Not a Cure for Depression

As a survivor of full-blown depression, I thought I should write something in relation to the death of actor Robin Williams. My first brother and I are old enough to have watched "Mork and Mindy" as kids, and my brother, were he still a kid, would have taken news of his death really hard.

I don't know how it was for Robin Williams, but depression has never removed my ability to make serious moral decisions. It has made me cry a lot, and feel like a huge failure, and to suddenly escape conversations at parties to fall dead asleep on the hostess's bed. It prevents me from bouncing back from disappointments all that easily, and it urges me to quit just about any difficult endeavour. And like tens of thousands of people, I take prescription anti-depressants. But the one and only time I ever said anything remotely suicidey--and it was at a really bad time--it was to my best friend who indirectly, and in the nicest way possible, i.e. by talking about another friend, told me she would never, ever forgive me or anyone she loved who did that. And I'm glad she did. It was the spine-stiffener I needed at a moment of moral weakness.

Depression is not an excuse for suicide, although suicide may come to look like the only way out if the depressed person isn't careful with their thoughts. Perhaps in some people's case depression so interferes with their moral freedom that they really aren't culpable of their self-murder. But I am not aware of myself ever being THAT sick, even at my loopiest. I have always known (A) that sudden death of a family member is absolute hell on the rest of the family and (B) that one suicide can lead to other suicides and (C) that things ALWAYS get better eventually and (D) that suicide is a mortal sin.

Now Father Ron Rolheiser writes in his syndicated column once a year every year to say that suicide is not necessarily a mortal sin, and we should not put away the photographs of our loved one's who commit suicide, but accept their suicide as the sad result of a bout of depression and celebrate their lives. I think the idea is that suicides have "lost their battle" with depression the same way cancer victims "lose their battle" with cancer. Instead of being shunned as murderers, as they once were, suicides are bathed in a heroic glow. And I can most definitely see the appeal of that, especially as someone who "battles depression" myself.

However, whenever I read Father R's annual suicide piece, I get the impression he is writing to us merely as family members and friends of suicides, not as potential suicides ourselves. In fact, I often wonder what the cumulative effect of Father R's suicide column might be, not on a grieving family member, but on an unhappy and trusting mind in a very bad moment. One way to read Father R is that he thinks we can just jump from this world straight into the arms of Jesus, for Jesus will never, ever let us fall. So why not jump?

I believe it is salutary to hope and pray that God forgives the serious sins of others while never assuming that he will forgive one's own serious sins without contrition, confession and penance. And I certainly hope that God will forgive the serious sins of Robin Williams (as I hope he will forgive the serious sins of Auntie Seraphic), particularly this shocking last one. Poor man. There may indeed have been a staggering lack of moral freedom in his case. Certainly he seems not to have taken comfort in the thought that at the age of 63 he had amassed an impressive catalog of life's work, had sired three children, had proven himself to be a great comedian and a good actor, and had touched the lives of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people.

So there you have it. Like many other people, I am saddened that Robin Williams is dead, particularly because he killed himself. And as a fellow sufferer of depression, I understand that depression is a physical condition, not a moral failing, that attacks your grip on reality. But at the same time, I feel it necessary to state, for the sake of readers tempted to do what he did, and for their families, that suicide is a sin, and although we can hope and pray that God will forgive it in another, we can never assume God will forgive it in us. Although depression is not a moral failing in itself, and it may attack one's freedom to make moral decisions, one is not morally off the hook. You can say "No" to evil and "Yes" to good: it's just harder.

Update: I've just been talking with someone whose life was saved by some very tough talk from a dear friend. It really costs a lot for someone to tell someone they deeply love, "If you commit suicide, you will go to hell" and mean it. It is an incredibly compassionate thing to do, especially as it leaves the poor Christian vulnerable to accusations that he/she WANTS his/her beloved friend to go to hell. And thus the compassionate person is labelled a "judgemental" and "hateful" person--and he or she doesn't care, just so long as his or her beloved friend doesn't kill him or herself.

