I don’t know. I am not motivated — the topic feels superflous. I know the general answers, but will have to fill it out with details and find actual examples & references. The usual scientific drag. And I am still listening to the eels. But I also want to finally work through my backlog of photos. I haven’t really shared any I took in Liverpool these last two and a half years with anyone. I want to pick up my writing again. It’s just … not quite there yet, and I need my blanket more often.

Thursday: A fieldtrip to a waste water plant close-by. As ever so often I am surprised by the contrast between studying Outdoor Education and the leather-seated way too posh coaches we are put in at times. We were booked in for an hour long tour, but ended up spending two hours there.

Saturday: A visit to the tate. This was with Headspace but only K. turned up. Some of William Blake’s paintings and drawings on display. As with anything about him these are focused on christian motives, exploring spirituality and — no matter what you think about these topics — very well crafted. Particularly the way background and foreground work together, his obvious keen sense of human faces and expressions. My favourites, however, are an incredible goofy Cerberus and that fascinating creature in The Six-Footed Serpent Attacking Agnolo Brunelleschi².

Illustrations by William Blake

Walking back home on my own I passed The Olive Tree, one of those general esoteric and spirituality shops that smell of holyness and that everyone (including employees) whispers in. I walked in because they had Moroccan cooking books on sale (and picked one up eventually). A good ethnic cooking book is more than just recipies but also an exploration of a different country — and this one is a particularly nice example. I’d walked in wearing my headphones, smiled briefly at the person on duty, and turned them off just in the (unlikely) case they might leak sound and upset. Not eels. Artery³ Now … if I’d only lose my anxieties about cooking in shared housing. I dislike having people watch, especially when trying new things. Which means I stick to simple, quick and what I know.

1. That is — I’ve looked for some articles yesterday night. Past midnight.
2. Image slightly enlarged. And blurry, thus
3. Bulgarian-Dutch Balkan Underground Folk Metal. Try Rubber Moon, Take it from me, Control and Electricity for the whole width of their sound and please (mostly) ignore the lyrics.

I do need to take up blogging again though – or just keeping a journal in general. As all the time before journaling helps with keeping track of what I do, reminding myself that I am actually moving forward and helps sorting my thoughts. Sadly … that’s quite important just for my day to day functioning, once more. (And for what it’s worth this made me give a trial run to Windows Live Writer which seems to be a quite nice tool so far.)

That is – while I am doing better than a year ago things are still sluggish, I struggle to keep up my motivation and (seasonal related?) I am certainly less able to do some of the things I have to or should do. For example, I tried joining Batala, a local drumming band (see photo / video). Panic attack during the first band practice killed that off – I haven’t been back since. Which is of course the worst way to deal with this, but is mostly due to having a lot of other things going on in my life at the time. Now that those are out of the way I probably should be looking at trying again. Or, well, focus on making it to one of the meetings of the local Mountaineering club (that I joined last June, but never participated in). Or just working on that slightly underlying panic that is just there in the background most of the days, hiding in my room at times, despite living with much more likeable people then last year. I can’t place this anxiety. It’s just there at times and usually in the mornings. I guess this might be a backlash from last years shared housing or similar.

Here’s a quick rundown of this years crew (as names will likely appear in posts later on):

Anne, German, just moved to Liverpool. One of those that fell through the German education system and has been “selected out”. She doesn’t have the qualifications to go to uni in Germany. Will study Environmental Sciences. Lived in Mozambique and Portugal (and speaks some Portuguese). Connor — Irish … seems to be a typical student, really — studies economy & politics, but hardly ever seems to be around, or just in background if he is. Well except when you can hear him sing Irish folk songs. Karina — Russian born doctorate (medicine) student, whose family moved to Israel when quite young and eventually to England. She talks loads. And I mean loads loads. Alex (more later) happens to be her friend as well and — despite being good friends with her — “can’t deal with more than half an hour Karina”. Finally there’s Gopi from  India who only moved in a couple weeks ago.

Despite all this … . Headspace is continuing to move forward, I’ve done a number presentations to a variety of people about it, been on the radio, whatever. Chances are that some members of the National Institute for Adult Continuing Learning (NIACE) will knock on the NUS door and suggest groups like Headspace to be established at student unions nation wide. I am trying to link Headspace in with other university services like the Graduate Development Programme. There’s also a chance that a research sub-group will form, looking at student mental health, with the aim to film a documentary, eventually. I just finished working on an Audio Installation with some of the FACT artists in residence that will get an exhibition sometime in December (and will likely work on a video installation next) so I am using connections I’ve built on that end.

