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.

One reason is that I just haven’t managed to keep routines much, something I want to work on. My course, given the frequent times we are away, has an ever changing time table adding to that. Framing my day by writing more and making the time for it seems sensible.

The Headsound group has started working on our next project – a stop motion animation – this last Friday. I will likely experiment some on my own, using my digital camera and will post results here, once in a while. We were discussing stop motion in general and watching some examples as a starting point for discussing where we want to go. I’ve fallen for Jan Švankmajer‘s Stop Motion Animation: The Flat (split in two parts), Food and Dimensions of Dialogue, for example:

Otherwise – life just moves along. I am working on my dissertation, a short paper on behaviour in Mountain terrain and signed up for a Mountain Leader Trainer Course mid February. I’ve also been asked to rework one of the seminars I held last term as a journal article. For now that is on hold – I need to get the rest of my workload out of the way first. This is the interesting part. I have only three weeks left for my Dissertation and basically no data as of now. What is fascinating is that I am not panicking about that. I just don’t. And it is, of course, entirely possible to get that data through interviews and transcriptions within that timeframe as I have managed to write pretty much everything else. This is, however, an immense difference to just about half a year ago, when I panicked about pretty much any task at hand. I have no idea what brought that change along. I am also in contact with Graduate Development hoping to find a bit of a lending hand on where to go from here, working toward finding a job by the end of this term.

What is clear is – I will stay in Liverpool for at least another two years if I can, hoping to raise the money for the M.A. in creative writing I deferred a year and a half ago. I guess also that – in many ways – I am actually for the first time in my life actually “bonding” with a place I live in, in the sense of having a life outside the singular reason (study) I moved there for. I am not sure Liverpool is my dream location – but in the end, any place will do.

(*)If you operate on PAL.

It’s the type of movie that makes you look at the titles of the e-mails caught in your spam mail filter and actually almost find some profound meaning in them, only that it just about escapes you around the next corner. (There’s profanity here, but that comes with the territory.)

Betreff:   ID MSG:74452 You have new mail from Olga

Betreff:   V|a_gr-a 100mg x 10 pills = $ 59.95

Betreff:   Prices cant be lower

Betreff:   Hot blonde gives blowjob and swallow some sperm

Betreff:   Available for you period

Betreff:   Transaction failed

Betreff:   RE: Le logiciel populaire, localise pour le franca…

Betreff:   eliminate credit card debt

Betreff:   Thanks for reading

I remember there’s been one spam mail message that I’d kept around for a while. It was one of those automated ones that had pulled out lines from random webpages to mask itself and trick some of the spam filters out there. What amazed was that it was poetry. But I’ve deleted it a good while back, so no quote here.

Today (my old rule of the day not being over before I go to bed still is valid; I am a couple days younger then my passport says) was a day that somewhat escapes words. It is that feeling I struggle with – of not quite feeling things are real, where I watch myself, where I don’t quite feel I fill my body. Where I am not really “me”. But I’ll start with yesterday.

I’ve discussed my dissertation with my personal tutor – and chances are it will turn towards a critical theory approach; not a prescriptive intervention, not me working as a researcher but a participant in a collaborative research project on Adventure Therapy. Where the group decides what Adventure Therapy is (which, naturally, implies a critical perspective on therapy forms that do exist). Where the group forms the methodology. The problem: I am anxious about pushing this forward. I know I need to, as I need to start producing data. But yes … when trying to formulate all this in words (spoken) it goes down the “it’s all too ridiculous line”. Another day.

Back home – late night – the main fuse went off. It’s only Anne and me here right now, this being reading week, and everyone else (including Gopi. back to India, to attend a relative’s marriage) gone. Anne was already fretting about having to finish an essay on rhododendron and with the power off, being forced to call it quits, was getting wound up about the whole situation. Thing is … the wiring in this house is messed up, somehow, majorly. We don’t have lights on the ground floor (and didn’t have any on the first floor, either, for some time). They’ve been here, trying to fix this frequently, it might work for a while, then some fuse refuses to cooperate. It’s never been the mains, so far, however. We tried getting power back on for a while but gave up eventually and used candles (and early bed time for each soon after).

Today … well, one of the amateur builders (they all seem best buddies with our landlady’s agent) came in, switched the fuse back on, and it stayed in. I had to leave, I don’t know if he actually called an electrician.