When someone commits suicide, they are sinning against everyone who loves them. How culpable they are when they do that can only be determined by their therapist, or the courts, or God. Those sinned against may do some serious mental gymnastics to excuse the person who hurt them for their sin. "I forgive you, I forgive you, may God forgive you," seems to me the most natural reaction of a panicked, grief-stricken Christian who still loves his or her loved one and hopes against hope the loved one is okay. The thought of a loved one being in hell is awful--intolerable! Indeed, there are people tortured by the idea of anyone at all in hell, and they find the easiest way to cope is to turn off their brain and pretend there isn't a hell after all. However, the authentic Catholic response is to pray for the dead, to do penance on their behalf and to hope, not assume, that God will have mercy on them. Turning off our brains and parroting "He's looking down from heaven smiling" and "He's at peace now" is a sin against reason, however comforting it might sound.

I don't think I am a cruel or insensitive person, and like anyone who suffers from depression, I think about depression and how to cure it a lot. It takes prevention, medication, all kinds of effort usually invisible to others. Depression is a common complaint; apparently one in four American women in their 40s and 50s take anti-depressants. Imagine if they all just ended it. What a bloodbath! Imagine if I just ended it. You regular readers would feel unsettled, hurt, angry, disappointed, betrayed. "How DARE she call herself Auntie Seraphic," you would harrumph, and rightly so. Let's not even imagine what my family would think, especially the little ones. I would rather suffer from a painful disease for forty years than hurt my little loved ones like that. My uncle's (natural if too-young) death when I was nine hurt my brother and me terribly, and I will never, ever forget my grandmother weeping through Mass that Christmas.

The fact is that "mental illness" does not necessarily make us adults as incapable of sin as three year old children. It's not a comfy moral place where we can do whatever we want, safe in the knowledge that our self-appointed nannies will scold anyone with the brass to "judge" us. Those of us who are catatonic or living in heightened states of irrational terror or anger, okay. Those of us who know what we are SUPPOSED to do to live normal, rational lives but from laziness or whatever do not do it are, however, culpable of sins of imprudence or whatever else. (That reminds me; I must take my pill. Gulp. Okay.)

Today I am annoyed not at suicides but at people who are getting high from their public expressions of compassion and approval for people who commit suicide and their scoldings of those who think suicide is a rotten thing to do. These nanny-types seem to think we are adding to the suffering of the suicide's loved ones, but if anything we are pointing out the real harm done to these loved ones and dreading any future suffering of the suicide. ("To die, to sleep - To sleep, perchance to dream," said Hamlet. "Ay, there's the rub, for in this sleep of death what dreams may come...') Really, the only thing anyone can say to the loved ones without sounding like a twit is "I'm so sorry for your loss." But when talking generally about suicide, and its implications, I think it is best to use our reasoning faculties.

The whole world seems to be talking about the Robin Williams suicide (probably because suicide is such a contrast to his funny, life-giving persona), so the forces of intellect and truth are being forced once again to engage the army of cheap sentiment and woolly thinking.

Last Week: 2. Living Single

I was wont to think of Singles only as unmarried people of marriageable age, but as marriageable age changes from era to era, community to community and, indeed, person to person, I have adjusted my thinking and now date the beginning of Single life from Christian Confirmation (or, if your are Jewish, your Bat or Bar Mitzvah). In short, your responsibilities as a Single begin when you are about fourteen. It is at fourteen, not first year university, when you should pray and search your heart for clues as to the direction in which your adult life should follow. By your high school graduation you should have a good idea as to what profession or trade you wish to follow (and be trained for at college or university) and if you want to co-head a family, live in a religious community, become a priest or dedicate your life as a Single person to some institution or cause. It is neither clever nor funny to say "I don't really know what I want to do with my life" in your third year of post-secondary education. It is sad.

A profession or trade is a given, although you can certainly wrack up huge debts and stay in post-secondary education until you can't stand it anymore. If you choose to go this route, I recommend that, as you study, you keep one foot firmly planted in the work world, even if that is just writing op. ed. for your local Catholic newspaper. And if you do enroll in a PhD program, not to quit unless you land a terrific job in a related profession. (B.A. quit after he landed a terrific job; I quit because of illness.) Work, paid or unpaid, is the lot of adult life. No work, no honour, no self-respect.

