DEAR BABY, WELCOME TO DUMPSVILLE, POPULATION: YOU
Back to school on Monday. Oh, how I don't want to, HOW I DON'T WANT TO. Last week I was all YEAH, LET'S GET THIS BITCH ON THE MAT, LET'S GO, but now THE BITCH IS NEARLY ON THE MAT and I DO NOT WANT IT TO BE THERE. NO, I WOULD RATHER THE BITCH BE ON SOME OTHER MAT FAR FROM ME. Oh god. At the refresher course a few weeks ago I discovered that, among others, I had forgotten the words for "pneumothorax" and "blood culture". It is going to be a MASSACRE.
Heigh ho. Anyway, Ethiopia, one more post and I'm done, just because, the monastery murals, I CANNOT BEAR not sharing the monastery mural pictures with EVERYONE I KNOW. They have been the one thing I have consistently shown to EVERYONE, regardless of HOW VERY MUCH THEY DON'T WANT ME TO. They're not great quality (in fact, the more sensitive might describe them as AGONISINGLY BLURRY OW OW OH GOD MY EYES MY POOR EYES THEY CANNOT FOCUS) because it was dark and I don't have steady enough hands for long exposure, but what they lack in non-blurriness they make up for in HA HA OMG WHAT SO AWESOME. It may be that I am over-selling these a bit here but I don't care.
A bit of background: the Ethiopian Orthodox Bible has more books than the standard international one, because Ethiopian Christianity was cut off from the mainstream before the Council of, er, Nicea I think, or it might not have been Nicea but one of the ones around that period, where they decided which books would be part of the True Proper Bible and which books would be left out of it (left out of it: stuff written in Greek; stuff written by the Gnostics positing that since the god of the Old Testament was clearly a TOTAL BASTARD, perhaps he HAD created the world, which would explain, oh, WHY IT SUCKED SO MUCH; and stuff with dragons). Hence the Ethiopian Bible has lots more dragons, and marginally more batshittery, than our standard one.
Point the second: the islands of Lake Tana have lots of 14th century monasteries on. These monasteries are full of things like the mummified bodies of past emperors (which we weren't allowed to see, because we're GIRLS, MUCKY GIRLS), ancient relics, and loads of art. We got shown lots of ancient books, and special outfits for monks and nuns and hermits (who knew that there were special outfits for hermits? You would not have thought that it would be a fashion-conscious profession.) and lots and lots of HUGE WEAPONRY, for when there was strife or unrest or invasions, at which point all the monks and nuns and hermits would leave their lives of saintly contemplation and go forth to OPEN A CAN OF WHUP-ASS on the invaders.
And the murals. The ones I got to take pictures of were, I think, mostly about six or seven hundred years old. That's what the guide told me, anyway, but he could have been wrong. I think they're definitely from medieval Ethiopia, anyway, the odd suspiciously Italian-looking figure aside.
FIRST TO SET THE SCENE, here is Lake Tana, looking MIGHTY FINE at dawn. DID YOU KNOW it is the source of the Blue Nile? And the Ethiopian rains are the main reason the Nile floods? AND ALSO IT HAS CROCODILES:
Here are some blurry pelicans. The pelicans are so sodding beautiful it made my heart CRUMPLE LIKE THE BONNET OF A 1973 CITROEN WRAPPED AROUND A TREE. It was rather a shock to someone used to the more prosaic pelicans of The Giraffe, the Pelly and Me. Pelicans, yes, good for washing windows, that's what I always thought about pelicans, but OH they are BIG and WHITE like SAILS and they have this habit of suddenly rising up in groups of five or six and flying together in a long low straight line over the water as if they are getting STRAIGHT tTO THE HEART of some BEAUTIFUL MATTER, they are ACE:
Here is one of the islands:
Here is one of the monasteries:
Inside the monasteries are most filled by the big cubic tabernacle/sanctum/whatever, and the sanctum is mostly filled with PICTURES. Here is the outer-inside:
And here are some rubbish views of the inner-outide:
AND HERE are some of the murals. Explanations below images:
This is telling the story of a saint who was meditating in a tree one day, but then he dozed off and fell out of the tree and landed ON SPIKES. But then some angels came to heal him. The lesson of this story is that if you're a saint it doesn't matter if you're also an incredibly poor planner.
