Contrast that to the experience of being a postman in Germany, which means management far removed from the actual workers and whose “staff training” consists of telling it’s delivery operative that they are nothing more than glorified advertising dispensers, a largely abusive public and having to meet strict averaged delivery times (1 second per letter, 3 seconds per package plus a blanket travelling time added). These are so tight that, in the depot that I worked at for a while, some of the older postmen physically didn’t manage. The rest of their family helped out, unpaid, unofficially, just so that their spouse/parent met the targets set. In Germany the family name of whoever occupies a house is displayed on the outside in addition to the house numbers. The expectation is that postmen must have memorized the first name of who lives where in their district, but also that they know/remember if some member of a family that used to live in a particular house has moved elsewhere. If you don’t remember, but post a letter, there will be complaints. Here in England houses only have numbers and there’s no indication who lives where; that alone makes the job so much more enjoyable. It is a good transitional job. Which is where I am. Stability. I am not quite sure where I’ll go next, yet.

Today is the last week I am on anti-depressants after a two-year period. Over the last three weeks I have stepped down dossage in agreement with my GP. I have graduated from my BsC in Outdoor and Environmental Education degree with a first (but will miss the graduation cermony as I am in Sweden at that time) and am half-way through my MA in Writing. The first feels like the biggest achievement among the three. I’d like something big to happen next, somehow.

What is the purpose of an online journal? I am not really sure. This one turned out to be a form of public diary. I don’t keep any note of the things I don’t want to share though, so these are all the (sporadic) notes on my life I do keep. Keeping a diary is, I guess, a lot about the implied promise of being able to turn back pages somewhere at a non-descript future moment in time looking back and rediscovering what one had forgotten. Excuse me while I sum up some recent and not so recent events. Right now Iceland is shutting down modern transportation for the second time this year, as volcanic ash-clouds endanger fragile air-plane turbines. The biggest recession since the 1930′s has arrived in the UK, but no-one really seems to give a damn; some traditional shops that were part of “British culture died”, but live goes on. There’s been one of the wettest and one of the coldest periods in England since weather records began. Cue this amazing satellite image that made it’s rounds. I am listening to PJ Harvey’s The Whores Hustle and the Hustler’s Whore, not through my headphones for a change, but through the computer speakers that my mother gave me on an extended loan and that are, mainly, usually, in the lounge for our frequent film nights.

We can’t decide on films most of the time. We use a roundabout method instead. There’s a pile of about 30 DVD’s in the lounge, with a tupper-ware style small plastic container on top containing an adequate amount of paper cut into roughly equal squares with numbers written on them then folded over. Our own random-number generator. With smaller decisions (like – do we have Pizza today or not? Who’s first to put up washing?) a simple coin flip is enough. We is P., my flat mate, and me. P.’s an Outdoor Ed. Student, in his last year. And, incidentally, a postman, too. I feel like having some vanilla icecream.

The apartment. I’ve meant to introduce it months ago. We are in the middle of the town. There’s a photo of the view from my desk below. We are living among seagulls¹. Quite frequently one of them lands on the windowsill infront of my window. They don’t seem to be overly aware of their surroundings when landing. Only after their landing do they look up, see me, hesitate for a moment startled((These are massive birds. Their wings span extends beyond the width of my window.)) and flying off again. Just as frequently one or the other is (not very happily?) pecking at one of the cut out cardboard fishes we stuck to the lounge window (aka our aquarium). Other notable happenings include another completed headsound project. The first was an exploration of Liverpool through sound, the second a stop-motion animation (this is a rough and incomplete cut) and the third a VJing/DJing performance where we plugged in and used as many devices as we could [two laptops, a portable play station, a wii-mote, a set of digital-turntables, a light-board and a smoke machine]. We weren’t actually allowed to use the smoke-machine within FACT and set off the fire alarm during practise. There’s a fourth project in the plans for this summer.

And the rest, as they say, are photos.

View from my desk

Spraypainting Fishes for a Liverpool Studen Amnesty protest agains Shell

Justin and Julie

Well hello there! (A mannequin in some clothing shop in Liverpool.)

. It's a tie.

1. Cue P.J. Harvey’s Seagulls track on her Uh Huh Her album.

And Liverpool – for me – comes alive not through its architecture, but its people. An openness and acceptance of just being, just as you are, that I find unique among the cities I lived in. So this is what I’ll focus on here, a few select encounters, all recent, that stuck to memory. I’ve had these experiences of people sharing a lot about their lives to me, as a stranger, at times in the past, but it happens more often and more consistent here. I may be asking for it, of course, making a point of looking at people and making eye-contact while walking through town, but still. These being from memory by definition means they are inaccurate.