Here are two recordings that did not make it into my soundpiece, but that I was quite happy with:

#1 – Walking past a Dylan cover singer in the city centre and keeping recording while passing an African musician … it’s the transition effect I aimed for. *Click*

#2 – One of these odd things just happening. Guitar player in city centre standing next to a small drum kit, his colleague somewhere else. A man (white hair/semi-bald, a cigar in his mouth) walks up, talks to the one on guitar for a while, sits down and starts playing, eventually says thank you and walks off again. It takes a while to get going. *Click*

Things like toilets that provide facilities to only half-flush, recycling systems, composting, reducing carbon footprint by bicycling/using train, etc.. I won’t say these are givens in Germany or Sweden but it is more of a normality to simply do them, without having to think about it, then it is the case here. Particularly the notion that “cars are still the best way to get around” and that the suggested alternatives are “ridiculous” coming from some of the other course members annoy me. I’d really hoped that a course on “Outdoor and Environmental Education” would draw a more environmentally aware crowd.

They also have a bookshop and given their orientation I just couldn’t walk past it. I picked up David Edwards’ Free to be Human: Intellectual Self-Defence in an Age of Illusions, E.F. Schumacher’s small is beautiful: a study of economics as if people mattered and James Lovelock’s Gaia: The practical science of planetary medicine (which was on sale). That means I am dipping into my savings this month, again … or rather I exchanged some of the Euros I still have for pounds to allow me to go through the rest of the month.

On the way back I started reading some in Free to be Human and sadly one of the criticisms offered in one of the reviews on amazon seems to be quite descriptive:

“Too often the book proceeds by personal declaration rather than from the basis of concrete examples, facts or research. This is compounded by a rather polarised viewpoint in which the affairs of the world are seen as either good or evil, black or white.”

The introduction of the third edition I have starts out with comparing our societies and political realities with The Truman Show: A make-believe world and construct that is artificially created, where the only real person is the one born into the movie set, not knowing any other reality. From there on the first Chapter begins by summing up Chomsky and Herman’s Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media — which I read years ago while living in Sweden.

Chomsky and Herman’s book uses a relatively neutral language and highlights what, why and how this unbalanced picture of news comes into existence without commenting much outside their factual observations. In contrast Edwards employs a moralising and aggressive manner of speech that weakens his argument and doesn’t do a lot of justice to the careful language of the original argument.

What got me though are his attacks against Psychotherapy:

“Most psychotherapists (apart from isolated radicals like Erich Fromm, R.D. Laing and James Hillman) have approached this modern problem by attempting to alleviate symptoms of dis-ease on the basis of the Freudian hypothesis, suggesting that neurosis is primarily (if not always) a result of sexual repression. More recently, therapists have emphasised the need to re-live repressed childhood trauma, so relieving the symptoms of the repression that is their cause. Rarely have psychotherapists sought the cause of neurosis in the economic and political system within which we live.” (page 45)

“[C]learly any system concerned with alteration of the personality that assumes as its premise that the requirements of society define the norm of sanity into which the personality should be fitted, is little more than a system of brainwashing.” (pages 45–46)

“The irrationality of trying to make a human being sane by emphasising his or her childhood and sexual experiences while largely excluding the impact of the requirements of the economic and political system has, apparently, only recently begun to strike a minority of psychotherapists.” (page 46)

What irks me is that he criticises something without really seeming to have an experience or knowledge about current practise. That is — I feel he’s attacking some form of urban myth about what happens in psychotherapy. Freud stopped being a model quite a while ago from all I know. But also — the way he puts things to me feels like downplaying how crippling mental health distress is. If I am not able to function in a way that makes me able to engage with society — critically or not — at all, then yes, the only positive consequence is to assist in helping to move toward less anxious and more “normal” behaviour. That is not saying that the current promoted lifestyle has problems and that yes, there might be a link to mental health — but counselling/therapy can not change the political landscape to accommodate people with a mental health problem. It can work with people and assist them to be more able to have a functioning life though.

I guess the point is — I am disappointed because the aim of the book “Intellectual Self-Defence in an Age of Illusion” suggests to me an attempt to move toward something positive — how his aggressive and attacking tone will help is beyond me. The sad part is — a good number of the topics he raises are important and important to discuss, look and point at. Only that he’s standing in his own way. On the other hand, I haven’t even finished the first chapter and will at least try to give him a chance.

