2002-09-26 -

Not the most exciting day - not the most exciting reading for anyone other than me, certainly. If my life was a soap opera it would be called 'Reading a Book' today. I managed not to kill anyone during my driving lesson, which is nice. I didn't eat all the pies either, which is also nice. I left three of them in the cupboard.

Received a mail this afternoon off an old friend from University, who is now in the U.S. Got a bit carried away in my reply to her, ranting and raving about human nature and our need for faith and religion. It relates to a Christian woman (cue frantic singing of Type O Negative songs!) who I had a clandestine relationship with a couple of years ago.

"I think a couple of years ago I came to a point in my life - which up till then had not required a spiritual side - when I needed to find out more and think more about faith and philosophy and stuff like that. In a way I was both lucky and unlucky to be sharing a house with some practicing Christians at the time. Overall, now my passions and dissatisfaction with the way things were left with the woman I became involved with have died down, I guess I am both grateful and hateful of the whole thing. I was able to gain some clarity on my views about God and the meaning of it all - deciding that faith is a matter of personal choice down to the individual, and organised religion sometimes seems to be a man-made vehicle for reassurance and a whole load of bad things like war - but have ended up very upset and confused that such a (basically) beautiful and intelligent person as she was can end up repressed, unhappy and stupidly devoted to what she has forced down her throat (to coin a sexual metaphor) by her priests and christian friends. All because there is a 'gap' that it is human nature to want to fill. Some try to fill the unexplained with science, some don't feel the need to have it all explained, but some have a NEED to rely on a powerful crutch such as organised religion. It makes it so much easier if everything is black and white, right and wrong, sin and virtue. Shame that in real life there come along people like me (sinners) and the occasional virtuous one falls for them. Shame sin is such fun too :-)"

So yes, you can see how much of a rant I went off on. I'll shut up about it now. No flaming neccessary :-)

LISTENING TO:- Female singer songwriters today. Alison Moyet, Dido, Hope Sandoval and Joni Mitchell. Was in that sort of mood as the sun was out.