As a teenager, your job is not to have fun but to study and/or learn a trade. It is not to go to parties or to date even though the industrial-entertainment complex will tell you that is what teenage life is all about. It isn't. Unfortunately, so-called "progress" in civilization has not resulted in "progress" when it comes to sexuality. Once upon a time, when lifespans were much shorter and life was much simpler, girls married shortly after their periods started and thus became sexually active around the time they actually wanted to be sexually active. But despite the fact that Westerners are treated as children until they graduate from high school (or even university), our sexuality has not delayed. It's a problem.

But I don't want to talk about chastity today, in part because sex and lack thereof is too much and too often a focus of discussions of Single Life. I'll talk about it later in the week. (In your place, sex!) What I'd prefer to talk about today is how to be comfortable as a Single person.

First, your life as a Christian adult begins at Confirmation. Your life is not on hold until you get married. Your life began at conception and it will pause at death's door and then go through
to something else. You have to live every day. Try not to waste them in wishful thinking.

Second, you have to act like an adult, even if you live in your parents' house after high school, and this will mean adjustments for you and them. As an adult child in their house, you must pay them rent or do a significant number of chores. This will maintain not only their respect, but your self-respect. If you want your parents to treat you like an adult (which may be psychologically difficult for them, since they remember changing your diapers), you will have to act like an adult. Consult them about renovating your bedroom, and pay for it.

Third, living Single does not have to mean living alone. Although sometimes you really do need to move out of your parents' house as an adult, it is not a given. There is, in fact, nothing wrong with living in your parents' basement if you pay them a decent rent for it and shovel the walk so your old man won't have to. People from many cultures are horrified at the assumption that unmarried adults should live separate from their parents or away from their families. If you feel most comfortable living with your family, and they like having you around, why not stay? But if this is impossible, there is no shame in living with a pal who shares your core values or just such basics as "no overnight male guests". Living in a shared house or apartment with good female friends is one of the great delights of Single life. And it is a great joy to me that my Single littlest sister lives with my Single litter brother in a shared apartment.

Fourth, the two great temptations of Single Life are doing too much for others and its opposite, becoming isolated. That is one reason why I think it so much better for Singles to live with others. If you live with others, you feel less like you have to say "YES" to every request in order to keep up good relationships. And if you live with others, you won't be allowed to become totally self-absorbed. However, if you do live alone, do remember that you are ALLOWED free time and to follow your own hobbies and interests, and do remember to get out and spend time with people. A great way to do this is to enroll in a night school class. If you have a night school class, you can tell your boss so that she knows that even though you don't have a husband-and-kids, you aren't available to work overtime ALL the time. And you'll also meet people and learn something, too.

Fifth, you have to have lovely surroundings. It is all too easy to start treating yourself like a barn yard animal: waking, working, eating, playing, staring at stuff, eating, sleeping. But you are not your own pack animal, you are a human being, and thus you owe yourself a pleasing and comfortable living space. Single people are all too prone for feeling sorry for themselves; if you come home to a gorgeous jewelbox of a home, carefully cleaned and decorated by your own hands, you will not feel sorry for yourself. Indeed, you will love yourself. "Thank you, self," you will say, "For this moment of happiness I feel seeing this lovely space." (I felt that the other day when suddenly contemplating a perfectly tidy and vacuumed sitting room.)

Pay particular attention to your bedroom. As you will discover when you are older, there is nothing like waking up from a good night's sleep. If prone to sexual temptation or loneliness, pick a single bed--stuff for single beds is cheaper, which is great--so you do not feel the absence of another person. If not, pick whatever size you feel most comfortable or can afford. As a Single woman I much preferred monastic single beds; as a Married woman, I prefer a double even when I am travelling on my own.

Change the sheets at least once a week, invest in a mattress cover, make that bed the most comfy ever! And store your dirty laundry in a hamper, preferably somewhere else. And if you do your laundry every week, there's magically way less to do as the weeks go on.