But also, today, was a day where I couldn’t communicate (meeting Silé, not being able to express myself well). We both walked over to the Liverpool Mental Health Consortium’s general meeting – one of those conferences that are important but largely pass you by. It might become more meaningful a year down the road, once having more of an insight what the Consortium is actually up to.

Once back home … I needed to just crash down. One of the weirdest realisations really is that you feel you are just a brain stuck in a hard skull, it’s all very cramped, physically feeling how claustrophobic it all is. And yes, that feeling of … a distinct lack of reality as indicated in the first paragraph.

The weird thing is – it’s always books or movies or fiction in general that grounds me. That reaches me in a more real way than reality – my reality, my existence, my being, my being a physical form, me existing in a space, in a sense, in well “here” this “place” – does.

I am still trying to figure out how not being me feels like. If there’s common ground between what me individual feels like and what them (other individuals) being them feels like. I guess that distinct thing I am trying to express here is not a common feeling – but it’s not dissociative, not quite (or not even close) – it’s just a keen sense of observing oneself and how unreal and bizarre the way live just always winds and moves forward is. It’s also based on an incredible amount of confusion.

But well. It’s time to end this day.

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*

I will leave that entry - I started writing it over the last weeks and tried to push it out today – sitting for a while longer, keeping it as a draft. That post that you can’t read yet – well its origin is in seeing Yasmin Alibhai-Brown perform at the Liverpool Royal Philharmonics; two weeks ago (the 16th of May that is). Alex invited me. Yasmin’s performance is autobiographical and – at least I guess – connected to her latest book that is about to be published. However, it touches on so many themes and ideas that – there is so much of a personal connection to it. Beyond that, and that was what I really wanted to write about, it connects to a story I’ve been asked to tell, but never managed to. I have told parts of it, fragments, tentative beginnings, to a variety of people – but, and that goes for most of the things I have experienced in Israel/Palestine – I just somehow lack the words and my fluency, my use of language escapes me when trying. It’s not a happy story – it is one of murder and mistreatment – but it does contain – if I ever manage to express it – at least some humour (I hope).

That is not the only reason for the long silence. Here’s a quick run through of what went on from the previous entry to this one; doing these is part of the purpose of this journal – to be able to glance over these entries and say, boy, you are alive, things happen in your life. I know that might sound incredibly saaad. It is about me living too much in the now – in a way.

So what happened than in what is more then a month now? For once, I finished my exams (which, I think, went well for one of them) handed in three essays and a poster presentation, as well as a presentation on my proposed dissertation. This accounted for a busy two weeks that I just couldn’t write or think about anything else than the tasks at hand.

After that … I lost a whole week and only begin to manage to push myself back out of that hole I vanished in. Two things happened, really, that caused this. For one – I didn’t get the job I mentioned in an earlier post. It was with a different ferry company than I thought it was and I have edited out the name. While I was invited to an interview I had the feeling that a decision had already been made either before I arrived or within moments before starting the interview. That is – it wasn’t really much of an interview, with little questions from their side. I never head anything back from them. Regardless – I don’t think I’d have enjoyed the working climate (nothing tangible I can point to) from a feeling I got just by observing the routines there, while waiting for the person I was scheduled to meet.

The other bit and what really pushed me over the edge – was that the person I had made plans to share house with next year and go house-hunting with (we pushed that back until after the exam period) has left the country already for the summer. She only told me that upon contacting her again last Thursday, explaining (which I think is genuine) that she’d simply forgotten with all else that went on in her life. However, her decision of staying on and continuing to live in the student halls means I am stranded again – and likely forced to move in with random strangers for next term once more. That didn’t work out well, obviously, these first two years here in Liverpool.

Her decision affected me so negatively, because I can point to a variety of points where I’d been (conveniently?) forgotten/ignored or passed over by people I trusted in. [Of course what is true and not, what is just my interpretation and subjective perspective - I can't tell. The point is what it does to my emotional life.] So yes, this hurt. And then I just trailed off in the too well established paths of what – partially – characterises my depression. Needing more sleep than usual and at the same time not being able to fall asleep when I want to and feel tired in the evening; yet, hours later, waking up still feeling tired, never really waking up, that slight drowsy feeling in which days become a haze and just run into one another. Not being able to act, think or keep to the hours that others do, not getting done what I know I should have and want to. And then of course – to keep my mind distracted – going back to gaming. This time it’s been Mount & Blade. I forced myself to uninstall the programme Tuesday evening and since then started with little tasks around the house that are necessary and important.

