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.

I’ve seconded (more) and lead (less) a few climbs during these three days – and it worked well, at first: No trace of anxieties that hindered me on previous outings and generally just having a good time. I know the basics well enough, by now, can place (protective) gear, construct anchors/belays … even if it’s a little slow and clumsy at times. I still feel that I want to do more of this, that being out there, having those experiences is … well what I search for in life. That by and large Outdoor activities are my thing. I was having fun. But then.

Third day was a visit to Holyhead mountain. This is a sea-cliff like mountain close to the ocean, that requires one to walk up a steep scree slope to the base of the rock face where the climbing routes begin. It looks a little like a minutre version of Ayer’s Rock in as much as it rises out of flat ground surrounding it, quite suddenly. And then … hello darkness my old friend²: Anxiety. Started up on the scree slope where my imagination ran away with me. It wasn’t any more dangerous or difficult or complicated than ground I’ve covered in the past. Even the routes ahead weren’t more difficult than what I’d done the days before, just more exposed. Being afraid of the scree under my feet suddenly slipping away, or me slipping not finding the ground. Possible, yes, probable not very. And even if: Heather with it’s strong roots covering the ground, loads of bolders, things to grab in case. Anxiety persisted. I didn’t climb that day. Needed to tie myself in just to belay at the ground of the climb. And (remember this is part of the assessment days) the suggestion by Duncan (the lecturer with the small group of four that day) that I descend back to a ledge and call it a day.

And – as so often that coldness that comes with that, a chill down to the bones, where no amount of sunlight is warm enough. But then. It was a glorious day and it is an amazing place. I rested on that ledge, high enough to see the ocean curve on the horizon, no cloud, blue sky (a first hint of tanned skin, now days later). I built a minature stone circle on that ledge that was eventually crushed by a rope from the sky. I’d wished I’d packed my camera, which I had considered while packing, but didn’t in the end.

It was in that moment’s flight between the picture and the canvas that the demons set on her who often brought her to the verge of tears and made this passage from conception to work as dreadful as any down a dark passage for a child. Such she often felt herself – struggling against terrific odds to maintain her courage; to say: “But this is what I see; this is what I see,” [...] “It suddenly get’s cold. The sun seems to give less heat,” she said, looking about her, for it was bright enough, the grass still a soft dreep green, the house starred in its greenery with purple passion flowers, and rooks dropping cool cries from the high blue.”

-Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

Foghorns in the distance, as mist was over the ocean and this is a shipping lane, including those high-speed ferries crossing from Ireland to Wales and England. There were dolphins playing out in the ocean. And later in the day six sea-kayaks, quite likely other OEE students as they were supposed to be out there that day. There are sea cliffs in that area, which rank among the most scenic but also most difficult climbs in the UK – as the tide comes in you can’t escape other than climbing all the way. These cliffs are closed for climbers during the summer as they are the nesting place of some 10.000 birds or so. And then, there’s what I imagine Virginia Woolf’s Lighthouse to look like. I doesn’t require a boat – there’s a bridge, but still:

If she finished it tonight, if they did go to the Lighthouse after all, it was to be given to the Lighthouse keeper for his little boy, who was threatened with a tuberculous hip; together with a pile of old magazines, and some tobacco, indeed, whatever she could find lying about, not really wanted, but only littering the room, to give those poor fellows, who must be bored to death sitting all day with nothing to do but polish the lamp and trim the wick and rake about on their scrap of garden, something to amuse them. For how would you like to be shut up for a whole month at a time, and possibly more in stormy weather, upon a rock the size of a tennis lawn? she would ask [...]

-Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

Mind you – it is a beautiful place, but that’s the first description of the lighthouse I came across browsing the pages. I will have to use other’s photos instead of mine for illustration, below³. I’ve scrapped just below the passing mark for the assessment (35%) based on my climbing the first two days. It’s only part of the module mark and I can compensate that. But the point is … as I said in the review discussion later, what I need is people to go climbing with, but it’s so hard to find people that I don’t hold back, on those days I can’t, but that choose to climb to a level that’s challenging as well. I hope it’ll fix itself some day.