This is a man herding cows in a tree. QUITE SELF-EXPLANATORY I THINK.
This is a saint who was meditating in a desert. Demons came to distract him in the form of dogs. Judging from the pictorial evidence they stood on him in an obtrusive way. But he was far too holy to be distracted by them, OH YES.
This is a man climbing up a huge snake.
I took this picture just for the expression on the severed head. Here is a close-up of the head:
The head is DISPLEASED.
This is, I think, the Virgin Mary talking to a lot of severed heads on the rocks. I can't think what else it could be.
No, no, I know what you're thinking, but it's a LADY camel and he's drinking her MILK!
This is St Francis. You can tell he's St Francis because he's wearing a suit made of beard and feathers and the birds love him, and you can tell that the birds love him because one of them is pecking him in the eye.
This is Kind David playing his harp to assembled notables. It is a very beautiful painting, but I mostly focused on the woman in the window watching him.
"That is his wife," explained our guide (who was beautiful and owned a pet bunny rabbit called Lucy).
"She looks sad," I said.
"She is very impressed."
"She doesn't look impressed."
"She is VERY impressed."
I'm not convinced.
This is a collection of sadly very blurry pictures of demons in hell. I just love the fact that one section of hell apparently seems to be dedicated to a slightly panicky and high-strung demon perhaps conducting some sort of amateur dramatic recital, and another section is just where a happy demon with a huge ladle cooks you.
Right, okay, this is the story that I THINK this picture is from. There was this horrible man who lived a long time ago, and he was a cannibal. He ate his wife and his children and his friends and his neighbours and his business partners and his enemies and random acquaintances. He ate like NINETY PEOPLE before eventually the people in his district cottoned on to the fact that he was a HIGHLY INDISCREET CANNIBAL, and then they all ran away from him and his life got much hungrier. So he went on the move, travelling around and EATING PEOPLE OH MY GOD. And one day he was walking in a forest, and he came across an old tramp, who was dying of leprosy. This old man was so scabby and flaky and near death that Unbelievably Horrible Cannibal Man didn't want to eat him. He was going to pass on by, but the dying old man begged him for water.
No, said Unbelievably Horrible Cannibal Man, because he was unbelievably horrible.
"In the name of the Virgin Mary, please," said Dying Man. When he heard the Virgin Mary invoked, Unbelievably Horrible Cannibal Man took out his flask and gave the man a single drop of water. Then he went on his way.
Many years and many, many cannibalistic murders later, Unbelievably Horrible Cannibal Man died and went to be judged. He stood before the huge golden throne and watched his life being weighed in a pair of golden scales. In one side went all the people he had killed and eaten, and in the other went the single drop of water that he had once given to a dying man in the name of the Virgin Mary. And the scales were tipped to the side that held the drop of water, and he passed through the gates into Paradise.
Apparently this is supposed to be a beautiful story of redemption and the amazing power of the Virgin Mary. I am pretty sure it is the WORST STORY IN THE WORLD. OH MY FUCKING GOD. O_O
These are the Jesus pictures. I love the Jesus pictures more than anything. I almost guarantee that these are stories about Jesus that you HAVEN'T HEARD BEFORE:
Jesus and his schoolfriends were playing a game, making birds and fishes out of paper. But when Jesus made them, they came to life and flew around. I think this is pretty beautiful.
Here are the holy family fleeing to Egypt from Herod's men. But oh no! The soldiers have caught up with them! Joseph and Mary look terrified. But notice that Jesus looks considerably more calm. The reason for this is revealed in the other half of the picture...:
He has summoned DRAGONS to EAT EVERYONE.
This is Jesus getting a damn good walloping from the Virgin Mary. "Because," as our guide said understatedly, "he is a normal child, like other children."
MY ALL-TIME FAVOURITE. This is Jesus SLIDING OUT OF A WINDOW ON A BEAM OF LIGHT while his schoolfriends lie CRUMPLED IN AN UNCONSCIOUS HEAP ON THE GROUND BELOW. "They are playing a game of sliding... out of window," explained our guide. "But only Jesus has the power of flight."
