The Heavens Above Belfast

Last week was an awful week. On account of the dancing. We went dancing on Saturday night. We didn't stay out long. Home by 1.30. Not late at all by the standards of a 20 year old. Or even 19 year old which was the age of the woman whose birthday we were celebrating. But i took one week to recover from it.

First there was the temporary tinitus. We were dancoing in front of the speakers. This went on for two days. But on day one i was more deaf than usual.

Then there was the recovering from the drinking. Actually we didn't drink much. I was drinking water by 11. But i think it was a combination of this and the next point...

...a break from the routine. This was what really threw me off.

And then on Monday i found out i had to go to England on Tuesday. I thought i had at least another day.

On top of that we had not managed to get a proper routine going for work and school. All of us were being late almost every morning.

The laundry wasn't washed, the bins not emptied and the hoovering undone.

The icing on the cake? Ghin sick since Thursday and me trying to get interviews done for the Big Garden Birdwatch while getting him to work.

I felt so awful.

I do think that something then happens to the brain when that occurs. It goes into free fall. I think i felt i was losing control.

So that was last week. Goodbye to last week.

The thing about control is that we really don't have any control, isnt' that right? We just think we do. Ultimately, when we look at it, we're just corks bobbing along the surface of the water. We are not the water, we are not the wind. We are the corks.

And we should accept being the corks. Enjoy our cork nature. In a next life we could be something else...

The Valkeyrie book has made me think about angels. Do they exist?

Jacq and i always sing our parking song - and it works. We then get a great parking space. We've all been in tight spots before - and we've gotten out of then. Our guardian angels...? Sometimes i think my guardian angel had to work very hard when i was much younger. Not harder than some people i know, but pretty hard.

What would make me think or believe that angels really did exist? I believe in the existence of spirits. Spirits of places, dralas, nagas, penghulu rumah, i do believe in them. I believe that they are there to guard a place. Sacred spaces have spirits looking after them. Actually i don't believe it, i know it. I have encountered them. I think they speak to me when i allow them to. And i believe they help keep the balance of things.

A higher order of spirits then - angels...i don't know. It appeals to the rococo part of me though. The part where arabesques and over the top Alhambra architecture exists. For some reason i do not associate angels with nature - with the wide open spaces.

Angels seem intimately connected with the affairs of men. In Wim Wender's film, the Heavens Above Berlin, or the Wings of Desire, the angels stand around in streets, in libraries, on statues of angels. They have implements, like burning swords, musical instruments, they weld authority and power, they interfere if you ask them to. And protect an order. (They have orders - cherubim, seraphims, archangels, thrones, etc.) They also then take away. They for choirs and sing complicated harmonies. They have regalia, know how to break seals and blow on trumpets. They carry horns, vessels, pour libations...how could this creature be the creature of wild open spaces?

They would probably object to being called creatures.

We are not creatures...

Steiner says that angels are creatures not of the earth, but they help man to incarnate into the earth. In his description they are invisible aliens - really, what else could they possibly be? They belong to a universe that does not exist in current astronomy. A universe that has Old Jupiter and Old Venus and the Old Moon. And we are heading towards New all these place to finally ascend in this place called Vulcan. I kid you not.

Thankfully nothing of this is apparent in the educational system - the biggest in the world - but there must be something that speaks to us unconsciously. Personally i keep an open mind. I have seen nothing in the way in which we work in the school that has made me think that i object to all this. Or that this influences they way in which we teach the kids negatively. In fact it is much the opposite. The children are allowed to grow into confident, free beings...and if this is because about 80 years ago some guy thought that we were ascending into Vulcan, then so be it.

It is not stranger than someone sitting down and noting the heiarchies of angels now is it? Or the Taoist who believe in the nine levels of hell. Or Dante who tripped through the ten rings of Inferno.