Hmmm… difficult decisions to be made. Frustrated and confused.
Monthly Archive for January, 2003
Back in from Oria’s (my friend, my housemate and the girl who heads up the boiler room in manchester) Birthday celebration at PoNaNa’s… a lovely dark venue with a north african feel, live improvised open stage music and a nice bar. What is up with the British church, or is it just the Christians that I know, that as I’ve looked about me again I find myself surrounded by a lack of Christian guys. It was the same after Church on Sunday evening… lots of girls but a lack of guys. I live with what is effectively 8 girls, the boiler team is dominated by a girl presence, my social life too. The club has a healthy mix of 50:50 on staff… but that is a night club not the Church. My friend told me about a young women’s Christian conference she went to. The speaker told the attentive audience that if they were all planning on going out with Christian guys that the odds point to half of them being disappionted. Supposedly Christian women out number the men 2:1 in the UK. The reactionary audience turned to eachother with hopeful/dismissive smiles saying “Yeah, but not me!”.
Thankfully I’m planning to take up frisbee again, in this my male friends will grow in number and the girls can be left to ponder on whether the infamous ‘Worship Session for Single Over-25s’ is a good idea or not. Chuckle.
My Opa (that’s Dutch for “grandfather”) recently got very ill.
He couldn’t breathe properly and his feet were swollen; he had diabetes and couldn’t sleep lying down or else he would stop breathing. My Oma took him to the emergency room on Thanksgiving Day only to find they were not accepting patients. The only other hospital was a 40-minute drive across town. They went home, thinking that if he was going to die that night, it might as well be with his family at his side. The next day, they went to the hospital and the doctor gave him oxygen for a half an hour and sent him home. Three days later, he died. When we went to the hospital to say goodbye, a doctor gave me a prescription for Paxil to “help deal with the loss.”
What I want to know is, why is it that no one could save my Opa’s life when he was dying, yet when I needed to grieve for him, that pain could easily be numbed? I want to feel the pain that has come form losing the greatest man I have ever met. I want to think about his promise to dance with me on my wedding day and all the kind words he has given me. Why would I want to not feel anything?
I threw the prescription in the doctor’s face and told him he was not a human anymore. I will never again believe that anyone is getting the treatment they deserve.
STEPHANIE NOWAK (Calgary, Alberta)
That was from the letters section in the recent edition of adbusters, made me think again about anti-depressants and how this story is a reflection of the bigger picture.
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Well I have just got in from work and had a shower to wash out the club-night that had got deep into my pores. (Is it worth going to bed? We have a boiler team meeting in an hour). Tonight was one of those nights when you are reminded how much club-culture needs love. ‘Goodgreef’, voted No1 club in the country by mixmag, came in and ran the night, one of their monthly slots down at ascension. Their love of hard house attracts it fans and allsorts from manchester and beyond. Paramedics on site from the beginning and there until the end… I’m not used to that sight. They were needed. Drugs and alcohol, hard dancing, bright lights, loud music. The moisture in the thick air is sweat and you know it. A grime gradually grows on the club floor and hundreds and hundreds of decorated fools enjoy the beats, the deep bass, that atmosphere.
There is a potential; the energy and the devotedness of these pilgrims who have flocked to and gathered enmasse in manchester is a pale reflection of worship. It is almost spiritual, it is spiritual… you know some out there in the dry ice are praying, some are worshipping God, others the dj, others have no idea what they are doing. These are the ones to really be concerned about, the ones that don’t know what they are doing… because without realising it they are embracing a spiritual realm (we all do at every moment). The alcohol and the drugs are symptoms of a darker cause… escapism, hedonism whatever-ism. In that place the darkness thrives; preying on vunerable, unsuspecting souls. Some are searching and who is there to point them in the right direction?
‘To provide a safe clubbing environment’, one of the values of ascension. It is happening too, you may ponder on my previous paragraph looking for where the safety lies. But then it is 3 o’clock; the bar has not served a drop of alcohol for over an hour and the club is still going the people are still dancing, still chilling out in the lounge rather than wandering around the dark city. It is safer in here than out there. The units are being burned off and the effects of the alcohol fade, any pent up aggression is being thrown into the heavy beats rather than someone else’s face. Staff chat to the pilgrims, some of which are becoming familiar… it won’t be long now, they’ll be on first name basis and greeting eachother as ‘the usual’ is placed down. Everyone is an individual, everyone will be treated that way and everyone will be loved that way.
“And the greatest of these is love”