This journey of self-exploration has led me into some strange places, beyond love and desire, into… what? I have no idea. A new place to explore.
I am here. Whatever happens around me, whatever winds may blow around my crags and valleys, and shake the pine trees, I remain as I am.
These feelings are beyond words. I struggle to escape from cliché. But maybe I should let go of the struggle. What is, is and what will be, will be. There is an inevitability in my words.
None of this makes sense. How can it? It is beyond sense. I have caught a glimpse of that place, beyond the senses, beyond thoughts and emotions, beyond worry and stress, beyond desire. Only a glimpse. The clouds lift, just for a moment. A shaft of brilliant light cuts through, and sets fire to the ground at my feet. Then it is gone, and all is as it was before. Or can it be? Can anything stay the same? Everything changes, but everything stays the same. For an ant, the movements of the grasses are the storms and upheavals of a whole world. Our footsteps causally crush its forests and empires, then move on. The storms and tribulations of our lives take us to ecstasy and despair, and the world moves on around us.
And so, another day arises. And all that has to be done will happen, or not, jobs will be completed, or not, meals will be cooked and eaten, arguments will arise and subside, I will sit before my keyboard, my fingers will cross the keys, something new arises from them, and causes a series of electrical impulses which change the state of so many millions of particles of silicon. But what of the millions of particles of carbon from which they arise? They are changed too, they have their own electrical impulses. And the act of transferring from carbon to silicon sets up new reactions, new impulses, a positive feedback loop of growth and development.
When I sat down here this morning, I had no idea what would come, or where it would come from. No guided meditation this morning, I had got to the blank section on the tape, but also I was up before 6, so thought I would try and meditate till the alarm went off. I played the bi-lateral audio music tape, and tried to do the mountain meditation. I found myself forming words, trying to write a poem. Then when the alarm went off at 6, I changed the tape over and played the silent passage, 10 minutes until the bell rang. Then I came up here and had no real idea what I was going to write, except for a few phrases which had popped up while I was thinking about mountains. I was conscious of my lungs expanding and contracting. This is what I noticed last night. Even though the tapes say ‘the gentle rising and falling as you breathe in and breathe out’, I don’t think I’ve ever been really aware before, in quite the same way. The swelling and subsiding behind my breasts felt very sensual. But that’s another story.

All this work has hit me hard - all the things I thought I could easily squeeze in are coming home to roost at once. Mainly it's the magazine design, which has a very tight deadline, but which I really enjoy. If I could just spend the next week doing that, it would be great, but unfortunately all these other things also need to be done. so I run from one to the other and try to do the minimum that needs doing to get by, and scrape through. What I have to accept is that I can’t do things as well as I would like, they just have to be done anyhow, if I have to cut corners then so be it.

Yesterday I kept falling asleep in a meeting where I was supposed to be taking minutes. Every so often my eyes would close, and I would force them open, and there would be these faint squiggles on the paper in front of me, and I would think, what did they just say?
It also occurred to me that if I’m going to get done all the work I’m committed to in the next few weeks, I will probably have to give up sleeping altogether.
And then last night I had the first unbroken night (till 5:40) that I can remember having in weeks and weeks. When things seem very black, there is always some little tiny thing which pulls you back from the brink.
A friend said to me the other day ‘I hate to see you wasting your energies like this’. And I thought that, maybe, in this whole mess of a life, full of false hopes and lost causes, maybe, just maybe, there is one thing I can do well, and that is write. Maybe.
So, here I am again.
And yesterday, I submitted four of my poems to a competition. The first time I have ever sent them anywhere – apart from my blog. My lost children, wandering out into the world. It was surprisingly easy to part with them, as it happens. I printed off a form from the web, filled it in, printed out the poems, wrote a cheque for the entry fee, paperclipped everything together, found an envelope, stuck the whole lot in the post box. The kind of thing I do every day – no big deal, after all. And now I’ll just forget about it.
I have a feeling I promised to share information about writing competitions. bit late for this one, as the closing date is tomorrow, but here it is anyway:
http://www.gracedieuwriterscircle.co.uk/

At writing class yesterday, when we were all reading out our homework, one of the men read a piece where two men were talking in the pub, one was describing his relationship with his in-laws, and said ‘It puts a strain on our marriage.’ I had to ask: do men really talk like that to one another? I was upbraided, in a jokey way, by the tutor (female), who said that some men do, and obviously the men in our group are particularly sensitive because they are writers, and I apologised for being sexist. But later in the story the character was plotting to murder his wife and in-laws for their money - now that's REALLY sensitive

I took up all my 500 words this morning working on my end of term assignment.
now I'm out of time, and i can't think of anything else to say anyway.
time for shower and breakfast.

