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[03 Oct 2006|12:23am] |
I won't let time drown me..
i'll plunge in deep,
and i'll grab the surf.
let the current drag me..
this way, and that..
and i'll surface,
when time least expects it..
Hello there. What a good thing it is to be able to write so late and not have to sit at a pc screen yawning and collapsing first thing in the morning to feel complete.
My resurrection into personal and educational development continues apace. I donned my trainers (Chosen for a more comforting slog to Canterbury) and hurried to the station, eager to huddle with myself on the train and escape the lashing rain (Rain as you know is a beautiful thing to me, but not when it's cold and I have no umbrella) and to read one of the discarded papers within.
I got to Minster, and didn't reckon on the eccentricity of the service, which was once again pretty awful. A train pulled in that wasn't mine. It chugged away to Sandwich, after I discovered this and hurried off the damned thing. I then stood for twenty minutes more, during which another train came in and was bound for somewhere else entirely.
All in giving up mode and ready to go home, I spied another train, and as luck would have it (Or mercy), the train was the right one, albiet twenty minutes late. I boarded, and am exasperated conductor gave me my ticket. He spoke of works that had delayed for four hours. We laughed about it. He was cheery and so was I. We shared frustrations and he tossed a paper onto the table saying
"Something to read for the trip". I, needing something to pass the time scanned it. It was the Daily Star. Hardly on a par with the bible, but it's crass text message opinions page of illiterate speak by people with opinions they were barely able to express amused me.
I got to Canterbury and walked the streets swining my bag and puffing away, expelling the smoke filled air in my lungs into Canterbury's beautiful streets. It's still the most ashthetic of Thanet's towns and cities that I know..the buildings are neat and authentic, the roads clean and the place itself is weighted in history but not defeated by modernism. I love it. Walking through it is still for a wheezing thirty year old a pleasure.
I made good time and was only a minute or so late despite the hilarious escapades with South Eastern. Whitters was already talking and waxing lyrical about St George. I sat and listened and he talked about how history is changed by carying accounts. Good stuff. It kind of enriched the course a little, as he talked about the way things were written and percieved.
We all scampered to the cafateria at half time. I dipped out for a smoke with someone who wasn't present last time out. She was friendly and nice..tied back hair and enthusiastic eyes. She and I talked about the course and how it was to be nervous and terrified, and about what it was like to be learning and to be brave enough just to give it a go. I liked her too. A little. She had a confidence and character that attracted. She even latched onto my nickname.
I might even have fancied her, a bit. Was she my type? I don't know..she just had a glow and humour about her, that I liked. She must be late thirties, hair swept back into a chestnut pony tail..she was good fun to talk to and bright with it. She will be a good college chum at any rate, I hope. I can't remember her bloody name, though.
We both went back in and got coffee. It had been stewing a little, but it didn't matter, I felt good about the lesson, better than last week. We all sat and chatted and I even made some good remarks that got a few laughs. I miss meeting new people and overcoming nerves to make friends. It's beginning to happen and i'm enjoying it. We then rose the stairs to the room and read out our homework.
I wrote many nights about it last week, about how hard it was to write like that, and my fears. I stood up well in this, and i'm proud of myself. Of me, and my ability to overcome my fears. I followed two pieces of wonderful prose, a lovely piece about buttons and stitch (Described and read beautifully by it's author) and a wonderfully humorous piece about school, and read my account of a young man joining the war.
I read it a little quietly and monosylabbically, but it kind of fit, and it (Even though I say myself, and my critique of me is the hardest, so there is no ego at play here) sounded beautiful...it lifted off the paper and soared, in cadency, in beauty, and in flow. I actually weltered a little reading it as I realised how good it sounded in speech and that what i'd written was a lot better and more lovely sounding than I intended, and sat back, breathed and sighed.
John asked me if I wrote poetry. I said I did. He seemed to know, as he picked out the poetic flow to my writing. He also noted the difference between the style of the three pieces that had been read out. I'm glad he noticed the difference with such clarity. It means he's listening, and he's interested.
Everybody who read was brilliant, in different ways. Some write through stream of consciousness, some write from humour, some (Like I) excel best when using words poetically. I think I may have found something out about myself. I like weaving words, I hate trying to knit them when forced, I love melting them and styling them and fashioning them into beautiful things.
I'm pumped up and happy about that. I can write other things, but my insight and emotional tightness and the ability to convey them into images and breathless verbal pictures do me proud.
I just need to harness them as well as I can, and have.
It was over so quickly. Our homework is to write something about a family member, bearing in mind the added ethic of fictionalising, to make something different. I shall go into this with a new heartbeat and a creative lust. I have an idea, it's just how best to express it.
My trip home began. More huffing and puffing. I considered that if the day's service was so late and fractuous that it could keep me at Minster for so long, then the reverse may be true. Perhaps the train home would be late enough for me to catch. I got lucky, for once. I may not be so next week, as I will probably have to wait an hour for the train, but this time, I arrived six minutes late. The train was eight minutes late, so I was indeed lucky.
On I hopped and read the London news. I disembarked at Minster and found the welcome lights of the Bell. I love coming home after knowing i've done something, achieved, it gives me a little celebratory jolt, a reason to reward myself with some stout. I sat and exchanged some words with an hilarious old gent who told me he'd avoided going home because he'd have to "talk to the hamster". I chortled and wondered if this was an actual rodent or a metaphor for a wife. I concluded the former, when he started talking about it eating grapes and chocolate drops.
Funny man. Pete and his friend came in latterly, and I yakked to them about football. I have learned much and kept pace quite well, I thought. And then, I clomped home, satisfied and happy.
All it takes is something like this..to get the cogs turning, and for me to embrace it. I feel like i'm not doing nowt. And it's good.
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