Why this blog is called "Gallimaufry".

gal-uh-MAW-free\, noun.

Originally meaning "a hash of various kinds of meats," "gallimaufry" comes from French galimafrée; in Old French, from the word galer, "to rejoice, to make merry"; in old English: gala + mafrer: "to eat much," and from Medieval Dutch maffelen: "to open one's mouth wide."

It's also a dish made by hashing up odds and ends of food; a heterogeneous mixture; a hodge-podge; a ragout; a confused jumble; a ridiculous medley; a promiscuous (!) assemblage of persons.

Those of you who know me, will, I’m sure, understand how well some of these phrases (barring the "promiscuous" bit!) fit me.

More importantly, this blog is an ode to my love for Shimla. I hope to show you this little town through my eyes. If you don't see too many people in it, forgive me, because I'm a little chary of turning this into a human zoo.

Stop by for a spell, look at my pictures, ask me questions about Shimla, if you wish. I shall try and answer them as best as I can. Let's be friends for a while....

30 May 2008

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear......


“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.
At other times it feels like being mildly drunk or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me.
There are moments, most unexpectedly, when something inside me tries to reassure me that I really don’t mind so much, not so very much, after all. Love is not the whole of a man’s life. I was happy before I met H. I’ve plenty of what are called ‘resources’. People get over these things. Come, I shan’t do so badly. One is ashamed to listen to this voice, but it seems for a little while to be making out a good case. Then comes a sudden jab of red-hot memory and all that ‘common-sense’ vanishes like an ant in the mouth of a furnace."
C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed.

2 comments:

Sanchia said...

What he says about feeling ashamed to listen to the voice that says that he won't do too badly and life will go on... that's so true about grief, whatever the reason.

Beanz on Toast said...

100% nail on the head! Thank you for sharing that. Through reading things like this, I am able to learn to put into words what I am feeling and going through, and it makes me feel less out of control.
Thank you my dear friend.

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