... so I didn’t take a brolly, large or small. And I didn’t hang around outside the stage door. sorry!
And I didn’t buy the top I was looking at in Monsoon. But I bought one in Next, and a couple of others in H&M, and tried on quite a few in M&S. Nice lively spring colours to cheer me up.
There was a band playing in the street outside Marks, they were really good, thought the sound balance was a bit erratic, hardly surprising out in a busy shopping street. The singer, when you could hear him, had a great voice. They were there in the morning and still there around 4 when I got back from the lecture. I didn’t recognise any of the songs, but they had a good, rocky, bluesy sound. They had a full drum kit set up, which was kind of surreal.

spent my writing time doing my homework for Monday.
Back to Cambridge again today, with a bigger brolly

Window shopping in Cambridge yesterday, I decided it’s time to move out of my teal phase into an apricot and fuchsia phase. (not that they’re mutually exclusive; they tone quite nicely). I saw a lovely top in Monsoon, but it’s £50, and I’d have to have new trousers to go with it (30 years ago I would have worn it as a dress, but now, I’d have to have trousers as well). And the old, old question: ‘When would I wear it?’ Well, I’m going back tomorrow, I have 24 hours to decide.
The play was terrific, although I’m not sure all that middle aged despair, existential angst and frustrated passion is what I need right now (got enough of my own) There were so many great lines, I tried to memorise them, I even had to go into Waterstones afterwards and make a note of one of them, in my lovely new notebook (see Melinda).
It was a full house, impressive for a Thursday afternoon, and I wasn’t sitting with my friend. I didn’t even find her in the interval, which is surprising, because it’s only a small theatre. At the end, I waited while the theatre emptied, but still didn’t see her. Then I hung around the end of the alley to the side, in case she came that way, and suddenly realised that Neil Pearson was heading straight for me. I was paralysed, I didn’t feel like I could just stand and stare at him (though god knows he must be used to women staring at him in the street). But maybe with the shaggy hair and black Russian beard, and wearing a donkey jacket, he thought he was incognito – I don’t think I would have recognised him if I hadn’t just been watching him on stage for two hours. So I did that thing where you try to be nonchalant and walk away slowly so someone walks past you. I could have stuck out my brolly and tripped him up, but I just watched him in awe as he passed through the market square and turned right to Lion Yard. He looked as though he was trying to get a signal on his mobile. For a brief, mad moment, I thought about trying to follow him, but he was going too fast.
Anyway, back to the play.
It was funny too. Nicholas le Prevost as Uncle Vanya was hilarious, tragic, wonderful (though perhaps a bit too sexy to be plausible, but who cares?). At the interval, I overheard some pseudy guy telling his breathless companion that this was ‘the production of a lifetime’, because they had caught the balance so perfectly between the comedy and the tragedy. I couldn’t help remembering Mike Tucker’s disastrous date with Wendy
Here’s the line I made a note of: ‘I love LIFE in general… but as far as my own personal life is concerned, there's nothing really good there.’
And the real tragedy is that it isn’t even tragic. Nothing and no one gets shot, or killed, no cherry trees are cut down. Vanya’s tragedy isn’t heroic, but banal: a wasted life, and hopeless love.
What could be more tragic than that?