I am – since this morning – the only one living here, again. I’ve cleaned the kitchen (with Will’s assistance) and started removing all the random bits of trash spread around the house. I’ll put all the refuse bags (and those left behind in the backyard; at least twenty) out for collection tomorrow after writing this. The living room, likewise, is fairly tidy and clean now. As mentioned I still have a month to live here and want to be able to use this house during that time.

I’ve also been at FACT again, yesterday, watching Federico Fellini‘s 1963 movie 8½ as part of the Artist’s Choice (a film that inspired the people behind a current exhibition with a discussion of that movie and the significance for their work afterwards) series. lt had been picked by AL and AL – sadly, however, they weren’t around for a discussion afterwards. Especially with this movie that’d have been incredibly interesting, though. lt is an incredibly personal movie that is definitely a movie asking the audience to work with the material presented: Very little interpretation is provided and its disjointed, sometimes surrealist narration just leaves a lot of space for creating very personal meaning from it. (I’d guess it’s referred to as “post-modernist” … but to me that just illustrates my notion that “post-modernism” in literature/movies/art simply is a form of experimental story telling that has been around for a good long while.) Because of that getting AL and AL’s personal interpretation(s) – and just a discussion with the audience would have been great. As it was … well everyone watched the film and left. [The audience at these artist's choice events is definitely different though - there's a certain respect and concentration on the movies presented [which is often necessary, too] that is consistently lacking elsewhere.]

I’ve also re-watched Ed TV and seen Michael Haneke‘s Code inconnu: Récit incomplet de divers voyages yesterday night. Code Unknown deals with communication and miss-communication, racism (from both the “majority” and the “immigrant” side) and human relations in general. Despite loving the movie and feeling it does a lot right I find it hard to comment on it. That mostly, probably, because of its careful balance. It is a movie that – through its narrative structure – benefits from not knowing too much about it beforehand.

Haneke’s realistic approach is what drives the movie and, I think, makes his statement so much more focused than what Alejandro González Iñárritu managed in the thematically similar Babel. I agree a lot about Haneke’s statements in the accompanying interviews in terms of what makes for good storytelling (challenging the audience intellectually and accepting that a narration only becomes complete with the audience interacting with what is presented [among other points]). He also makes an interesting comment on stating that as a director he feels it is important to make his audience understand – especially with a realist movie – that (whether it is fiction or a documentary) the movie/narration presents a condensed form of reality. In Code Unknown this continuity of the characters life beyond the scenes is established through hard cuts in the middle of dialogue and actions from one scene to the next. That is, what is important for the narration is presented, while the scenes flow over into the next one afterwards.

I think this point of narratives being a more “distilled” and “intense” version of reality is what really makes me enjoy movies and literature as much as I do. I thrive for that emotional intensity, and I guess I am searching for it in my own life as well. I frequently feel detached from reality – that, again, linked to how depression works for me. I think I need a certain intensity of life to feel alive, needing meaningful experiences. Particularly know, this morning, through this haze of not really feeling present … it is some sort of distance and strange perception of the world – as if through a veil and a little hazy, less real.

That of course leads me back to Sylvia Plath and her being identified as an “intense” person – not necessarily through her writing but her diary entries (which I find so much more engaging than her poetry or short stories). I also don’t feel that an “intense” lifestyle is or has to be negative as long as it is a positive creative process. So on that end, writing about things I do and experience, reflecting on them – the purpose of this journal at part – is so important to remind myself that even in routine and everyday life I create something.

That Haneke’s realism is fairly accurate – well, I have just experienced a scene quite similar to one in his movie when taking the bus back home after watching 8½. An older man (white hair and balding) was shouting racist abuse at an Indian looking young man across the isle. I left my bag and jacket on the backseat and moved to the seat behind the Indian man (I couldn’t take a seat next to him) and in a silent moment between tirades told the one shouting that I thought it was time for him to shut up. Of course saying that won’t stop an enraged person, and him identifying me as a foreigner meant that I took the abuse for the rest of the journey isntead. I kept trying to reason with him occasionally, but naturally didn’t get through to him, being too soft-spoken and not able to really scream back at him. The ironic part of this – the man sprouting his hatred had the clearly darker coloure skin of a descendant of immigrants (if not having been an immigrant himself at some point).