AS A CHANGE OF PACE, here is a chandelier:
And here is a full-sized cross wearing a pink jersey:
AND THAT CONCLUDES MY MONASTERY PICTURES.
Heigh ho. Anyway, Ethiopia, one more post and I'm done, just because, the monastery murals, I CANNOT BEAR not sharing the monastery mural pictures with EVERYONE I KNOW. They have been the one thing I have consistently shown to EVERYONE, regardless of HOW VERY MUCH THEY DON'T WANT ME TO. They're not great quality (in fact, the more sensitive might describe them as AGONISINGLY BLURRY OW OW OH GOD MY EYES MY POOR EYES THEY CANNOT FOCUS) because it was dark and I don't have steady enough hands for long exposure, but what they lack in non-blurriness they make up for in HA HA OMG WHAT SO AWESOME. It may be that I am over-selling these a bit here but I don't care.
A bit of background: the Ethiopian Orthodox Bible has more books than the standard international one, because Ethiopian Christianity was cut off from the mainstream before the Council of, er, Nicea I think, or it might not have been Nicea but one of the ones around that period, where they decided which books would be part of the True Proper Bible and which books would be left out of it (left out of it: stuff written in Greek; stuff written by the Gnostics positing that since the god of the Old Testament was clearly a TOTAL BASTARD, perhaps he HAD created the world, which would explain, oh, WHY IT SUCKED SO MUCH; and stuff with dragons). Hence the Ethiopian Bible has lots more dragons, and marginally more batshittery, than our standard one.
Point the second: the islands of Lake Tana have lots of 14th century monasteries on. These monasteries are full of things like the mummified bodies of past emperors (which we weren't allowed to see, because we're GIRLS, MUCKY GIRLS), ancient relics, and loads of art. We got shown lots of ancient books, and special outfits for monks and nuns and hermits (who knew that there were special outfits for hermits? You would not have thought that it would be a fashion-conscious profession.) and lots and lots of HUGE WEAPONRY, for when there was strife or unrest or invasions, at which point all the monks and nuns and hermits would leave their lives of saintly contemplation and go forth to OPEN A CAN OF WHUP-ASS on the invaders.
And the murals. The ones I got to take pictures of were, I think, mostly about six or seven hundred years old. That's what the guide told me, anyway, but he could have been wrong. I think they're definitely from medieval Ethiopia, anyway, the odd suspiciously Italian-looking figure aside.
FIRST TO SET THE SCENE, here is Lake Tana, looking MIGHTY FINE at dawn. DID YOU KNOW it is the source of the Blue Nile? And the Ethiopian rains are the main reason the Nile floods? AND ALSO IT HAS CROCODILES:
Here are some blurry pelicans. The pelicans are so sodding beautiful it made my heart CRUMPLE LIKE THE BONNET OF A 1973 CITROEN WRAPPED AROUND A TREE. It was rather a shock to someone used to the more prosaic pelicans of The Giraffe, the Pelly and Me. Pelicans, yes, good for washing windows, that's what I always thought about pelicans, but OH they are BIG and WHITE like SAILS and they have this habit of suddenly rising up in groups of five or six and flying together in a long low straight line over the water as if they are getting STRAIGHT tTO THE HEART of some BEAUTIFUL MATTER, they are ACE:
Here is one of the islands:
Here is one of the monasteries:
Inside the monasteries are most filled by the big cubic tabernacle/sanctum/whatever, and the sanctum is mostly filled with PICTURES. Here is the outer-inside:
And here are some rubbish views of the inner-outide:
AND HERE are some of the murals. Explanations below images:
This is telling the story of a saint who was meditating in a tree one day, but then he dozed off and fell out of the tree and landed ON SPIKES. But then some angels came to heal him. The lesson of this story is that if you're a saint it doesn't matter if you're also an incredibly poor planner.
This is a man herding cows in a tree. QUITE SELF-EXPLANATORY I THINK.