A foreshortened meditation today, the batteries on the walkman expired half way through. I tried to direct myself for a while, but it’s never successful without the tape because I’m always wondering about the time, I can’t lose myself. Especially as I started rather late and was feeling quite time-conscious anyway.
It’s the full moon again, but it’s hiding behind the fog, won’t see much of it this month, and it seems to be around in the evenings rather than the mornings. By the next full moon, it will be equinox, and Easter. I like the fact that Easter is still dictated by the movements of the sun and moon, not by any sensible, practical method of determining dates. I like the fact that the seasons won’t conform to our rational, calendrical needs, that we have to have leap years.
Taking time out this afternoon to go to the theatre in Cambridge, to see ‘Uncle Vanya’, with Nicholas le Prevost and Neil Pearson and lots of other exciting people. Well, obviously, they’ll be on stage, I’ll be with my friend Maureen. But I'm not meeting her until just before the play, so I can sneak off to the hot sausage van without her knowing and indulge myself
I bought the ticket when I was in Cambridge a couple of weeks ago, and if I hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t be going because I know I can’t afford the time. I worked into the evening yesterday to make up for it, but it’s good, I enjoy it, it’s creative (in a way) and fun, unlike the usual run-of-the-mill stuff. I have two weeks now to put the magazine together before I go to Brussels, most of yesterday afternoon was spent either on the phone to the editor or trying to get our respective faxes to work, but we now know exactly what we’re doing - as if! I’d like to be able to give it my undivided attention, but next week unfortunately I have two governors’ meetings, and another meeting at the Town Hall, and I have to do preparation for the PC meeting the day after I get back from Brussels (actually, I have two that week). No, I really shouldn’t be going to the theatre. Oh well.
What else? No poetry today. I wrote down one of the poems from yesterday, but the other idea has gone completely, I can’t even remember properly what it was about, it was just a sketchy idea. Sometimes that happens, you just have to grab them when they’re there and do something with them or you lose them. But they have their own timetables and their own imperatives.
I very rarely think, ‘I want to write a poem, what should I write it about?’ In fact, I can think of twice when I’ve done that, for my writing course. And actually, they’ve both been quite successful (‘Miko and the Starlings’ and ‘Cut Roses’), though they both ended up tapping into what I was feeling anyway, rather than coming from nowhere, I just needed a little encouragement/inspiration to go looking for the feelings. Usually the feelings come hammering on the door, screaming to be let in (or out, I suppose that’s more appropriate).

My poetic imagination is working overtime. As I lay in bed this morning, two different strands/ideas came into my head, the lines whispering at the back of my mind, their rhythms curling and wrapping themselves around my mind. I have two fictional pieces to write for my course, I have work to do and life to live, but poetry beguiles and seduces me.
I came across an online literary magazine the other day, and thought about submitting some of my poems, but they say they won’t accept submissions which have already been published elsewhere, including on the web. Does putting my poems on a blog count as publishing, I wonder? Or how about the self-published annual anthology produced by my writing group? Strictly speaking, probably, yes.
I have no real idea who reads the stuff I put on my blogs. I never bother looking at the stats any more, because they get so easily distorted.
Well, having said that, I just did.
and apparently, I had 67 visitors and 240 page views yesterday. But how true is that? Not one of them left a comment.
Someone advised me a little while back that if I wanted to get more response, I should write about sex. Maybe it was that first sentence that got their attention . But if so, I guess they rapidly lost interest!

Why can I never just find a man to shag me sideways and have done with it? My lips and tongue tingle to feast on warm flesh, and as for the rest of my body… this is NOT that sort of blog.
But would that solve anything? No, of course it wouldn’t, it would just bring more misery in its wake. But in that case, what is the answer? Maybe the answer is that there are no answers.
How long can I keep going on adrenalin and relaxation/meditation tapes? Yesterday at writing I almost fell asleep when we closed our eyes to do visualisation, yet at 4:30 today I was wide awake again. I followed the procedure today. Got up, read a rivetting round table about innovation in the New Statesman for 10 minutes (Title: 'Prepare to celebrate your failures’), played an old tape I haven't listened to for a while because I couldn't find the usual one. I may or may not have then fallen asleep for 10, 20, perhaps 30 minutes before the alarm went off. Then lay in bed for another 20 before I dragged myself out to start it all again.
I’m at the of start two weeks of magazine design, the most enjoyable (and lucrative) of the paid work that I do, but it only happens four times a year. Broke a personal rule by working through the evening yesterday, phone calls from the editor, she is one of these people who works best in the evenings, while I’m best in the mornings. She rang at 11:10 to say she would be ready to fax the overall plan in about another half an hour, and would that be OK, or would I rather she did it this morning? ‘It’ll have to be early’ she warned, ‘probably about 8’. Ha. Some people don’t know the meaning of early.
Sixteen days and counting till I go to Brussels. Same old crowd, with some exceptions and some additions – for example, a new French representative. The old one has slipped into a black hole, fallen out of my life and off the map. Do I care any more? Well, I can tell myself not, certainly I don’t feel the way I did a couple of months ago, but I can’t answer for what would happen if I walked into a room and he was there. So, probably lucky that that’s not going to happen. But, hey, wonder what his replacement will be like? (Probably female).
For the next three weeks, then, life is going to be frantic but fun, as I try to fit everything else around the magazine, followed by four days of surreality. The slump should be hitting just about three weeks from now.
When I stubbed out the incense this morning after my meditation, I thought about what I was saying the other day about points of light. ‘Strike another match girl, start anew. ‘Cause it’s all over now, baby blue’.