Sixth, the best way to deal with sexual temptation and longing is not to think about it. Age old advice, but it works. Don't watch sexy movies or read sexy romance novels or make up sexy fantasies in your head or go to chastity lectures or read chastity books that dwell upon past sins. Don't talk about past sins. Tell people you are not comfortable discussing such personal matters, especially not at work. And don't let people bully you. If someone tries to shock you by showing you pornography, tell them you don't appreciate that and leave. If this happens at work, report it to your manager. Sexual harrassment is not just when your boss pinches your bottom. It's when anyone at work makes you feel uncomfortable with sex-related stuff after you've told them once you don't like it. N.B. YOU HAVE TO TELL THEM.

Seventh, you deserve respect and unfortunately you will sometimes have to fight for that respect. It might not be merely because you are Single but because you are young. Or old. Do not allow people to call you names like "old maid" or "fag hag" (should your only male friends be gay). You are not lesser than a married woman. Indeed, tradition dictates that virgins are ontologically higher up in the ranks, although (said St Augustine), a married woman who is martyred goes to the top of the class. Your value rests in the fact that you were made in the image and likeness of God and your honour is in self-denying service to people weaker than you. That does not include Mr Sneery Married Guy, who should be put in his place. At once.

Eighth, girls, if the number one man in your life is a priest or homosexual, you have a problem. Neither is going to relate to you in the way men-in-general should relate to you. Although priests and homosexuals (especially the ones who share your core values) do make good friends, they should not be your only male friends, or your bestest friend forever. To feel like an attractive woman, a woman that a man would be delighted to marry and protect, you must spend time with ordinary, marriage-track men. Otherwise you may start feeling sexless and unattractive without the foggiest clue why. Even if you are not interested in marrying your ordinary, marriage-track male friends, or they in marrying you, there is still a happy, often flirty or brotherly-sisterly dynamic that brings joy to your life and a sparkle to your eyes.

And I am sure I will think of other things, but I must go out with B.A. now.


Update: Seraphic Singles is soon to disappear from circulation, so if you haven't got a copy but want one, off you go to get one while you still can. Alternatively you could buy the American version called The Closet's All Mine, which may be around awhile. But as my deal was with the Canadian Novalis, I am more interested in promoting Novalis.

Last Week: 1. The Attraction Tyranny

If you are a practising Catholic (or a practising member of some other faith) who spends most of your time with other practicing members of your faith, you will get married unless you fall in love with a religious order or the priesthood instead of a person or if a major catastrophe wipes out the eligible men (or you, if you are a man).

Arguably the Sexual Revolution is a major catastrophe that has wiped out hundreds of thousands of eligible men and women by making them ineligible until they are well over thirty, but we'll leave that aside for now.

Unfortunately from early childhood women are taught to worry about how we look and if we are sexually attractive to boys and men our own age. But as a matter of fact, it is completely irrelevant if we are sexually attractive to men until we are old enough to get married. What is much more important is that we get along with people our own age and that they respect and like us for our characters. To grasp this is to be rooted in reality and--incidentally--adult life. As a married woman myself, it doesn't matter a darn if men-not-my-husband think I am sexually attractive. Indeed, it is probably better if they don't. But I would like the men around to respect me and like me for my character, so I dress and try to act accordingly.

The fault for this attraction obsession lies with advertising and the industrial-entertainment complex. If you read literature written before the First World War, you realize that once upon a time girls were discouraged from thinking about their looks, let alone wearing cosmetics. (In the eighteenth century powder and paint were for aristocrats. Are you an aristocrat? Probably not. So don't assume you would have been one in the eighteenth century. And you would have had as much chance of winning a "Mr Darcy" then as you have a shot at a billionaire today.) In the English-speaking world, girls were told to read their Bible, and girls' deportment was compared to the deportment mentioned in the Bible, and the only readily available public entertainment for girls was the Sunday sermon--and they could be very long. We become what we hear because most people unthinkingly accept what they hear over and over again as Gospel, which is why people who watch television for three hours a day start repeating what the television tells them. No "Will & Grace", no "g*y m*rriage."