South Stack Lighthouse

South Stack Lighthouse & Sea Cliffs

Holyhead Mountain

And that was the last big field trip with the course I’ll be part of. No-one, unlike those other days, felt like returning home. We usually just focused on going back quickly, everyone yearning for their home after a week or so out. No … it was a holiday like feeling these days, for everyone, I think. I’ll miss them days.

1. in translation – Species of Spaces and Other Pieces
2. I was nicknamed “the sound of silence” back in high school.
3. Click on them to go to the source pages

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 handed in my dissertation

And yeah, there was something I wanted to say.

...

Never mind.

And I need to hand in the “open” Mountaineering paper that ate away my time these last few days. And of course I want to yield to my own self-promise of using this journal to get some routine in my life. An entry a day or every other. The Problem: these assignments always take on a life of their own and I end up leaving home at eight in the morning and only return back home a few minutes to midnight.

I am tired of this.

Down the river, saw you drown.

But what keeps me awake now are these:

Sennheiser HD 280 pro

Wanted good headphones since a while – as I have been using the cheap library ones to get rid of of the noisy atmosphere. And well, working on soundrecordings at FACT gave me a lot of time with headphones of decent quality on. These don’t look nice. But that’s fine. They grip tight. The first hour was actually painful. Now that they made friends with my head and lost their initial factory inflexibility …… they be wonderful and comfortable. And they keep the noise out. Meaning lower volume required to listen (around -32 db is good).

Did you know that there’s a small voice track mixed into Propellerhead’s History Repeating? “Can you hear this?”

You know it really is amazing.

I’ve finished the first mandatory part of the World-Of-Work twiddlefaddlemuck at uni. Let’s say I am carefully optimistic that some parts of that may actually prove useful. However. Myers-Briggs. Psychometric Analytics! Onehundredeleven rolleyes.

We could sing the Pope to sleep
(…)
would he take up too much room?
would he hog the blankets, too?

Good night.

Here’s a list of side effects
Practice tested
Covering every malice angle
For example you will sleep forever

I’ve frequently said that good horror is not about bloodshed, or shock effect, but that good horror suggests a deeper kind of scare – an intellectual one, a question about our humanity, or our society, or about who we are. If we really are as good, or moral, or simply in control about our life as we believe. Where our reality is questioned. Where you end up feeling both alone, but not entirely sure if you can even trust yourself and your own motivations.  This, by the way, does not just go for movies – but for anything “horror”. This movie is a good example illustrating what I mean. But, sadly, not because it tries to be a horror movie (quite the contrary), but because of how incredibly creepy the point it makes is, when looking at it from “a manufacturing consent” or (to go back to Dawkins) “religion as a mass delusion” perspective.

Before I go on: That is not meant to say that the movie is bad. In contrast – it is very well crafted, filmed and presented, and certainly has a quite intelligent script. As a movie – disregarding what it attempts to say – it is entertaining and interesting. The problem: Its less and less subtle undertones of Christian philosophy. And from here on there be spoilers.

The movie tells three separate stories that overlap, all three using the same actors and it certainly has quite surreal elements as the realities of each three different scenarios overlap. The idea (which is quite startling given how the movie ends) is that god (or a god like being) is an addict, lost in its own creation. Impersonating humans living within it through avatars, playing and participating in the lives of its creation. The last of the three versions of the story presents the god like being as impersonating a game designer within the reality it (not as a game, but as a world designer) created. The first “incarnation” of the character presents it as an actor, close to a mental breakdown, addicted to drugs and alcohol, suffering from delusions. The second (there’s the trend) as a writer/director, who – again – loses control of reality and is being accused of wanting to manipulate people and control people outside the realities he (the director, not the god being using it as an avatar) creates, mistreating them in the process. There’s a suggestion of comparing this god like being to the players of everquest (referenced as crackquest in the movie) or world of warcraft (the boyfriend as an orc reference). Lost in this process of the game / world / it created, god just missed the last 4000 years, as it is informed  – and here is one of the many places where the movie is inconsistent, as explained later – by an angel, or another god like being, that tries to bring “god” back to the real reality of it as a deity. The line goes “we missed you”.