I never know what to do when this happens. Or rather, I do know what i should do, but somehow i never get round to doing it. I lie in hopes of getting back to sleep, when i know that my best chance of doing that is getting up, reading for a while, playing a tape. But there hardly seems enough time to do all that, so I stay there, and time goes on, and it gets to the point when I think, well, if I go back to sleep now, it’s hardly worth it, better to be up and getting on with something, maybe get a start on the day, when I know that what I will really do is come here, and wander round alone, poking into other people’s blogs, looking for someone else who’s up at this stupid hour, to talk to.
What now? I’ve written that, maybe I should go down and meditate. I wanted to write first today because I had that in my mind. And anyway, the heating wouldn’t have been on, though it should be on by now. It’s 10 to 6,time is doing what time does, minding its own business as I fret and wonder over mine.
Two poems yesterday, that’s amazing really, one in the middle of the night, one in the evening. The evening one wasn’t what I set out to write, I started with some lines in my notebook, but not the ones I ended up with. Sometimes it works that way, it’s better to sit with a pencil and notebook than to be here in front of the computer, but sometimes it’s the other way round. I write down lines, and out of them something emerges, like an image coming towards me through the fog, it slowly comes into focus.

Ten of us, some old friends, some new, coming together in a special place, bringing our hopes, intentions, curiosity and food to share. We laughed and talked, we stretched our bodies, we quietened our minds.
The focus of the day was the metta bhavana meditation, or ‘cultivation of loving kindness’. Loving kindness is about accepting people as they are, and cultivating a friendly, caring attitude towards them regardless of who they are or what they do.
So, by turns we practise directing loving thoughts towards ourselves, a good friend, a neutral person, someone we have a difficult relationship with, and finally all living beings. The aim is to be able to direct those warm feelings towards all of them, irrespective of our personal feelings. This is not easy, which is why it takes a lot of practice. But by practising, perhaps, we can even out our feelings, and see people and our relationships to them more truly. We can learn to be more understanding of how they are, not to react without thinking when they act in such a way as to hurt us or make us angry. To learn to be thoughtful and careful about our relationships, with others and with ourselves.

Nothing repeatable, anyway.
But I'm going to a meditation day on loving kindness. Maybe that will restore some equanimity to my turbulent thoughts and emotions.
the sun is up, and it's a beautiful day.
sounds like a song... (or even two).

Two points of red light in the darkness. I watch as they are extinguished – first, the incense stick, then the candle wick, leaving behind its acrid smell that chokes me for a moment. They take their time; although the flame has gone the embers stay red, and I wait for them to go, allowing them to take their leave as they see fit.
I am restless this morning. Last night, in the group, I found the quiet place, without knowing how, but here it is different, too much going on in my head. Tomorrow I will go to a meditation day, a day to be with friends and share laughter, food, companionship, as well as our inner peace.
I have been meditating for three years now. Lots of things have changed in my life in that time, though there has been lots of continuity as well. But now there is a different energy in my life, different even from only a few weeks ago, a real sense of change and moving into a different phase, of hope. How genuine is it? The old undertow of cynicism is quietened for once. I can see real, positive signs that life holds more promise than it did, that my relationship with myself has improved. And this is February.
Is this a false dawn? In coming Februaries, will I look back and add this to the list of Februaries that have hurt me and dragged me down with their darkness and deceit? We were saying last night that it doesn’t have the normal February feeling, and maybe that is because of the weather, the sunshine. But for me there is something deeper than that, the hope I have is real, it comes from a different place. There are real opportunities opening before me, a sense of taking a different path. Most of them have been around for a while, but I didn’t have this emotional reaction to them until now, I was locked into the past, the patterns of disappointment, of riding for a fall, I could not quite grasp them. Now they wink at me in the darkness, tiny points of light. No, bad analogy, the points of light I started with were about to be extinguished. I don’t like that. Except, of course, that I can light them again any time I want, all it takes is striking a match. And maybe that’s the lesson I should be learning. That lights go out, but we can still find the way.

