Lots going on - and I feel as if I have been away from this site for a
very long time.
Since the early part of January, life seems to have been a bit of a
roller coaster. The time finally came when it was necessary for my
mother in law to enter a care home, and for her house to be offered for
sale. As a result, there has been the double emotional turmoil of seeing
her settled into her new residence, a very satisfactory facility with
which I am very pleased. She is less so, but it is inevitable that a
towering physical force of a woman (6') with a personality to match,
should find it an imposition to have to live by someone else's routine.
And along with this, the sorting and clearing of her home - which I feel
is an intrusion, (and I am the one making it), for the best and most
necessary of reasons, but nevertheless, it is having to be done. So not
an easy time.
Along with this, I seem to be starting out on another life adventure,
with my final formal acceptance, just this week, onto a Master's degree
course at the University of Winchester. I discovered its existence just
before Christmas, but it has taken until now for the paperwork to be
completed.
It is an MA in the School of Religion, entitled "The Rhetoric and Ritual
of Death" - which sounds gruesome, but in fact covers very many of my
interests and seems absolutely faaascinating!
I am a bereavement counsellor, so the "Pastoral Care of the
Dying and Bereaved" module will be extremely useful for my work.But as many of you know, I also run therapeutic writing courses, and thefirst module of the course, beginning next Tuesday is actually in theSchool of Film Studies, entitled "Fairytale & Gothic Horror". Since I often use references to Jungian theory (use of archetypes etc) on my writing courses, I am looking forward to gaining a much deeper and broader insight into the field, which I can then incorporate for use in my courses. Added to which, I have always been fascinated in WHY people are drawn to being scared and terrified. I have my own theories - but won't it be fun to find out what other people think?
Other modules in the course cover the "paraphernalia" of death - theories of mourning, funerary monuments, ritual procedures - all of which will tap into the interest I have had for thirty years, in old churches, Monumental inscriptions, the whole story of this part of people's lives and how it is artistically as well as emotionally
expressed.
I will hopefully be able to glean lots of material to bring to the course when I travel in Italy again in April (What an excellent excuse, eh? - as if I needed one). The photographs today are both from my last journey - to Venice - taken in the Church of the Frari.
The course will take three years, I sometimes think I must be crazy to even contemplate it - but the challenge is there, many people have been so affirming in their belief that I can achieve my goal, "Honourable No. 2 son" will have soon left home - what reason is there for me NOT to do this?
Away, now, to more sorting - and awaiting "the man" who is coming to
repair my stove. From the sublime to the mundane - but that is what life
is all about, is it not?
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