And yet despite being discouraged in thinking about their looks, ordinary Christian women got married in droves for centuries. (If only the unusually pretty ones did, we'd all be supermodels, wouldn't we?) It helped, of course, that Christian men were told day in and day out that charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised (Proverbs thirty-one:thirty). Allowed to develop into mature, decent human beings, the vast majority of men in general are sexually attracted to women of child-bearing age in general, very much so to perhaps some dozens--which dozens depending on the psyche of the individual man--and also capable of falling deeply in love with one or a few. P*rn screws up men's natural attraction to natural women and natural female sexual behaviour, which is why we should all scream like banshees about how horrible it is and not let our friends go to 50 Shades of Grey the movie.

By the way, I once met a pretty and yet very overweight black woman who married a Hispanic guy she met on an island holiday and brought him to Canada. In his culture, and in her country-of-birth's culture, there was nothing wrong or unsexy about a woman being very overweight. He thought she was kind, fun, generous, sexy and (being Canadian with a job) rich. He thought he was a very lucky fellow until he got to Toronto and got a job in construction. He was a good-looking man and, alas, his co-workers wondered aloud he was doing with his wife, she being so fat and, in their minds, unattractive. They gave him a hard time about her, as that sort of man tends to do. And the Hispanic guy, being rather a simple guy, as most of the three billion men in the world are, actually, took what they said seriously and began nagging my co-worker to diet. It's a sad story, and it leads me to my next point.

Being male and being female (or, very rarely, being a hermaphrodite) are not social constructs but biological facts. But physical beauty is indeed a social construct, as are standards of modesty and dress. And when in Rome, do as Romans do, as long as it is not hideously immoral, unhealthy or stupid. If it is the norm in La Porte, Indiana to be twenty pounds overweight, you are probably going to attract men when you yourself are twenty pounds overweight (and the men are going to be at least twenty pounds overweight, too), but it is a bad idea to be twenty pounds overweight, just as it is a bad to starve yourself into anorexia just because it is the norm at your college to be super-slim and throw up after meals.

If I had a daughter, I would want her to have a healthy weight (which can usually be determined by a BMI calculator), clear skin (if possible), shiny hair and clothes that did not make her stand out as anything other than well-dressed. If she were under 21, I would come down on her like a ton of bricks for wearing any make-up other than Chapstick. "Why?" I would nag like mothers everywhere. "You don't need it. You have perfect skin. I would kill for skin like yours, and I have great skin for my age. You don't need to attract men yet."

"Mother!" wails this imaginary daughter. "I don't want to attract men. I just want to bring attention to my eyes."

"Whose attention?" I shriek. "At your age everyone notices you anyway; they just pretend they don't. It's oldies like me who have to draw black circles around our eyes not to feel invisible."

"But I want to EXPRESS myself," shouts Seraphic Junior, fatally.

"Then draw on a piece of paper, not yourself!" I cry triumphantly. "I spent umpteen hundred quid on your sketching classes, you know!" But then Seraphic Junior brings out the big guns.

"But everyone else my age wears make-up," she says, and I freeze because I suffered the tortures of the damned in elementary school for "being different." "Being different" turns some people into saints, but others into self-absorbed eccentrics. Making your child stand out like a dowdy thumb is a big risk. Fortunately, I would have kept tabs on everyone my beloved child came into contact with at school, a school I had picked for its large population of devout Poles and hijab-wearing Pakistanis, and could therefore name some girls whose parents were just as strict as I.

"But you wore make-up at my age," sulks Seraphic Junior.

"Yes, but there was no internet porn featuring teenage girls back then", I say and Seraphic Junior is so horrified her own mother has said "internet porn" out loud that she rushes away to recount the whole conversation to her best pal by text.

This post is going on forever. To recap:

1. All but a few of you will get married, no matter what you think now.
2. Men are attracted to women, and the religious ones in particular want to marry. The others will want to marry when they grow up. If they grow up.
Three. There's a whole industry making you think you will marry only if you buy their stuff.
4. Beauty, like "normal", is a social construct but young and healthy are always attractive. If you are of marriageable age, looking to attract marriageable men, work on becoming as healthy as you can be. Healthy weight. Healthy complexion. Healthy teeth. Healthy hair. Healthy brain. (She suddenly remembers to get up and take her healthy brain pill.) Eat properly. Get enough sleep. Brush your teeth. Get some sun. Take up Pilates.