How do I spend my time? I bounce around from one thing to another. In some ways, I tell myself, life is good, better than it has been for a long time, better maybe than it has ever been. But am I ‘bobbing around like a cork’, as a friend said to me in a different context? It could be, but will the bobbing ever end, will I reach a place of peace and stability, and, really, is that what I want?
The moon is half way through its waxing, I saw it a couple of evenings ago. Why is it that one month it appears in the mornings, and the next in the evenings? There has to be a logical explanation, I just don’t know what it is. Once I would have tried to think something like that through from first principles, now my tired brain rebels and everything is fuzzy and fuddled. In some ways it is sharper than ever it was, I’m still learning, still growing, still following where it wants to lead me. But in others it seems to have lost some of its agility, I get angry with it when it forgets or gets confused. I try to push it too far, and it rebels like a sulky child.

Is Alice dreaming of the Red King?
Or is the Red King dreaming of Alice?
and what happens if either of them wakes up?

I looked for the moon this morning when I opened the curtains. How long since I wrote about the full moon? Seems like weeks, surely it should have returned by now. Time feels elongated, stretching and coiling away behind me, the year barely started yet piling up thoughts and experiences – well, to be honest, mainly thoughts. Not dragging exactly, just spreading itself thinly, like the smoke rising and coiling from the incense sticks as I do my morning meditation.
Why do we procrastinate? Things which are really quite small and insignificant grow until they become monstrous and looming, and we hide away from them, turn our backs, try to ignore them, and the longer we leave them, the harder it is to make ourselves grasp them and get them done. And meanwhile, the time drifts away, curling and floating in the air, long, thin wisps of grey that dance and dissipate before our eyes, returning to nothing.

There is such freedom in cyberspace. Is it freedom to create myself anew, or to be the person I truly am? Aaah, that’s the question. I’ve asked it before, but I haven’t got the answer. Or rather, I believe the answer is that this is the true me, this is my way of letting that version of me have a life of her own.
I say what I’m thinking, I explore and expand my mind, I ride the waves of thought and feeling. I can say things I would never say to flesh and blood people, because this is the world of words and ideas and nothing else matters. I have time to think about and shape my answers, my thoughts, the things I want to say. And the pattern grows and expands. I’m not only running in the same old tracks, strange new doors have opened and I have started to explore, the space of my mind is opening up and I pass through with no thread to lead me back to the outside world, I may lose myself forever in these vaults, but it doesn’t matter. I laugh, I think, I gossip, I flirt, I meet new people, I grow.

What do I love about Brussels?
I love that everywhere smells of chocolate
It’s not the most exciting or glamorous city in the world, but I guess it’s the associations with people who mean a lot to me. Whenever we get together, it’s always good.
I feel a real sense of otherness when I’m there, of escape from the humdrum me. It just seems friendly and tolerant, you do what you want to do, it seems to say, we’ll take you as you are, if you want to work, work, if you want to play, play, that’s fine with us.
It’s relaxed and welcoming but with just enough reserve so that it’s not in your face all the time. You expect it to be cold (metaphorically) and grey and a bit dour, but I’m always startled by how cosmopolitan it is, how laid back and faintly surreal.
Its politics are ridiculous, its weather is horrible, but it just gets on with things, it knows how to have a good time when it feels like it, it doesn’t take itself too seriously, it doesn’t pressure you into being one thing or another, it doesn’t make you feel small because you’re from out of town and you’re not used to its ways.
It accepts you for who you are, and it would ask you to do the same, except that, it doesn’t really mind how you take it, not in an arrogant way, just that it’s your choice and it will respect that.

