h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

, just gets worse, correcting myself, I'll stop now

Strange coincidence, yesterday I had a very intense experience about catching up with myself, and now here you are talking about it.

I was saying goodbye to the farmhouse where I was raised, quite a relief to me, phew and I am intensely fainting about it long story.

Even though I said goodbye in 1976, my parents lived there forever and so I was always involved in one way or another, and there was a lot of stress in the last fifteen years or so, and I was never born to farming.

My bro and his wife and taking it over now, and although I will visit from time to time, it will be different from now on, no pressure on me. Also they're changing it around, knocking down walls and thngs which is good for a house I think, releases the energy, makes way for the new.

So I stood in the little bedroom where I spent my childhood, my magic artspace where I did drawings and made scrapbooks and dreamed my dreams.

And, quite unplanned, I caught up with the spirit of myself as a little girl, aged about 10. I know that sounds flaky, ,but hey ....


Together we said goodbye to the room, to the house, thanked our parents for raising us, realised we hadn't changed in essence, and even though the journey had been tough at times, we knew that that things had worked out for us, we had kept true to our nature,

And this morning when I woke I felt so different, light, like I was 21 again, with my life ahead of me. . Although I'm glad I'm not 21 again, I prefer it now ....

..... even though the hills get steeply hillier, and my thoughts get deeply sillier. .

By the way ...

Meant to say, Hullo all!

Peanut darlin', you were posting the same time as I was, so now I must go check your wisdoms. ...

or rather me trying to catch up with my corrections

I can't do any sort of justice in terms of a reply to your post, I'm trying to keep Hiccup awake and serve tea but big

your goodbyes, hellos, and the inbetweens, in the house you are raised so meaningful, beautiful and touching

What a lovely thought about the house. I'm sure you're right - rearranging things does release energies isn an old house.

You had a brilliant idea there, saying goodbye. Thanks for telling us about it.

That would make such a good story or poem...

A poem? Returning to a familiar place and seeing things as you did as a child, but knowing that they have changed in the intervening years?

Interesting. I'll think about it....

Afternoon all!

and thanks for your appreciation of my strange experience, you guys are so amazing, , even though I wasn't typing very well yesterday (I'm on my home laptop now ), left Brighton at 5 am this morning , so now I am so tired I am seeing stars where once there were not-stars.

Yes! I know what you mean Peanut, about that indefinable feeling (paces around) yes, yes, now I am trying to express it (paces around some more), how to express it ....ah the elusive expression, that watches from the shadows and charms me with its flickering mystery.



mvp yes pleeeeeeeeze write a poem, this is urgent. . I need this poem.

I tried to write about my experience the following morning, but I ended up with a vision of my entire life represented by thousands of coloured bubbles, they looked like lit up balloons, flying over the South Downs, and on over a further horizon. Each bubble had a word or phrase in it, it was really lovely. I tried to write it down, will find notebook, see what the words were. .

I had thoughts about horizons....

Oh, late already. .

Laters

That is a wonderful image, coloured bubbles, with words or phrases, representing your life,flying over the South Downs

I love bubbles, I'm going try it as exercise

Thank you darlin' for the inspiration

Memories as bubbles . I can think of memory moments which are bubbles - with a clarity and perfection of their own.

But more often memory is a stream. I can think of key events - places where the stream forks or flows over rocks. Though, as Peanut says we often don't spot the importance of those key points until later. And memory blurs. I can remember what my little room in my parent's house was like in my later teens but not what it was like when we first arrived in the house.

Maybe we constantly reconstruct our memories - filling in the gaps with imagination, re-interpreting events. If I asked my brothers what they remembered of that house, their versions would be quite different. Interesting....

I need to ply myself with get hold of a and write some of this down.

Random false memory, might have told this one before, I remember being in the cellar and there was a bin with brine in, I opened the lid and in it was a pigs head.

I was about 9, it didn't bother me, I just thought my parents were brining a pigs head and I never thought to mention it.

I asked my Mum about this and they never brined a pigs head,I am not even sure if you can, yet I 'remember' it clear as day down to my outfit

Just for context, we lived on a small holding and were pretty self sufficient including our meat, which is why I wouldn't have considered it particulary unusual that my parents were preserving something

Now, *that* would make a story, that pig's head.

Memory in bubbles...that resonates. If I remember back to childhood, I see vivid memories in isolation. SInce all the other people involved are either gone now, or were even younger than I, I can't connect them.

For example, I remember holidays, but not how we got there.

Once, we stayed for a week in a 'cottage' - a house, really - near a lake. It belonged to some friends of my parents'. I remember finding a Hitchcock Magazine in the bedroom, and reading it. I would never had read such a thing otherwise.

Then I remember swimming in the lake with my sister and mother. There were tiny fish in the water.

heheh, it would make a good story, , the pig's head.

I love it! I love all these thoughts and writings and pictures about memories, they are inspiring me, thanks!

That's interesting mvp, what you say about the nature of memories. I was talking to my brothers this week, and we had totally different memories of the same house, same time, same place, weird.

Interesting, Mr. D, when you said you remembered holidays but not how you got there, and then all those other memories, that's a lovely piece of writing. Vivid memories in isolation .... ah there's a first line of a chapter ... ...

My horizons were different to my brothers. I saw a strange horizon, beyond the view from my window, through the magic gate that the Long Man of Wilmington was holding open , ah yes, , it was a golden horizon, like a sunlit shining borderline. Did so I did. . I blame the 1960s vitamin tablets. .

My mother once saw a giant lit up cat hovering over the Downs, she said it was like a spaceship cat with lights , I think she was on legal medication, she'd just come out of hospital after an op. It was a bit scary, I drew my curtains after that for a while, but I never saw it.



I love bubbles, now we're talking about them I'm going to go into the toyshop tomorrow and buy some of that soapy bubble stuff and blow bubbles out of the window and watch them burst somewhere over the hedge, or when they run into a blackbird. I'll warn the neighbours. And the blackbirds.

I think I read once that in Tibetan Buddhist culture they fly kites when someone dies, to set free the spirit. Or maybe got that from my Tintin in Tibet book , there was a picture of a boy monk flying a kite. It's a good thought though.

PS I love the white mice that appear on top of the page here, when in the blue and white skin.



Try figure out that sentence .... that's a very hootoo sentence. .

Tell me there are white mice on top of the page , there are? there aren't? I saw white mice. On the Front Page. And some other places.

(heads out to verify sanity)

(comes back in again)

I can't find them now.

Where are the white mice? I just saw them.

.

Could someone send me a link of a blue and white page header with a white mouse?

You're sane. Pastey isn't. He did that - random mice appearances - for 1 April. Everybody liked it so much they left it on.

I, too, enjoy those . for them.

Oh really? Phew. Thanks for that. . That's so funny. .

Tell Pastey I love the white mice also. Do they just appear at random? My sense of order was briefly challenged there. .

Cheese! Yes!

And bubbles! I need bubbles!

I am feeling bubbley, I might have earned myself a badge and

A badge? Nice one darlin'. What badge? I was just about to read your posting on DG's borderline thread when I got distracted by white mice.. Is that where you got your badge? That's a thread about borderlines, not a borderline thread. Oh you know what I mean, you were there. OK I go read it.

Splendid! I remember the Magic Bus. I took it to Athens, from London Victoria. It was hell on wheels, but you could get to Greece cheaply and have spare drachma to spend when you got there.



I'm now obsessed with random white mice. I'm checking other skins. Do they appear in Brunel? I shall wait. I have no life. .