All this would offer a lot of questions about what “god” is. About it’s morality. As mentioned it (god) is not obviously portrayed as a “good” or a “sane” being. The movie has the chance to ask somewhere interesting questions and remain on a purely and generally philosophical level about religion. And there are these inconsistencies (god is not a 10, it’s a 9, not quite perfect; there’s more than one of them) that seem to carry a somewhat neutral and not specifically Christian idea of “deity”.

But it doesn’t. Instead, the very last scene of the movie undoes all the grittiness and moral ambiguity (there’s less and less of it as the movie progresses) of all that came before. God’s back home, it leaving it’s world did not destroy it, and the way it returns to it’s “rightful” place … it leaves a “perfect” world behind (for the characters involved).

And then there’s of course references to the trinity, gods, mortals and satan, the obvious 4,000 years. This is not about the idea of god, but very specific. The problem: It is not clear whether that is the intended message of the movie. There are too many inconsistencies to say “this is christian propaganda”. Rather, it’s just very likely that someone wrote a “great script”, but the christian message sub-consciously wrote itself in.

That is what turns the movie into horror. The notion that the idea of god – one of the very points of Dawkins – is being indoctrinated into and engrained within members of society from a very young age, to a level that this one religious biased perspective even escapes their conscious knowledge. And, in the case of the movie, it probably doesn’t reach the level of awareness (and the comments on the movie on IMDB suggest this) of most viewers either. It doesn’t need to explain it’s Christian overtones – they are part of the “common sense” and agreed upon conventions. It is horror because, if you perceive it on this level, it will force you to ask about your own perspective, your own reality, your own biases. Those you’ll never be able to quite grasp. That you’ll never be able to be quite certain about. Because you can only filter what you are aware of consciously.

Interestingly – there’s a discussion of exactly this subject and notion about the film on IMDB’s forums. It’s a nice read as (as one participant observes) it happens to pan out between a strong atheist, a (less forceful) ‘atheist’ and a believer.

My vote on the movie isn’t complete yet. If generating debate is a good thing, it can (see above) work. More likely though – I’ll have a copy to give away soon.

And than – there’s that question about myself. I know and have noticed Christian elements appear in my stories. Given the cultural reference of the Bible where I was born and the way fictional writing at times is not a conscious process, this is probably not surprising. I haven’t finished the two stories I am particularly referring to, mind you, and these elements exist within the fictional world created with out really defining their meaning for the characters or the stories itself. It is not a problem that these elements exist. But the question of what they do to the story, what they say, and if they just reinforce and repeat the “consent” or “meaning” these symbols have within a Christian based society need to be brought into my conscious if I ever attempt to finish writing these stories.

In other (and brief) news … I haven’t been well these last weeks. Feeling SI triggerish. Overwhelmed with the world, not being able to do as much as I want, trouble getting up in the morning and needing a lot of effort to push all this away before I can even attempt to work on what I need to (which doesn’t work well, due to lack of concentration). I have to do a critical analysis of and 20 minute presentation on a number of international documents (Stockholm Conference, Belgrade Charter, Tbilisi Document, Agenda 21 [that’s a maybe] and the recently published Earth Charter). This was meant to be group work, but given I still don’t really know anyone on my course – I ended up working on my own.

And there, in my room, no-one to talk to, it all turned into that big unsolvable mess, giving me that feeling of – well – not getting anywhere I want to, in my life, doing things I don’t want or feel are “necessary” for my further development. Until I did, finally, text Alex and just talk it all over, this afternoon.

As always – the world in our heads seems to be so much more unreal and bigger than when one starts to cut it down. Thanks Alex.

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.