... I can hear a song thrush in the horse chestnut tree.
The church steeple and the tops of the trees are silhouetted against the red sky.
The evenings are getting lighter at last.
just a couple of months to campari and soda in the garden by the fish pond

Looks as though my expenses paid trip to Australia isn't gong to happen after all
In the autumn, I got an email asking me to be an external examiner for a PhD. I hadn't heard anything more, so I emailed the woman concerned and it turns out I was just one of a shortlist of 5, and evidently I wasn't picked.
well, it was all a bit too good to be true.
So, I'll have to make do with Brussels and Paris.

I should really do some gardening this weekend. I have not been in a gardening frame of mind for the last six months. Which you might say is reasonable given the time of year, but then there are always things that need doing. I haven’t done any cross stitch in ages either. My life and my thoughts have been running on different tracks. Those are the pastimes that lead me to a kind of contentment. But I don’t want to be content at the moment. I want to be wild and excited and chase the dreams where they take me, even if it is only further into my head. But my head is an exciting place to be right now. I just remembered one of those fridge magnet slogans: ‘I live in a world of my own, but it’s OK, they know me here’. Yes, I can relate to that one.

I love traveling alone. My dream life would be to take off on my own and just go from place to place, meeting nice people on the way. And taking a laptop with me and writing as I went. And sending off my writing to someone who would pay money into a bank account so that I could keep traveling.
But I guess I only have that dream because I have a home to go from and come back to.

Well, something exciting happened yesterday. I got myself some more work – which in one way is crazy, given how I struggle to keep up with what I’ve got already. But in another way it’s great, because it’s so much more interesting than the stuff I’m mostly doing. Oh, in itself it will probably be tedious and frustrating, but the context is so much more exciting.
I’d better stop being cryptic. I’ve referred to this before on Cassandra, about 6 months ago, and I should have pushed harder and made it happen sooner but I held back partly because I was thinking, ‘well, it’s up to him really, he knows I’m interested, if he was really interested he’d make the moves’ (sounds familiar, yes, but different circumstances). And also because all the other stuff always takes up so much time that I tell myself ‘I can’t do anything more, I’d kill myself’.
Hmm, maybe I’m still being cryptic. This is about some work I discussed after the conference I went to in Oxford last year. Initially it will be technical editing, being an extra pair of eyes to go through manuscripts of edited books of papers and prepare them for the printers. But yesterday he was also talking about working on the website, which is music to my ears, because I love doing that stuff. So, work that I enjoy, that will look good on my CV, for an organisation I’m really excited about and a lovely guy who…
Well, stop right there. This is not what you’re thinking. Granted, he could be prime knight material, but that’s not the way this story is going to go. A professional relationship will be much more valuable to me, and probably more fun and less heartache in the long run. Certainly a lot less messy.
The reference wasn't on Cassandra after all, it was Melinda (figures).
http://melinda-in-surreality.blog.co.uk/2007/07/07/more_on_the_momd~2592246
And after all that, I slept right through till 5:30 this morning, for the first time in ages.
The only problem now is going to be how to fit it all in –all I need is just a few extra hours in the day, days in the week, usual stuff. Maybe a bit less time spent on navel gazing.
When I spoke to him before, I had my DTP work for the magazine looming, and I didn’t know how that would work out. But actually I love doing it, and now I’ve done two issues I know that even though it’s stressful trying to get it all done to the deadlines (and fit everything else round it) it’s such an adrenalin rush to do that I get on with it and do it, the momentum carries me through. Experiencing that has made me realise the kind of things I enjoy doing, and what I should be doing more of.
So, things are looking good at the moment. Not something you often hear me saying!
Oh, and yesterday I booked my hotel room in Brussels, in my favourite hotel, across the street from Planete Chocolat