There is something so sad about young girls covered in slap (British for make-up), tiny and/or tight outfits, tattoos and piercings. I don't ask why they do it because I know: they think it makes them look good. They think it makes them look "cool", i.e. admirable, in the eyes of their peers. And I suppose it does, quite a lot of the time. But I am not sure it makes them look attractive to old-fashioned guys who just want to get married and have children. And I am pretty sure those guys want to marry girls who dress like the Duchess of Cambridge while being as approachable as their mothers.

One of the first rules of the writing trade is to think about your audience. Until you are old enough to get married, your principal concern should be that people like and respect you as a friend, classmate or neighbour. When you are old enough to get married, then you can put your books, sports and work aside for a moment to consider how you can attract male attention without demeaning yourself or men, if you have not been attracting male attention already, just by being a young woman. (If you have been attracting the "wrong kind" of men, you may ponder why that might be, or how you might handle them in future.) It may depend largely on the community in which you live and what "women who marry" are popularly supposed to look like. When I showed up in Edinburgh to meet B.A. I was wearing a pretty dress. Just in case. And when he fell in love with me, I was dressed as Jackie Kennedy c. 1962, pearls and all. Just saying.

I beat up on myself all through elementary school and high school for not attracting boys. But in Grade 8 I looked on at a game of "Spin the Bottle" in holy horror. And in high school I listened to tales of "he pressured her" in utter horror and was pretty horrified when at 18 I faced "pressure" myself. Strangely, I could not see that "attracting boys" could be a BAD, UNCOMFORTABLE THING. What was cool, what has been a joy in life, was and is having good male friends. And an important part of being friends with men is that they NOT be that attracted to you. Maybe a little bit is okay, but not enough to make them or you miserable. Of course, it is awesome if you and one of your good male friends fall head over heels in love with each other and get married, but this is supposed to be a once-in-a-lifetime thing, and who knows when it will happen? Love and attraction are not the same thing, and one does not necessarily lead to the other.

Meanwhile, I can never say it enough: your value as a human being does not rest in being found sexually attractive. Thinking that the more attractive you are the more value you have as a human being is a stop along the road to aborting Down Syndrome babies and smothering childless old ladies. Your value as a human being rests in being in the image and likeness of God and, like God Incarnate, being willing to give up your life for someone weaker. No man is more valuable than the man who gives up his seat to a child, woman or elderly man, whether that is on the bus or in a lifeboat. No woman is more valuable than the woman who denies herself a treat so a child can have one. One of the most pernicious things about euthanasia is that kindly elderly folk will think it their duty to give up their lives for the good of their children or the state because "my medical care costs so much." This is why we adults under retirement age must fight on their behalf.

Bottom line: the whole point to being sexually attractive is to get and keep a spouse and have babies. You shouldn't worry about this until you are over twenty (unless the normal age to marry in your community is younger), and you should understand that neither frumpy (aka "modest" in Pius V circles) nor trashy (aka "cool" on the Rough Bus) suggest "I could be the future mother of your children" to truly eligible men. But that said, your value doesn't lie at all in sexually attracting ANY man whatsoever, but in being a human being capable of self-denial for the sake of someone less powerful than you.

By the way, the young lady in the photo never married. That's Mother Teresa.

One More Week of "Seraphic Singles"

After so many years, I think I have blogged what I have to blog about the Single Life. And I have left a permanent record, after all: Seraphic Singles (Novalis) and its Polish twin Anielskie Single (Homo Dei). These fine volumes describe what life was like for a Single woman in her mid-thirties in 2006-2007 which was, after all, seven years ago. Times have changed, and so have I, quite obviously, having been married for five years. I think it is time to leave the baton of writing about Single Life with Single women. And indeed, there are many Single women writing about Single life now. In the USA there is even a Catholic organization devoted to non-consecrated Singles.