It is around 8:50 in the morning. No rain, but partially cloudy. I am on my way to work. I’m also in the middle of moving. My parents are over, visiting, primarily and officially to bring my new passport and ID card. I’d travelled to Germany late June to fill out the paperwork required to renew these, and returned using a temporary passport. I am carrying all my music instruments, planning to drop them at the apartment this afternoon. My train leaves at Edge Hill, now a tiny train stations with either an energetic and friendly employee or, in the evening, a lethargic, grumpy one, with dark rings under his eyes, on duty. It used to be one of the major stations in Liverpool, before that last hillside was cut through to the centre of the town, allowing for Lime Street Station to take over. When I enter the station building the more energetic of the two was in a discussion with a man (carrying two plastic bags) who’d just missed his train. The customer trailed off, I got my tickets, went out to the tracks, rounding the back of the station building to catch the train toward Warrington, which would drop me off at Broad Green.

Plastic-bag man eventually made his way over, asking about all the music instruments I was carrying. He thought that electric guitars have a nicer sound then acoustics. Asked if I am in a band. Then told me that he’d walked all the way from Wavertree (I didn’t ask why, there’s a train station close-by there) to Edge Hill, and just about missed his train. That he could see it depart. And that he’d wanted to kill himself by standing on the train tracks a few days ago. That he was staying with two women, but loved another, whom he was on the way to, but who had thrown him out not long ago. As far as I’d gathered they are back together. He also told me that he couldn’t sleep, and that’s the reason he wanted to die, seeking reaffirmation that it really is the best thing to just go to the doctor. He told me that they were taking his clothes at night, locking them away, so that he wouldn’t dare going outside, naked. My train arrived, eventually, and we said goodbyes. He told me to join a band. And that he’d be on the look out to see me on TV, should I become a famous musician (I never told him I am not really aiming to make music professionally, or, really, consider myself a musician. He didn’t ask.). He walked back to the bench, sitting down, waiting patiently for the next train, that would take him back to life, I hope.

This time it’s sunny. Bright light, few clouds. I don’t remember what exactly I’d come to town for, that day, but it wasn’t anything urgent. This was before the episode above. Maybe two weeks earlier, maybe more. I’ve passed the bus stands in front of St. John’s just about to walk down the steps in the middle of town, close to the BBC’s big TV screen. A woman stops me, as I am just about to pass her. Middle-aged, stepping out of a crowd of people, with a man of indiscernible age, his head shaven, obviously belonging to her, struggling to keep up. “Hi. Do you know where one can find an adult shop here?” I don’t, really. I send them to Bold Street area, suggesting they might find some there, or that at least someone might know around that area. I’d never been on the lookout for shops like these, since I’ve moved here. Now, of course, the way my mind works, weeks after, I notice how many there are, and in how many different places. There actually are a few not that far off of Bold Street.

K. needs a favour. Someone stole her passport and credit card in Athens. She never changed her address with the bank. So I am off to see if someone in that house I lived in, temporarily, for those two weeks waiting for my apartment to be ready, is in. No-one is. I am to ask the people in that student house to hold onto any letters for her. She used to live there, for a while, too. I sit down on the porch to write a note for them. A black man walks past, stops, and asks me where he has seen me before. I don’t really know, but I don’t really negate that I might have met him somewhere before, either. I am no good with faces, not quite as bad as with names, but I tend to pass people I should know, easily. He tells me he has been in jail, that one learns to remember faces whilst there. He sits down on what is the wall that used to fence in the front-garden. He tells me he’s hit hard times. He’s been released from prison not long ago. They put an electronic tag on him. He lifts his trouser’s leg to show me. People treat him badly. Distrust him. He ain’t ever asked for anything. His loneliness, his desperation of not being able to get a sure footing seeps out. Of well – being treated with disdain. The police gave him a house to live in after prison. He ain’t ever asked for anything. Six years he’s been in. He’d had a girlfriend, been faithful to her, cared for her. She is with someone else. Has been already while he was in prison. That broke his heart. A police car comes round the corner, passes by. (I’d guess they are able to track these electronic tags, right?). He watches them pass. He ain’t ever asked for anything. He tells me that he has to be home by seven, or that there’ll be problems. That he hadn’t had anything to eat today, nor a cigarette. He asks if I smoke, watching the police car all the time, noting it had slowed down, turned into a side street. I think they’ll come back to look at me, he says, they do. He says he remembers the riots in the 80s. Everyone screaming murder, including the Police. How his brother was beaten up. His brother has a scar all the way down his head. He ain’t ever asked for anything. There might be jobs on the weekend, but during the week, no-one needs him. I give him the two pounds he’s been waiting for. I get a promise that he’ll pay me back, once he has money. Tells me that he’s often walking along this street. I don’t care if he lied or not, he was genuine enough. I haven’t a lot of reasons to be in that area of town often, but who knows. He may really do remember faces well and I might meet him – somewhere – once more.