Hard to find something to blog about this morning. I wrote my first 500 words, but it was all full of questions, the question mark must be the most over-used punctuation mark on this keyboard. I went to meditate, but I was thinking, thinking, always thinking.
I was dreaming when the alarm went off, I wrote about that, but I can’t blog it, no one would be interested in that – or maybe they would, and that’s why I can’t post it. The bit I can repeat is that I was at a seminar, which was tedious, but the food was amazing. Another woman had picked up a plate with the last two slices of a cream pie covered in fruit and I was about to ask her if she was gong to eat the whole lot or if I could have some, when the alarm went off. Make of that what you will.
What did I think about when I was meditating? Only how hard it is to focus and not let your mind wander. No revelation there. I remembered a conversation with the sleep therapist, when she was trying to get me to try mind games like counting, or counting backwards, or repeating a word over and over in your head, the sort of thing I’ve tried for years, that never works for me. I explained to her that while one part of my brain is counting or whatever, another part of my brain is still thinking about something else. ‘That’s not possible’ she said with a smile. Well, I’m sorry, but it is, it happens all the time.
Everything happens in my head. I wish I could get it out into the open sometimes. Well, that’s sort of what I’m doing. But does that create something which wasn’t there before? Does translating things into words make them more real?
I don’t know what to write. This is ridiculous. Some days it works, some days it doesn’t. This is not a day when anything worthwhile is going to come, so why not just let it go? Why fret about it all? There are enough things in this life to worry about, without looking for something else. Let it go.

I’ve been struggling to write this. Last week in class we were talking about landscapes, familiar ones and ones we’ve never seen and maybe wouldn’t want to see, imagining, describing, making lists of what you’d expect to see, working in small groups. Homework was to do a visualisation of your landscape, ten minutes free-writing, then ‘write a short piece of fiction, or the opening of a longer piece, 1-2 minutes reading time, based on your landscape.
Usually I get inspired on the drive home on Monday, sit down during the week and knock out my 2-300 words, and that’s all there is to it. Not for me the struggles described by the others, hunched over the computer on Sunday evening trying to write. And anyway, I could just go into class and say ‘I’ve been too busy, didn’t get a chance to do it’, and that would be accepted, I wouldn’t get detention or be sent to the Head’s office. We all have other lives, after all, this is really just a hobby. But I don’t like doing that. So most of yesterday I fretted and messed around, didn’t really do the visualisation, didn’t do the free-writing (THIS is my free-writing), made a half-hearted start after dinner (bad time – or good, depending on how you look at it), then thought ‘Ill do it in the morning’.
So, here it is:
http://melinda-in-surreality.blog.co.uk/2008/02/04/writing_assignment_4th_feb~3676532
When I looked at the mish-mash of yesterday’s and today’s efforts, edited it a bit, knocked it into shape, it was noticeable how much better the stuff I wrote today was. This is my time, obviously. But at least I’d made a start.

I had a nice day in Cambridge yesterday. I was supposed to be going with my neighbour (she of the cats) to a women graduates’ talk in the afternoon, and as she’s been very ill, we were going to go straight to the talk and park in the short term parking so she didn’t have to cope with the Park&Ride. But she rang to say she was feeling worse and had decided not to go at all. So I went in early and had a wander round on my own. I had a regular with onions and mustard from the Hot Sausage Company, a guilty pleasure I only indulge in when I’m on my own, I’m too embarrassed if I’m with somebody else. Then a chai steamer from the AMT kiosk, which I drank in the winter sunshine en route to the Fitzwilliam Museum.
(Actually, I mis-typed 'onions' there, and the spellchecker offered me 'opinions and mustard', which seemed like an interesting combination.)
I wandered a bit aimlessly, through the middle- and far-eastern ceramics, said hello to the great owl, and honoured the Bodhisattva Guan Jin (rather battered, and a bit fierce, by comparison with the one in the V&A). sometimes it’s nice to do things like that with other people, but mostly I like to be on my own, moving at my own speed, lingering by those things that grab my attention, doubling back on myself, not having to worry about losing someone, or finding someone, or where we’re going to meet, or should we go for a cup of tea?
The talk was by a woman who is in the final stages of a PhD in architectural history, about the seventeenth century roots of the gothic revival, and all kinds of interesting discussions ensued, about the nature of history, the creation of an ‘English’ architectural style, authenticity vs pastiche, we even got onto journalism and the construction of stories. If my conference ever happens, I’ll ask her if she’d like to submit a paper.
I also went a bit mad, went into the Arts Theatre and bought myself a ticket to the Thursday matinee of 'Uncle Vanya' in a couple of weeks time. Like I can afford the time to take an afternoon off to go to the theatre.