I feel I should have acted different though, and here is that magic idealist realism I’d wish for, wishing to be a stronger person. Much of the anger expressed by him centred on why he should  “spread his seed” if it means his children have to fight in wars elsewhere. His attack was indifferent (given the choice of an Indian-looking and me as an European person) of nationality, however, telling us to go back to where we came from and sort out our own problems. While leaving the bus shouting that he’ll follow me home and show me how building a bomb really is done and that he’ll be back. [the Indian-looking man had left earlier and I'd put my hand on his shoulder, establishing eye contact for a second; an apology and guesture of goodwill.] I wonder. I should have asked him – in that ideal world of being able to react well – if he actually lost someone. But as I said, me being me, I never even managed to get through to him in his rage. Someone hit him (and that mirrors that scene in Haneke’s movie I am referring to) when he left the bus. A reaction I don’t feel well about either.

To explain the title of this post – a cat walked past the living room windows while I was watching Code Unknown and stopped, starring at me, through the window, me looking at the television. It stayed there for quite a while.

A short list of things I need to accomplish these coming weeks:

• Complete the assignments I still have to.
• Find somewhere to live, someone to share with. I am completely at a loss here. [Note ... maybe not quite so, we just had an e-mail of someone joining the course for the third year looking for a house-share forwarded to us].
•  Start reading for my dissertation again. I am going back to the basics and looking at counselling theory (I still prefer Jung over Freud).
• Find some job. I don’t know how to go about that, honestly. I don’t really care about what it is as long as the working climate is ok, however. I don’t have much faith in work bank at uni, though – begging for them to do something isn’t mine.
• I still haven’t secured a work-based learning position either and don’t have any idea where to look, too. I already told the respective team and person responsible that are meant to assist us that I need help, but haven’t heard back from neither. Still, it IS, of course, my own responsibility just as finding a job after finishing this course is. The problem is – I don’t feel fit to work in the outdoor industry, don’t feel I’ve gained the skills I really need. Sadly Tom Gee’s criticism of Outdoor Education programmes (here and here) are all too true. Except that after two years I don’t have any Governing Body awards whatsoever. I simply can’t go out there and tell an employer that I am able to work for them. I did however join the Merseyside Mountaineering Club now – but haven’t made it to any of their social get together Thursday afternoon (and possibly some climbing wall practise beforehand) yet, however. For once – I still need to buy the simple equipment (harness, belay plate, carabiners etc.) required for climbing. But I also don’t want to introduce myself and start this on a low … I tend to get panicky about abseiling if I am not feeling well – that combined with how important first impressions are for many – yes, I simply don’t want to start this badly.

Oh and me made quiche [Now possible again in kitchen!]

-C.

]]> http://www.confession-box.org/2008/05/30/the-cat-at-the-window/feed/ 0 http://www.confession-box.org/2008/04/20/chomsky-chomsky-chomsky-chomsky-chomsky-chomsky-chomsky-chomsky-chomsky-chomsky-chomsky-chomsky-mushroom-mushroom/ http://www.confession-box.org/2008/04/20/chomsky-chomsky-chomsky-chomsky-chomsky-chomsky-chomsky-chomsky-chomsky-chomsky-chomsky-chomsky-mushroom-mushroom/#comments Sun, 20 Apr 2008 18:07:30 +0000 C. http://www.confession-box.org/?p=125 I’ve been (with the course) at the Centre for Alternative Technology last Monday. The centre is situated in a quite nice spot in mid Wales and has been founded in 1973 to promote alternative ways of living. They literally started from the ground up, discovering and re-discovering ways of how to insulate and build housing in a sustainable way, create energy etc. The centre can be accessed via a water balanced funicular (the upper cabin’s weight is increased by adding water [no not IN the cabin :p]. It then, as it travels down, pulls the lower cabin up). I liked the centre both for their exhibition and as a place of peacefulness. It was also a confrontation with how much is natural for me, but apparently needs to be taught toward the English public (and sadly even people on my course).

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).