In one of those funny coincidences I also happened to read an article by Paul Stolz (The Power to Change Through the Change to Power: Narrative Therapy, Power and the Wilderness enhanced Model, published in the Australian Journal of Outdoor Education, Volume Four, 2000) on the way to the centre. Stolz uses The Truman Show (!) as an example for “power and knowledge that serves to construct the reality in which one lives”. That is, he is pointing to exactly the problem that Edwards attacks (see above). However, Stolz, as a therapist, approaches a constructive not destructive perspective as a base of Narrative Therapy:

“As a therapist my discourses will be often completely different to those of the adolescent. My values and beliefs about family, gender, race, education, drug use etc. are coloured by the discourses that I have engaged in and have acted on me over a long period of time. […] In understanding this within myself it opens up the possibility of acknowledging multiple realities, multiple perceptions and multiple constructions which opens the space for new and different possibilities.”

I’ve had my last counselling session this Friday. As said earlier and elsewhere things are good. My “CORE” score dropped massively since last October and while I am not at the level of what is considered “normal” I am not far off, either. Met next year’s house-mate B. whom I’ll be hunting for houses with as soon as possible (Ehlo!). We’d still need a third one to catch somewhat cheaper house prices (and have more choice as to where to live) but let’s see. Also taken some pictures at CAT … some behind the cutoff below. Finished the registration forms for Headspace. Next thing to manage: 5 exams and a seminar in a row (and then another exam a bit further down the road). Oh and … if “Cellar Door” is the most beautiful word in English then “Mushroom” must be in the top ten.

–C.

I just love the Welsh word for Microwave! I still hope to pick up another language sometime … Esperanto, at least on the basic level, still seems a fair bet.

My attempt at doing a Kinga Freespirit (one of my idols) like self-portrait from memory. It’s nowhere close, but hey, features the green water bottle I always carry (it’s the third one, actually, the rest having been lost somewhere)!

A public phone booth at CAT.

One of the exhibitions at the centre. This one explaining issues around public transport (on signs along the path).

Random motive saying winter is over (#234123450123).

Now the interesting thing - I didn’t know they were able to turn their legs upward quite a way. That happened when I stroked its back with my finger [They, as most animals, tolerate that if one is just careful and gentle enough. Their “hair” does feel like hair]. Both front legs went up bracing against my finger — sort of like .. /o that (.. = other legs going down, / = leg going up, o = head).

It flew off eventually — after cleaning itself — vanishing over the roofs of the houses that line this street.

What is it with dog owners always misinterpreting what I do when I approach their dog, by the way? I usually start communicating with them (dogs, not owners) early — there’s eye contact for once — and I extend my hand/arm towards them, slightly, which gives them a chance to take up scent — an important sensual impression for them after all. It’s like saying ‘hello’ or shaking someone’s hand. Most dog owners interpret that as me trying to keep dog at distance/being afraid of it. “It’s friendly really! It likes human’s, just not other dogs.” I know that already. Dogs can read our faces — we can read theirs too … if one pays attention.

I’ve meant to put some links of “noteworthy” things I came across in here, since days, and say something about each — but I didn’t manage. So — quite simply, without much comments:

Afuganisu-tan (click next) — Japanese Manga about Afghanistan that isn’t only adorable but also manages to be quite educational — plus the story behind its publication (as seen on wikipedia) is quite interesting, too.

An American pensioner is building stonehenge. Without using modern machinery. Meanwhile the first excavation in 40 years is underway at the real Stonehenge.

Tutara’s (one of the oldest reptile species alive) are “evolving” (as in showing more DNA changes) faster than most mammals … but refuse to change.

A number of inventions are “unleashed” in Africa (Pull Cord Power-Generator, A Merry-Go Round Water Pump and Hippo Rollers to transport water) all of which illustrate that doing good isn’t a simple case of “black and white” morality (see respective comments on TreeHugger.com).

Finally — the name for the mental health group at uni has been decided, preliminary. So our mission statement looks like this:

“Headspace is a safe place for any student who has personal experience of emotional distress. We offer a friendly and welcoming place — to be yourself and become part of a social, open, confidential, equal and non-judgmental group. As the group itself decides on activities our weekly meetings are what you make them. So whether you just want to drink tea (or coffee) and have a chat, watch a movie or participate in (almost) any other activity you can think of — come along. You can also join our Facebook group online to ease you in.

Despite the focus on well being and group activities we also aim to provide opportunities for Raising Awareness and education, lobbying and positive campaigning — both within the university and toward the general public and health services.”

[I quite liked “Fun-Da-Mental” and “Positively Mental” — but as the group specifically also welcomes those with neurologic conditions we avoided the word “Mental” in the end.]

–C.