The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people’s reality, and eventually in one’s own.

- Susan Sontag

My tele lens died. Well – at least I have the feeling it is beyond fixing now. I managed to repair the shutter when it collapsed a while back, but this is more serious. The problem is I can’t check – I haven’t found a way to access the part of the lens that I’d need to look at. Without knowing how it is constructed I’d describe it as it having broken apart – the focus ring at the back no longer moves the front part. Rather – the two have become seperate. But this is no good description and I can’t offer a better one. But I think I got one last good use out of it. All, but one, of the lenses I have have do not have modern features like auto-focus and the like. It became a bit of an extra challenge getting things in focus as the tele was already begining to fail, badly. That is I had to press the lens backwards to get it to focus (ouch, nose), and even that only worked occasionally. I am rather happy with the results, however.

On Saturday a set of free concerts in the Docks started, focusing on African Music. Liverpool-based Zimbabwan ‘Hohodza Band‘, ‘Groupe Lolou’ from Senegal and ‘Oumou Sangaré‘ (Mali). Here some photos in no particular order; more can be found in the gallery:

Also: I have a deadline to move out of the apartment I am in, now. The next tenant needs to be out of his old apartment by the 17th. I agreed to try to find a new place by then, but – given that the landlady has another house in the same street – I could temporarily stay there until the end of August (when my contract for this apartment officially runs out) if necessary. I am fine with that. Not least given I might need my current landlady to provide a “reference” for anything I’d rent through an agency.

I handed in my dissertation

And yeah, there was something I wanted to say.

...

Never mind.

Also – up & down mountains loads, micro & night navigation, river crossings, emergency procedures, steep ground², rope work, an overnight camping trip to Sprinkling Tarn (frozen at the time), pointless evening lectures, and many, many stories about Landrovers from my room mate³. Apart from that – my evenings filled with working on my dissertation. I ended up bringing three backpacks to carry all books.

Back home and off to Ambleside with the three that participate in my Adventure Therapy research/dissertation the day after. It was a good day, I think, and I felt – at the time – that it was quite successful. I’d left late though, we missed the first train, but had wonderful weather once there.

I spent a day at home, last Sunday. Then off to Wales for “Mountain Experience Days and Assessment” through uni. The last time to stay at Charmoix Mountain Centre with the course. None of the University Lectures actually could be present, leaving those students that already have gained Mountain Leader Assessed (or more) status to run these days (as members of staff).

Two of the LJMU students were going for their Walking Group Leader assessment, however, and I joined that group (of five total) under Phil George‘s supervision. Marshlands. Welsh wild horses (one dead). More micro navigation. The remnants of local shooting practice (wooden planks, aluminium cans and assorted other material partially pullverized by bullet holes) … and more Landrover stories⁴. I am glad to have had the chance to meet Phil again before the end of the course – he remembered me from back in year one. Phil – and his identical twin Al [suffering from cancer] – is one of the legends of English Mountaineering. Now in their fifties the two left the UK for Italy aged 16, became Alpine Mountain Guides by 21 and completed many first ascends of routes in the UK.

Mostly though – he is one of these awesome personalities that are rare to come by. Highly intelligent, yet humble, full of stories, little facts and knowledge – but always keen to get to know more about the world and the people around him.

1. Unless you paid a fee.
2. Still my main problem – I am less anxious than I used to be though
3. One of the few topics that really excite him
4. He didn’t like the pink one we ran into.

Elsewhere …

I’ve received an extension on my dissertation until March 2nd. It’ll still be tight to finish in time – it’s quite hard to co-ordinate four different people all on a different full-time course. And … well – as dissertations probably always go – it all seems incredibly mundane and not particularly useful while working on it. I’ve also got a transcript of my grades through the mail. It makes for a somewhat interesting read. My mean marks for level one and two where both at around 55%. Level 3 (up to the end of last term) is on a 71% level so far. Given it counts 3/4 for the final mark … I increased my degree classification to 67.1%. I.e. I am on a good path with room for growth. I am not that sure I can keep this up though – the whole dissertation mess up will mean I’ll be pressed for time with other assignments coming up in March. And I’ll not score high on the practicals, as in any of the previous years. Hm … .

