Getting a grip

Beautiful drawing of Loki - off the web, no idea who did it

OK, so i have spent the last few days recovering from a tummy bug. I have some idea where it came from, but the upshot is i am now very careful about what i put in my mouth. I have this habit of picking veg from where it is growing and eating it and really, i picked up veg from a very silly place and ate it and i felt ill immediately. And now i am just very careful.

The tummy thing only lasted a day really. but i get tired very easily now. I also found myself getting quite miserable, for no particular reason. This was not helped by watching lots of stupid TV. Most stupid was The Inbetweeners and Siblings. These two shows are supposed to be comedy about young adults. I actually did not find it funny at all. I found it so depressing that people could be portrayed as so self unaware. But not self unaware like John Cleese in Fawlty Towers or cynical like Blackadder or even lazy like Men Behaving Badly or narcissism in Absolutely Fabulous. No. Its the quality of self obsessed unawareness was not funny because it was so close to the bone in this media saturated image obsessed culture, where the only thing that matters is the impression you give someone and the louder you shout the truer it is - and appearances were the only thing that counted. It was so terrible. It was corrosive. A part of my soul died when i saw these TV shows. Is this honestly what passes as comedy these days? No wonder Russell Brand decided to leave it.

It wasn't even like The Office - the inability to accept responsibility ... i think that was what made me feel so dreadful. Is this the generation we are raising? It was like the crossing the line between Madonna and Miley Cyrus.

After that everything felt tainted and soiled and horrible. Are our young people completely lost to commercialism and consumption? It is such a depressing thought.

I know that this is partly because i am ill - but also i just wonder what is the point? I did not want to laugh at these young people. I wanted to take them by their shoulders and shake them. I also wanted to take their comedy show parents by their shoulders and shake them. How come i could laugh at Patsy in Ab Fab and not at Hannah in Siblings? There was nothing in Hannah i could sympathise with. Her brother is even worse. I think their complete lack of a moral compass might be something... or just not being able to have any centre. They really had no idea who they were beyond the need to be loud and obnoxious. And the complete lack of moral compass of the boys in The In Betweeners. If it was not about them then they were not interested. I don't know... i am still quite confused about why this kind of comedy i find objectionable.

My mom and dad arrived on Friday. I went to collect them at the airport and almost passed out from the effort. I have managed to eat but i have now decided that i am now going to stop eating. I am just going to have tiny meals and drink lots of water and herb teas. It really is hell on earth being so weakened.

I wish i didn't feel so depressed with the state of popular culture. It makes me wonder why any of us should bother? If this is what the world is composed of these days, why should we bother?

It's hard to believe how happy i was last week after coming back from Ballybay.

We were in St George's Market today. I was chatting to the fishmonger who had just come back from Vietnam. He said he loved Vietnam, not Singapore so much. Ah the exotic East. Singapore i guess is just not exotic anymore. Vietnam still has the fields and the villages and the nice people.

It is going to be a busy week coming up again. For the next three weeks we continue with the building Main Lesson. And of course i continue to garden. Then my mom and dad will be here till the start of June. And we leave start of July. I plan to get everything sorted before i leave for Singapore. I can't quite believe how quickly time has passed. We will soon be doing Class Four where it is Man and Animal and the Norse myths.

When i was in university i did an essay on the Norse myths. My dissertation was on trickster figures and i did a lot of research on Loki. So i know the Norse myths like the back of my hand. I also went on to read the Niebelung and then proceeded to listen to the entire Ring cycle. I then read Shaw's criticism on Wagner's operas and i also then listened to Parsifal and Tristan und Isolde. For a long time, my ambition was to attend the Ring Festival. I once listened to the entire Cycle conducted by George Solti back to back. Yes, even back then i did not do anything by half. The thing though, even when i write that, i think, i don't really know an awful lot about these things. I feel like some dabbler.

So i am looking forward to rereading Snorri Sturlusson and also getting to know all the Celtic creation myths, including rereading the Ulster and Mythological Cycle which we also tell the children. I always think that Ireland is in such a lucky place to have their own version of the Norse myths... and speaking of myths...

The reading of Bock's Moses continues apace. I am now beginning to see that certainly in the context of the curriculum, the Old Testament, or the Tanakh, is just like the other mythic cycles. Moses, and what he encountered, is not historical so much as allegorical. It is about the development of human consciousness and makes sense as the development of human consciousness. It is echoed in other mythic systems and for instance, the 40 years being lost in the desert is more a characterisation of how in this particular mythic system, humanity's consciousness changed, moving from a direct communication through the subconscious with God (paradise) to a more awakened form of thought where we start to ask questions and begin to understand our individual agency. This happens in the nine-year old... it is so fascinating to see this development of consciousness from this perspective. So when we tell the story of the Old Testament, we are trying to capture the journey out, into independence for the children listening to the stories.

Anyway, i think i should end on a hopeful note - well hopeful to myself. I was talking to Oisin about The Inbetweeners when he surprised me by telling me that he knew what i was talking about. What did you think of it, i asked him. He had watched one episode. I didn't think it was funny he told me. In fact, it was really quite stupid. Thank god, i thought.

Thank god. Stephanie, get a grip.