Amazing Grace

Had a cultural binge which started on Friday all the way through to Saturday evening. Even managed to squeeze in a visit to a gallery and Bikram yoga in between. As I was walking from Bikram to the gallery, all I could think about was the grace of the previous night's dancers and how my name means Graceful, my full name being 'Graceful one of the family'. I'd always thought it was pretty naff and never bothered to invest it with much thought. But this weekend, I really pondered its significance (or lack of) in my life, how my parents must have agonised about the choice of name and how perhaps I should redirected my life towards living gracefully - specifically not pigging out so much, pulling so many childish & silly faces and generally being more disciplined. How I'd like to have more grace and poise and how giving grace and being thankful would make me less dissatisfied with life.

I thought about an aunt of mine who was also called Grace and how that word is so linked with the 'Hail Mary' (ies) that people recite verbatim. (Learnt once in poetry class that the last word in a line of a poem is always the most magnified).

Then, eerily enough at the exhibition, as if to cement this recurring thought in my mind - one of the rooms contained footage of a little old biddy singing 'Amazing Grace' on loop in a wispy voice. It was just far too much, every time the song played, I seemed to hear the words afresh discovering a new emphasis each time. It's one of those songs you've always known all your life but it was almost as if I was actually listening to it for the first time- 'Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound (??) that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found, was blind but now I see. A pretty simple ditty with an obvious choice of sensory words to rhyme with each other but it also made it very human and visceral - the song is also of course loaded with significance as a paen to slavery and suffering that promises redemption, enlightenment. Hmm, definitely food (chocolate) for thought.

On a another note, i've been sickened by all the crass, distasteful displays in shops cashing in for V. day. - it's enough to induce projectile vomitting. Do these marketing men actually think that heart-shaped bears in vermillion red somehow reflects the state of romance or is an appropriate token and sign of one's affections?? Do they all think that the combined waft of gorgonzola cheese encapsulated in their stupid teddys will elevate us to a higher state of ecstacy? Any alien descending upon earth right now would think that all humans were infantile retards with purile fantasies. I know it shouldn't make me so angry but it just smacks of how people have such limited imaginations and how they're high-jacked emotionally.

And before you wonder, no - i'm not single but if I were, i'd hope that sheer tackiness of the whole affair would make me choose a lifetime of celibacy rather than such obvious and contrived gestures. In fact, if I get a Huggy Bear from Gruff, I will tear it apart from seam to seam and yank out the stuffing to shove it up his jaxxy.

Ok - tirade over,.... one day I will learn how to rant gracefully. I'm honestly not a bunny boiler ... hee hee. (Man, that just makes me sound even more deranged!)