]]> http://www.confession-box.org/2008/04/20/chomsky-chomsky-chomsky-chomsky-chomsky-chomsky-chomsky-chomsky-chomsky-chomsky-chomsky-chomsky-mushroom-mushroom/feed/ 0 http://www.confession-box.org/2008/04/13/10000-years-old-mud/ http://www.confession-box.org/2008/04/13/10000-years-old-mud/#comments Sun, 13 Apr 2008 17:09:07 +0000 C. http://www.confession-box.org/?p=123 Outdoor Activities all over these last two weeks – from visiting the Trough of Bowland (Geological Survey of a Valley) to the Wensleydale / River Twiss Waterfalls (another Geological Survey) to examining the Limestone Bedrocks at Ingleton. And caving (including a cave survey). Caving is good fun. Interestingly it is a not very widespread thing in the UK with only about 60 Caving Instructors in the whole country whereas people with a Mountain Instructor Certificate come in the hundreds if not thousands. Caving also is limited by the expensive insurance – even though, as one of the instructors put it, caving is mostly about people’s perceived fears (darkness, tight spaces) rather then real dangers (or at least less so than in rock climbing/mountaineering). Of course there is a risk of flooding – particularly in UK caves that usually are active (i.e. have water flowing through them at all times). As with any outdoor activity planning ahead, checking weather reports and having an emergency plan can limit these somewhat.

I can’t really say what makes caving enjoyable for me. Part of it is probably discovering a part of the world and the environment that isn’t easily visible. Part of it are those fascinating views one only gets in an underground environment. Walking through a cave and suddenly coming to a spot that has an opening, the walls covered with moss and grasses – life claiming it’s space, a waterfall feeding the channels that cut the caves, and then re-entering darkness. Part of it is the whole sense of awe of the time spans, the geological history of the places one touches. Caves are ancient spaces. Spaces that are beyond human history, that have a sense of eternity in them. It is an environment that changes only very slowly. On the last day caving we spent time in a quite muddy environment – dry mud that partially started to turn into rock – and likely has been deposited in that cave during the last ice age (there are no signs of flooding, whatsoever) 10.000 years ago. And maybe that aspect of having to bend, flex and use all of one’s body makes part of it – wriggling through a tight space for a couple meters, squeezing around corners, using counter-pressure to stay on that rim, with a large drop below – to traverse from one part of the cave to another … I really can’t say. Other then that I enjoyed my time.

I’ve also learnt an interesting tidbit about the way assignments are constructed here at the uni. There are, apparently, regulations that govern how much words an assignment has to have. That is, for example, an assignment carrying 33% equals a maximum of 1000 words. Knowing that helps appreciate the difficulties in constructing tasks for the courses – and, at the same time, makes it easier to accept what sometimes seems like “impossibly” few words for complex topics. I think I always need to understand the reasoning behind things, understand why something is asked of me the way it is. I like transparency.

I also have to state at this point that the lecturers on this course are accepting and understanding of my needs to a point that is exemplary. I will – very likely – need – in one form or another – some extensions on my work. The general consent among the staff is one of – we’ll help you, think you are intelligent enough to do this, and want to provide support. I am more scared and feeling guilty for asking for help than I should be.

Coming home … I stopped counting after the 50th discarded beer can in the living room. The house was clean and tidy when I left (and after Ed had returned) – with all the others around the same problems as usual return. We’d run out of toilet paper. Instead of buying new ones (buying more alcohol always works) they started using newspaper. Will, as ever so often, passed out sometime Saturday afternoon and didn’t return to the living world until midnight (I was watching Oh Brother where art thou on Film4 in an – for once – otherwise empty living room) when I went to bed. I am worried some about him – drinking and diabetes don’t go well together. That he’s being “abandoned” pretty much by his drinking buddies in that state – doesn’t really point toward healthy friendships, I think.

I am looking forward to moving out, hope to find more mature people and – finally – a room with a window that I can actually look out of. (There are some photos after the “more” tag. Warning! Big!)

-C.



This is the lower of the two Limestone Beds we examined. What happened here is that glacial movement removed the cover of the bedrock and then water cut grykes in it (and leaving clints behind).



A view from inside a gryke.



A top down view.



One of those photos that are so cliche Outdoor Ed



River Twiss valley – before the waterfalls section and an obviously artificially straightened river bed. Shows the typical glacial valley form (with subsequent “softening” through weathering/erosion).



Same waterfall as above (there are several) – the lower part of the rocks are Ordovician slates (which have been uplifted and are at a 76 to 78 degree angle now), with Carboniferous limestones (in there original vertical sedimentary position). The Devonian rocks must have been eroded away before the deposition of the limestone – leaving a “gap” in the geolocial timescale (i.e. an Unconformity).



A close up of a third layer of rock between the two, this time a conglomerate, likely remains of glacial deposits. There’ll be some cave photos later – once the files from the waterproof “indestructible” university cameras have been uploaded.

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