Where the skies are forever grey

I’ve been meaning to write this post for quite a while (along with the million other things floating around in my head at any given moment). The reason I’ve procrastinated this one, I suspect, is my own lack of knowledge as to the level of interest this topic may generate. Like it even matters, right? It’s interesting to me, and that should be enough. I’m not writing this blog for the benefit of others. All those enterprising-marketeering-blog snobs can go stuff that in their pipe and choke on it. I wish stumbleupon would stop taking me to their gross “how to get more people to your website by spamming all your friends and acquaintances!” Only they wouldn’t call it spamming, they’d call it networking. And they wouldn’t call them friends and acquaintances, they’d call them networks. 

Sorry. Cynical side of me peeked out for a moment there. People make and keep acquaintances for the sole purpose of extending their network kind of disgust me a little. How do you ever know what’s real with them? How do they ever maintain a real relationship? Isn’t it a constant question of “what else can I get from you to propel myself forward another millimetre?” 

I’m sure that the people who live their lives this way don’t even realise that’s what they’re doing. How about you stop pondering what other people can do for you, and start to simply enjoy the company of others? How about just being in the moment? How about having friends as friends, and not as rungs of a ladder that you tread on to get yourself further up in the world? 

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OMG I love my life. 

I love not feeling the need to constantly justify my actions, living in the moment, allowing myself freedom to feel the emotions that come naturally. I’m still careful not to hurt anyone. 

Everyone should read this book. My interest in the undead springs forth from my initial interest in a) the Black Death, and b) apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic novels such as “Plague” (originally “Plague 99″) by Jean Ure, and “A Wrinkle in the Skin” by John Christopher. 

My interest has just been piqued by the term ‘pedigree collapse’, when referring to genealogy. Much favoured by European royal families (see the Hapsburg jaw/lip syndrome! Also known as prognathism), and sometimes necessary after the Black Death ravaged the population of Europe so much.

The part of me that loves anthropology loves the Black Death for it’s catalytic effect on the development of Modern English, on the very social fabric apparent at the time, and on the population’s understanding of the world and their place in it. I’d love to go back in time like Kivrin in “Doomsday Book” (Connie Willis) and see the everyday lives of the different social classes. 

I’m tired. Those are good books. Read them. I’m obsessed.