure I was included in things and always had time to chat and share a beer.

When I heard he'd died and how I was surprised how affected I was, even though I'm sure I hadn't seen him in 15 years.

Anyway, from what his wife told me I expect that there was little chance that he was responsible for his act, and I told her I would pray for him and for her. Her name is Heather, his is Charles.



~

What would you do?

How do you deal with this problem: you have an old friend who wants to re-connect. You really care very much for this person. He has enormously good qualities and is loyal and decent, but he suffers from such ferocious anxiety and other emotional disorders - mainly caused by "family of origin issues" - that it makes him manipulative and in some ways actually kind of dangerous to know. A long time ago, you were pushed to making the drastic measure of cutting off all contact because of it all. It was very painful because for a while you'd been fairly close.

He isn't aware of the motives for most of his more difficult behaviour, and spends a lot of time fairly confused about why he can't keep his friends and relationships better. He suffers a lot because of the awful lies his evil brain tells him all the time.

When he's relaxed and not feeling threatened he is smart, fun, interested in the same kinds of things and a genuinely warm and good soul. On the side of the angels, and all that.

He's also very lonely because of his brain-troubles and has reached out to you on FB.

What would you do?



~

Loss

It's funny, isn't it, how losing someone you love never goes away entirely.

A person you're close to dies, and you spend a long time, months and months maybe, not caring about anything, not wanting to talk to anyone, not really living in this world at all except for the barest physical necessities. You live in a strange almost deathly netherworld in which not caring about anything almost means not seeing or being aware of anything.

Then, almost without wanting to, slowly, little by little, you come back to life. You start registering things again. You start hearing people talking to you and remembering what they say. A bit at a time, you start responding to people again, and noticing the world around you and expecting things again. At first this makes you feel strangely guilty, and almost as if you're losing touch with the person you lost. But it's inevitable, and it's what's supposed to happen.

It may take a long time, but eventually, you find you care about and are interested in things again, and you realise that life isn't just something that carries on without you, but sweeps you along. And all this is how it's supposed to work. We're not supposed to let go of love easily or well. It's supposed to stick with us. And at the same time, we're supposed to eventually get back into life and keep living it, and this honours the person you lost.

And another thing that's supposed to happen is that you're supposed to sometimes suddenly get struck with the loss again, out of the blue. And it strikes you very sharply, that gut-clenching feeling, that the person you loved is gone and won't be coming back. You'll never be able to finish your conversation, or show him the book you're reading, or ask him that question you meant to ask. It won't last, but it is a reminder that love is a real thing and won't ever go away.



~

Floods of memory

Treasure: just opened my copy of Lord of the World, and saw that the inscription reads, "Anne Muggeridge, from Michael Davies, Park Cottage, 1987"

Park Cottage was the Muggeridge family home at Robertsbridge, East Sussex. John talked a great deal about his childhood there. He told me that his father and Ian Flemming invented the character James Bond over late night whiskeys at Park Cottage.

A number of the books John gave me before he died have his father's personal bookplate in the front, and it is a lovely pen and ink drawing of the cottage.

I still miss him terribly.



~

Kiron update

One of our friends has been in touch with Kiron's family.... Here is the latest:

Thanks again for all your prayers. Kiron was hit by a taxi while cycling in Rome and sustained a serious head injury. The good news is that the bleeding has stopped, and the area has drained. Kiron is being kept in a medically-induced coma on a breathing machine in the ICU -- the doctors intend to keep her in the coma for 1 or 2 weeks.

Her condition is gravely serious but stable. The haematoma has so far not worsened and the inter cranial pressure is good. All her vitals her fine. He also said that they would be monitoring the haematoma in case it worsens.

The doctors have encouraged people to come to visit -- to sit with her, talk, read, pray . . . . She's at St. Camillo hospital. Visiting hours are from 1-3 and 5-11. Fortunately, many of Kiron’s friends have been able to visit, and her father is here from the States.

Latest today from her family:

"Kiron is not worsening so that is good and the only thing to be done now is keep her in a coma so that she may heal. She is being monitored closely with a drain in her head to relieve and monitor cranial pressure. She is also being administered progesterone which is the new protocol and been shown to help limit damage and aid recovery. It looks like the doctor today said it may be 1 to 2 weeks that Kiron will be kept in coma. So for next week the the good news would be that there will be nothing to report as she is left to heal."