Although I plan to focus on my professional writing, I won't give up blogging entirely. I'm turning over a few ideas about my next blog, and I'll set it up soon and post a link. Meanwhile, starting Monday, I'll be reviewing what I think are the most important aspects and issues of Single Life.

Update: By the way, today is the Feast of St. Edith Stein (Teresa Benedicta of the Cross). I just found out or I would have gone to Mass this morning!

A Wonderful Evening at Blackwell's, South Bridge, Edinburgh

It's another beautiful sunny August day in Edinburgh. This idea that Edinburgh is foggy all August is a myth put about by Festival goers with bad weather luck. It does, on occasion, rain in Edinburgh between May and September, yes. And it does rain rather a lot between September and May (although not non-stop). But we do have many glorious spring and summer days, and this seems to be another one.

Except for the part of my brain agonizing over the Iraqi Christians and other religious minorities in Iraq (e.g. the Yazidi), I am in a pretty good mood today. For one thing, I managed to get today's household tasks done in an hour and to finish all dusting and vacuuming before the first tour of the day. The whole flat has been dusted and vacuumed, all the windows are open to cross-breezes, the big closet (really a room) is in apple-pie order and the moths have been vanquished for the time being.

And of course I had a wonderful time last night at Blackwell's Bookshop, feeling appreciated for my OTHER job, writer. This was my very first time appearing before an Edinburgh audience, so I was quite nervous. Come to think of it, it was my first appearance in a big name, non-theological, utterly glamorous bookshop, too. And Blackwell's has long been my favourite bookshop in Edinburgh, the place I guiltily buy new books as opposed to used books, which abound in shops near the Grassmarket. And Blackwell's has a Café Nero, in which I generally do my Polish homework last minute while slurping a skinny latte. In fact, it has a great foreign language section, which I visit weekly, although usually only to gaze longingly at the two-volume Oxford University Polish-English/English-Polish dictionary which I can't afford.

That said, I couldn't really afford a new dress for last night's performance either, but I bought one anyway on the grounds that it is The Perfect Dress for Me. Alas, I forgot to ask B.A. to take photos last night, but here at least is the dress. I wore it with red shoes because those are the only shoes I have that go with it. And I threw on some red jewellery, so as to present a bold writerly appearance.

And when I climbed the stairs to Blackwell's upper floor, I was delighted to see that Blackwell's had also invested in the evening by ordering in at least ten copies of my book. There it was, the beautiful pile, bold against the stack of the other featured authors' works.

"But of course," said Ann, the Events Co-ordinator. "We want to sell your book!"

It was all I could do from throwing myself at her feet and weeping, "Thank you! Thank you for wanting to sell my book!" Let's just say, not everyone in the book trade is that interested in actually selling books. I shall draw a veil over my darker thoughts on that topic. At any rate, Ann was determined to sell books and also to make all us authors feel at home, so she introduced us to each other, and directed us to sit in the most comfortable chairs. I enjoyed a nice chat with Michael Malone, and was delighted when someone from my Polish class arrived and bought a book for me to sign. Then B.A. turned up, and then my friend Angela came, and so I felt very grateful to them all.

First up was poet Bert Flitcroft, and then it was my turn. First I explained the three big inspirations for my novel--the attempted Cologne train bombing, the Toronto 18, and the somewhat paradoxical Catholic publishing interest in finding "the next Graham Greene"--and then I read a passage from the "Boat Party Scene". The audience--quite a good-natured one--giggled amiably at the worldliness of Anna Maria.

Choosing a scene to read from Ceremony of Innocence is always difficult because it contains something to offend almost everyone. If I read about Father Francis's Asia-inspired syncretism, Asians Christian who walk in late (and therefore miss the context) raise their eyebrows and (in one case) rush to get their South Asian Christian boyfriend's aid in glaring at me. If I read Catriona's (relatively mild) thoughts on the Palestinian controversy, I dread the reaction of my very nice, very left-wing professor-pals. If any character uses a swear word, I break into a sweat because I'm in front of a bookcase featuring the works of John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Pope Francis. So this time I decided to play it safe and start with the boat, Anna Maria and....hmm... "How Germans really think about Germany." Whoops. And afterwards B.A. told me that one of the bookshop organizers was "quite obviously" German. So really I cannot win.