This is a saint who was meditating in a desert. Demons came to distract him in the form of dogs. Judging from the pictorial evidence they stood on him in an obtrusive way. But he was far too holy to be distracted by them, OH YES.
This is a man climbing up a huge snake.
I took this picture just for the expression on the severed head. Here is a close-up of the head:
The head is DISPLEASED.
This is, I think, the Virgin Mary talking to a lot of severed heads on the rocks. I can't think what else it could be.
No, no, I know what you're thinking, but it's a LADY camel and he's drinking her MILK!
This is St Francis. You can tell he's St Francis because he's wearing a suit made of beard and feathers and the birds love him, and you can tell that the birds love him because one of them is pecking him in the eye.
This is Kind David playing his harp to assembled notables. It is a very beautiful painting, but I mostly focused on the woman in the window watching him.
"That is his wife," explained our guide (who was beautiful and owned a pet bunny rabbit called Lucy).
"She looks sad," I said.
"She is very impressed."
"She doesn't look impressed."
"She is VERY impressed."
I'm not convinced.
This is a collection of sadly very blurry pictures of demons in hell. I just love the fact that one section of hell apparently seems to be dedicated to a slightly panicky and high-strung demon perhaps conducting some sort of amateur dramatic recital, and another section is just where a happy demon with a huge ladle cooks you.
Right, okay, this is the story that I THINK this picture is from. There was this horrible man who lived a long time ago, and he was a cannibal. He ate his wife and his children and his friends and his neighbours and his business partners and his enemies and random acquaintances. He ate like NINETY PEOPLE before eventually the people in his district cottoned on to the fact that he was a HIGHLY INDISCREET CANNIBAL, and then they all ran away from him and his life got much hungrier. So he went on the move, travelling around and EATING PEOPLE OH MY GOD. And one day he was walking in a forest, and he came across an old tramp, who was dying of leprosy. This old man was so scabby and flaky and near death that Unbelievably Horrible Cannibal Man didn't want to eat him. He was going to pass on by, but the dying old man begged him for water.
No, said Unbelievably Horrible Cannibal Man, because he was unbelievably horrible.
"In the name of the Virgin Mary, please," said Dying Man. When he heard the Virgin Mary invoked, Unbelievably Horrible Cannibal Man took out his flask and gave the man a single drop of water. Then he went on his way.
Many years and many, many cannibalistic murders later, Unbelievably Horrible Cannibal Man died and went to be judged. He stood before the huge golden throne and watched his life being weighed in a pair of golden scales. In one side went all the people he had killed and eaten, and in the other went the single drop of water that he had once given to a dying man in the name of the Virgin Mary. And the scales were tipped to the side that held the drop of water, and he passed through the gates into Paradise.
Apparently this is supposed to be a beautiful story of redemption and the amazing power of the Virgin Mary. I am pretty sure it is the WORST STORY IN THE WORLD. OH MY FUCKING GOD. O_O
These are the Jesus pictures. I love the Jesus pictures more than anything. I almost guarantee that these are stories about Jesus that you HAVEN'T HEARD BEFORE:
Jesus and his schoolfriends were playing a game, making birds and fishes out of paper. But when Jesus made them, they came to life and flew around. I think this is pretty beautiful.
Here are the holy family fleeing to Egypt from Herod's men. But oh no! The soldiers have caught up with them! Joseph and Mary look terrified. But notice that Jesus looks considerably more calm. The reason for this is revealed in the other half of the picture...:
He has summoned DRAGONS to EAT EVERYONE.
This is Jesus getting a damn good walloping from the Virgin Mary. "Because," as our guide said understatedly, "he is a normal child, like other children."
MY ALL-TIME FAVOURITE. This is Jesus SLIDING OUT OF A WINDOW ON A BEAM OF LIGHT while his schoolfriends lie CRUMPLED IN AN UNCONSCIOUS HEAP ON THE GROUND BELOW. "They are playing a game of sliding... out of window," explained our guide. "But only Jesus has the power of flight."
AS A CHANGE OF PACE, here is a chandelier:
And here is a full-sized cross wearing a pink jersey:
AND THAT CONCLUDES MY MONASTERY PICTURES.