Please keep praying!

Our Lady of Pompeii, pray for us!
Saint Pantaleon, pray for us!
All ye holy Helpers, pray for us!



~

Prayers for a friend, please

A friend of ours, one of our little ex-pat gang, has had a serious bike accident tonight and is in a coma in the hospital. Suspected traumatic brain injury with bleeding on the brain.

More later.



~

Ooo! I know her!

This is my art teacher. Andrea Smith, certainly one of the most awesome people I've ever known.



~

And now, back to the Real

Ah, well that was fun. So, I hope this can be a little lesson to everyone: don't EVER try to tell me what to put on my blog.

Ever.

A very close and trusted friend, a priest no less, once tried to tell me to tone something down or adjust something. He learned that lesson.

Meanwhile, Real Life keeps on happening. We need a storming.

A very good friend has unexpectedly lost his job through no fault of his own and, due to government bureaucratic nonsense between states, now finds himself unable to collect the unemployment benefits he paid into. He's facing possible bankruptcy and the loss of his home. The stress is starting to give him health problems and is starting to weigh heavily upon the family members he cares for.

O's Picknickers will know that I don't do this often, but in your charity, please spare a prayer if you can today.

Thanks.



~

Happy Birthday Mickey

It's Michael Voris's birthday today. He's 51.


From one over-the-hill, bull-headed, right-wing, backlash-kid has-been to another...



~

Birnam Wood

A friend is in an agony of frustration because he owns a lovely house full of beautiful family heirlooms and antiques in civilised B________, Pennsylvania but works in Detroit and does not make enough money to keep an apartment and a house at the same time. He's casting desperately around for solutions while living rather horribly by sharing a house full of other people, like a college kid, though he's otherwise a bona fide grownup.

He's just mentioned that the only solution he can think of is to sell his (fully-paid-up, mortgage-free) house, and buy one in the countryside outside Detroit, which seems to me like the solution of selling Rivendell and getting a little place on Dagorlad with a great view of the Morannon and Ephel Dúath.

Still, it looks as if the problem may eventually solve itself. Detroit seems to be going back to the wild. If my friend just stands still long enough, the countryside will come to him.








~ * ~

Also, from the same 'blog, how to make your kids happy: give 'em swords and armour.

Violent? Dunno whatcher talkin' about. I was given a shield and wooden sword when I was a kid, and I turned out just fine!



~

First portrait sketch

So, I've been reading the book, Lessons in Classical Drawing, and practising with charcoal, and I thought I'd have a go at doing a formal sitting. I picked a friend whom I knew would not be offended if I made him look like a bowl of pudding.


As it turned out, I think it looks OK...for a first go. This is the sight-size method that Andrea has been teaching me. You place the easel in such a way that you simply do a one-to-one copy of what you see.


Here's the original

It wasn't easy to get him to sit still until I hit upon the method of letting him watch a movie on the computer while I worked.

Also, yelling.

I'm going to have to keep working on charcoal technique, I've not really got the knack of shading and judicious smudging that brings the whole thing up to a fine polish, but at least it's a start.

I think I am going to call this a "portrait sketch" because I realised as I was doing it that I did not have either the time or the expertise with charcoal to do a more closely rendered drawing. With a real portrait, there are all sorts of wee teeny details that you have to get just right in order to go from it being "just a sketch" to a real finished portrait drawing. (For example, look at the shape of the shadow just on the inside corner of Chris's left eye. It's not round is it? It's got a little point on it at the top... Stuff like that.) There's also a whole lot of shading that can be done by putting down layers of charcoal where you deepen a shadow and then do another shadow on the inside.

Also, I think I'm going to use toned paper for the next one. I thought of just doing a value over the whole face and then bringing up the brightest highlights using the white paper with the eraser, but (because I'm still recovering and my hands are still somewhat shaky) I was not very confident about my use of the charcoal pencil for doing a light tone, and because the paper was the cheap crappy stuff I bought to just futz about on.