I am off to the Lake District from this Saturday on for my Mountain Leadership Training (private arrangment, not part of Uni course), then off for a three day assessment on my Mountaineering skills with uni. Which means I’ll have to work on my dissertation in the evenings.

And meanwhile …

I’ve attended a staff training for my Student Learning Mentor post – “Magic Spelling” – which is basically a NLP approach to assist people in memorizing correct spellings of words. The fun bit … you’ll have to do a bit of “calibrating” by firing of questions and observing the person(s) eye movement for some clues on how their brain works. It’s not unlike the Voigt-Kampff test in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep / Blade Runner.

Also … I love The eels.. The world needs more of them.

there’s a world outside
and i know ’cause i’ve heard talk
in my sweetest dream
i would go out for a walk

but i don’t think i’m ready yet
i’m not feeling up to it now
just not that steady yet
and i don’t need you telling me how

there’s some happiness
and my stone face cracks again
maybe sometime sooner or later

but i don’t think i’m ready yet
i’m not feeling up to it now
just not that steady yet
and i don’t need you telling me how

so if i leave my room
don’t you tell me to lighten up
maybe sometime sooner or later

but i don’t think i’m ready yet
i’m not feeling up to it now
just not that steady yet
and i don’t need you telling me how

I already forgot many of those that I wanted to note down somewhere – no blog nearby, no time, whatever. Some stuck to mind though … and given I spend a good bit of time on busses, that’s the main focus right now.

#1: Not uncommon is the on the job chat. Not with a passenger, but a friend that happens to pass. The bus coming to a sharp stop, and a 10 minute discussion between driver and passer-by through the open door, while the passengers stoicly wait. No-one’s complained yet.

#2: Or that busdriver that reads a book while working … a few lines every red light (and a sip of tea). He’s bearded, wears glasses. Enjoys thrillers.

#3: The magic all day ticket that passes from passenger to passenger. Day-passes are valid an unlimited amount until midnight of the day of purchase, and, if you do more than three bus trips, cheaper than individual tickets. So frequently people just pass them on once they are done, and a single ticket transports many, many different people as it (I’d guess) is passed on from person to person, wherever the last person using it alights. I just got one of these (it was bought at 10:04 in the morning, it reached me by 21:03) today. From a complete stranger I’ll never meet again, as usual.

#4: I’ve mentioned pedestrian area musicians before. Nothing says Liverpool as the drummer and guitarist playing decently “hard” metal at a central spot of the shopping area. During christmas shopping time, with candy-cotton music oozing out of anything even remotely commercial. In the middle of a stressed out over-crowded shopping frenzy. Plus – they drew an audience!

#5:

Midnight, mid-January

——————————————————————————————————

I am late with my dissertation. So late, in fact that I won’t make the deadline. I am in the middle of crunching out interviews and transcribing, still. I am getting somewhere, though … and there are nice results up to this point. I’ll meet my tutor Monday. Let’s see what happens.

But because of that all leisure activities are off. I missed a Merchant of Venice performance by Propeller (an all male Shakespeare company) that I’d bought a ticket for (I’ve been told it was great, too ) – and skipped today’s Headsound session at FACT, too.

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.

Joshua had to be put to rest early last week after discovering that he’d developed cancer (that had spread from liver to lungs). This is the first time I mention him here, mainly because I posted so little over the last year; he’d become a quite important part of my life for the short time I’d known him. I’d spent New Year over at Alex place, as my landlady finally got someone to rewire the house and fix electricity; there was no power here for a few days. Add to this that my dissertation refused to be written and gave me a hard time – I needed to get away from sitting at home alone. He’d been part of the audio recordings I did as part of the Headsound project at FACT – providing “dog noises” mixed in, here and there.

Josh had been sick for a while, unable to keep food down, losing weight. We ended up staying in on New Year’s eve to not risk exposing him to the freezing conditions and brought him to the vet the day after. They thought it was just a virus, initially. So this is for a dog that kept his playful nature even when terminally ill. That – as most animals – just been there and kept others well. Those last few nights he swapped between Alex’ and the guest room I was using, sleeping on the footend of our beds – a few hours here, then there.

I am glad I had the privilege of having him in my life and be allowed to share some time.

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.

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