But don't ask me why

The sales triggered a counter-consumerist reaction in me yesterday. I came home via the foody shop (where, as I mentioned yesterday, I had a hard time deciding between the creme fraiches with 28% fat, 17% fat, 8% fat, 3% fat, 2% fat, no-lactose, low-lactose, HYLA (don't ask - something to do with lactose), and combinations thereof) and sat at home feeling like a capitalist shite.

Question: Why do I have so much stuff? Inventory. Why do I have so many clothes (I looked at some pyjamas yesterday, they were the only thing I really wanted to buy, but didn't - I have some already)? So many fucking layers of clothing I will never be able to wear out all of them, and besides, so many items I hardly ever wear, or never, even, and it barely helps I've decided to buy second-hand from now on, it's a poxy plaster I apply to my sore, ridiculous, affluent-Westerner conscience. Why do I have so much food in my cupboards? Foodfoodfood, brought here from hither and yon, from all over the fucking place, just so I could delight my palate, not just so I could feed myself and my offspring, and again, not eating meat barely helps, it's a piss in the ocean of global suffering whether I do or not. Why do I have so much stuff? Books. Yesyes, they are for my entertainment and edification, but who and what has given me the right to sit here being entertained and edified? Television, digibox (again, don't ask - it's something to do with being able to watch telly in this country), desktop computer, laptop computer, landline phone, mobile phone, washing machine, lamps and pots and plants and plates and glasses (crystal glasses too, they are beautiful and I like having them, but what do I need them for? Some other woman's entire life is based on the ownership of a single cooking pot, in which she cooks a bean stew, daily, to sell), stuff - stuff - stuff. My life revolves around stuff, does it not? My life, my world, it's inescapable, it's horrendous.

So I went on a foray around the internet, I said hello to a few people, I felt lonely and shaky, I was quite desperate for a bit of communication, even though I also want(ed) to hide alone in a corner, curled up. I went looking for this and that, I uncovered this, I thought it was haunting and beautiful:



but it didn't exactly make me feel any less like a pig. No offence to pigs.

This Christmas thing, I've been wanting to write my thoughts about it for days, and also run away from trying to write my thoughts about it. What sometimes strikes me when I think of the basic core of the story, never mind whether you are religious, never mind whether you believe in Jesus and the saints and all the prophets, never mind whether you believe there's a God at all, let alone whether He could be born a human, what strikes me sometimes is the stabbing beautifulness of the story combined with the fact that for two thousand years, people have - to varying degrees - professed to believing in it, that a child is born, a baby, a beautiful baby boy (I've had two), and we claim to believe he is the saviour of mankind, somehow, and somehow, it is true, look at any baby, anywhere, they are perfection, they could become anything and everything, if only we could give them the world in which they could unfold into what they could be, they truly could save us all, if only we allowed them to, but

just as I'm trying to explain it, explain what I really mean, the thought disintegrates, I can't verbalise it, and I'm left with a melodramatic platitude in my hand. Which is where I am now, but sometimes it's good to write without self-censorship, write like I was writing it anonymously for the eyes of no-one, without thinking how ridiculous I sound. I think.