However, nobody--as far as I could tell--raised an eyebrow, and after all the readings, a man came by to tell me that he was already three-quarters of the way into Ceremony and really liked it. He had bought the book after seeing my name on the Blackwell's list and deciding the plot sounded interesting. This is exactly the kind of stuff authors like to hear.

Michael read next, and then Dr. Sureshini Sanders and finally the celebrated Rosemary Goring, whom most reading Scots would recognize as the literary critic in the Glasgow Herald. Her partner, the critic Alan Taylor, was in the audience, and B.A., who reads him all the time in the TLS (or the LRB?), was delighted to meet him.

When the shop was closing and Ann chased the crowd, still chatting, down the stairs and out of the shop, B.A., Angela and I went to the Captain's Bar on South College Street. We got a table and three chairs before the place filled up with other Fringe Festival goers, and as I enjoyed my beer and the vibe, I decided I liked Festival Season in Edinburgh after all. Okay, so I still can't stand the huge daytime crowds in my way. But I see that it makes a huge difference to my attitude by having a part in it!

Two Young Men

It is a bright and sunny day here in Edinburgh, and next up on my housekeeping schedule is the guest room. However here am I blogging again, to link to this sobering article that rather calls the importance of social media into question. In short, a young man dies due to medical negligence, and an expert witness, whose nom-de-plume is Theodore Dalrymple, decides to learn something about him.

After the case was over, I looked up the deceased on the Internet and though, as I have said, he was not in any way remarkable or extraordinary, I found quite a lot about him and by him, most notably a video that he had made about himself and the kind of shoes that he wore. Even here, as far as his taste in shoes was concerned, he was not at all extraordinary: I think he wore the kind of shoes that everyone, or at least everyone of his age like him, wore. The film lasted more than five minutes, and consisted of him putting on and taking off various of his shoes and holding them up to the camera. This was done to a background of rock music, which I muted as quickly as I could.

The banality of this surprises Dr. Dalrymple, who thought he was too old to be surprised, and he seems to suggest that the more trivial stuff about you on the internet, the more trivial you may be.

Well, it is fun to poke fun at the over-fed masses and their low-brow tastes, I guess. After all, I live in the UK where people make snap judgments about you based on your accent and no, I'm not American, and no, I'm not offended. I take a bus where tattoos pulsate like open wounds yet feathery hats get me strange looks, so I might enjoy giving the lumpen proletarian a going over from the safety of the internet from time to time.

However, this morning I also read the story of another trivial-seeming young man, one who very likely may not live very long either, but in his case, he took real action in his life by embracing the seventh century.

His page on the social media site VK suggest a young man apparently obsessed with his body - it is dominated by a series of pictures of him in a gym, showing off his toned physique.

Now he uses Twitter to glorify the "Caliphate" of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State, and to post gory pictures including one of two heads in a basket, which he compares to the heads of sheep that can be ordered for the table in specialist Egyptian restaurants.

Hipster Jihadi seems to be having oh, what a lovely war, inviting his mother to come and live in a nice flat near the Euphrates river.

"My son," she said, "what would happen if the owners of the flat came back? What will you do then?'

"I told her not to worry", he said, "They are dead and gone."

So although growing a beard and cheering the slaughter one's enemies and taking their homes and perhaps raping their mothers, wives, and/or daughters may seem like more meaningful activities than making videos about one's stupid shoes, I am tempted to think it is a shame that the first young man died of a treatable disease, not the second.

Just Busy

Not sick--just busy. My fingernails are splintered stumps, let me tell you. Spring cleaning continued today with the big closet: hauled everything out, dusted, vacuumed and chucked; found and killed the moths who had been munching on Casimir the Bad Little Fox; put everything not garbage back in; dusted and vacuumed the sitting-room and on and on. Exhausting, really. The goal is to get housework down to two weeny hours so as to spend afternoons in reading and writing. I hope that day comes sooner rather than later.