With toned paper, either grey or tan, you don't have to do that fine layer of mid-tone value over the whole thing and then erase, and you get to use white chalk to bring up the highlights and go really dark with the darkest shadow shapes. All in all, a much more pleasing effect.

Something I definitely learned with this though, is that I don't like drawing small. I think next time I'm going to have the easel and the subject close to side by side to get a much bigger drawing. I think I'm going to be one of those Draw-it-Big artists.

For a little while I think I'm just going to practice on some of the Caravaggio pictures I've got out of books, heads of Christ and St. Francis, etc., to get the hang of doing values with the brown charcoal pencil. Also, get ready for a long and fascinating series that I think I will call "Getting the white milk jug right".

Keep trying. Try harder...

(Also, I'm taking applications from any of the Rome/S. Marinella people who want to be next.)



~

Happy Birthday to Yoooooo

Dorothy's birthday is this weekend. She would like it to be known that her birthday is the whole weekend and not just a little part of it.

Go send her a nice note.

Hurrah for you, nice girly.



~

Now I know how you all feel

A dear friend and close colleague, the man without whom I would not have been able to make any headway in my work in Rome, has been taken to hospital and is having surgery for colon cancer this week.

I'm in shock and am completely taken aback.

Damn cancer!



~

Irene

Dreamed I was holed up in a big house in North Carolina with a bunch of friends.

In waking life, they're keeping us updated on FB. So far so good. House still attached to the ground, roof still on top and even electricity still running.

Andrew in New York reports that he made it safely down to the pub.

So far, no reports of anyone standing on top of their houses yelling for help, beating each other up in the local stadium, looting flat screen tvs or shooting at rescue workers.

Update:
Latest news from Jacksonville NC. Gusts down to 70 mph and dropping. All friends + dogs accounted for.



~

One day closer to the last one

This is for my friend John, commbox regular and provider of tea n' sympathy.

(When he's here).

Everybody misses you.



~

I really have very cool friends

And I really want one of these.

But there's only one in the whole wide world.



~

Death, be not proud

No wonder I had such a crush on him.

This is my old friend, and briefly "boyfriend" Jon Laursen, as he was when I first knew him when we were about 17 or so. I remember Jon very fondly. It's odd, perhaps, that he was one of the very few people in my adult life (what passes for it) who met my grandparents and visited their home with me.

I had word yesterday that he died of cancer on Friday. A lot of people loved him over the course of his life, including me. It was a long, long time ago, half my lifetime, but I am not forgetful.

I know there are some people who stay put, more or less, in the place where they were born. They hang about, in general, with the same people all their lives. A lot of the people I went to school with still live in BC; most of them still live on the Island.

I left them all behind. Have, in fact, left a trail of people behind me that is now 6000 miles long. When I look back on my teens and childhood, it is almost like remembering a film or a book I read once. Like something that happened to someone else. In my mind, these old friends of mine will forever be 17, 22, 25...no matter what happens to me. No wonder I always have a strange feeling as though I am a replicant, grown in a vat and implanted with false memories.

I can say one thing for death, though, it makes you remember that you really exist.

But I have to say, I'm getting pretty sick of effing cancer. Nearly all the people who have died, whom I have loved in life, have been taken by cancer.

Judy
John Muggeridge
Joan Reid, my mother's gentle friend
my grandfather, Norman White
and now Jon.


~

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou'art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy'or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.



~

News of death

I had a note yesterday from a friend in St. Catherine's, Ontario of the death of Anne Muggeridge. It has made me wonder, again, if one ever "gets over" loss. Or even if we should want to. When we get over something, haven't we forgotten it? Isn't it better to be in pain than to forget someone or something, like a love, that is terribly important?



~

Another great one passed

I have had a message today from a friend in Ontario.

Of your charity, please pray for the repose of the soul of the great Anne Roche Muggeridge, a person who, through her books, had a great influence on many of us.

John and Anne, united at last.

Later, when I feel up to it, I will try to write something of my experiences with Anne and her family.

Requiescant in Pace.



~

I have the nicest readers on the net

Tom from New York writes,

Dear Hilary,

I'm slow-witted. Please tell me to what address I might send a book so that it reaches you?

Grazie,

Tom