Well yes actually, it is all about me.

Tuesday, October 31, 2006

I have a problem.

I have a problem with the library. Not because of its limited opening hours or the fact that anything I try to take out is already on loan. I can even handle the fact that it's closed on a Sunday. The problem I have is with the people that sit either side of me as I type. The rest of the room is silent except the sound of keyboards being operated but on one side of me some girl is pushing the irritating scale to such a limit that I'm surprised it even works anymore. The only reason I know it does is because the girl on the other side is only a couple of points behind her. Let's start with girl A on my (let me get this right) left hand side. Since I have been here all she's done is ask her friend if what she is doing is right. Here is a brief illustration of the conversation this far:

Girl A: What did you do for that script thing we had to do?

Friend: I wrote about someone coming home from their Mum's funeral.

Girl A: Oh did you. That sounds good. What should I write about?

Friend: (Sounding slightly irritated and trying to do work while being pestered). Well it's up to you. What do you want to write about?

Girl A: Why aren't you helping me? You're being really mean!

Friend: Just think what you want to do and do it. I'm not being mean.

Girl A writes for about thirty seconds before turning around and seeing her friend searching for pictures on Google. I'm not sure what she sees because my neck can't strain too far before looking a bit invasive.

Girl A: I went to a fancy dress party the other week.

Friend doesn't answer.

Girl A: Oh you don't even care! At this point I have to stop because it's pissing me off just to think about it.

This girl is so annoying you want to just scream at her: JUST DO YOUR WORK AND LEAVE YOUR FRIEND ALONE YOU SELF OBSESSED MORON. God, she's awful. She left a minute ago and still hadn't done what she needed to. I bet she ends up printing off a copy of her friends work.

So, the other side - on my right hand side is another girl who is equally obnoxious. This one though has been sat looking on MySpace for the last hour asking her male friend next to her what she should answer in some quiz that someone has sent her. Because obviously he would know more about her favourite films, books, music than she does. This excruciating experience is cut short when MySpace wipes her whole profile off. It's all I have not to laugh out loud. She actually falls with her head on the table and stays like that for a few minutes before her friend asks 'oh what's wrong?' She then tells him how her entire profile has been deleted with the tone and body language of someone who has lost their entire family in a disaster with phrases like, 'This is the worst thing EVER' and, 'Why did this happen to me?' Gah. Anyway, he runs through what she needs to do and she asks inane questions all the way through as if she has never seen a computer before, flirting in that annoying pathetic way. It's not long though before all is back as it should be and she is filling out a questionnaire on one of her lucky friends berating herself for not knowing this persons favourite smell, frog type or tree shape. The library, I have found, is a place to meet people who make you question hope for humanity.

xx

Nothing strange about a stranger.

Over the weekend I went to St Mawes to meet my Dad. On the way back on the ferry I got on behind a woman who was also waving goodbye to her father, a frail looking man who looked quite unwell. ‘That’s my Dad,’ she turned around to tell me, ‘he’s dying.’ I said I was sorry and she replied simply with, ‘Well, people do.’ We then both got on the ferry and didn’t speak a word all the way back to Falmouth but any time I caught her eye I would smile and she would do the same. I noticed she was blinking back tears and decided that, when we got off the boat I would ask her if she wanted to go for a drink. I think part of me knew that this was the most human thing I could do seeing someone as distressed as she looked. Maybe it was none of my business and maybe she was heading home to a family, I didn’t know. I just wanted to feel I had done something to help someone. So, when we docked, I asked her how she was. She said she was OK but a bit shaky and that she was going to go for a pint. I asked if she would like some company. She smiled, yes, she would like some company. We ended up in a pub on the harbour front, her with a glass of Dry White wine and me with a pint of Tribute. We talked a bit about her father and his illness and also the fact that her mother was ill too and she asked me about my course and my background. During the course of the conversation she revealed a lot of personal information. Information that maybe you wouldn’t normally imagine divulging to a stranger. But it didn’t feel weird or bizarre. It just felt like I was at the right place at the right time. Here I was talking with a woman who I had never met before who was telling me things that maybe she normally only ever told her closest friends. I think she just needed to get it all off her chest and it made me think about how we deal with strangers. We very rarely speak to someone we don’t know for any substantial amount of time. We say hello, goodbye, or ask an empty, ‘How are you?’ But that’s about it. How do we know that that the person we are sat next to on the bus does not share the same interests as us? That the person behind us in a shopping queue isn’t just as enamoured with the author we love? We never know. It so happens that I met one of my best friends at a bus stop, so I have a lot of faith in the comfort of strangers and love the idea that a stranger is just a friend we haven’t met yet. But it seems most people more cynically assume that a stranger is just a rapist or mugger. It’s sad that our interpersonal communication is limited to our comfort zones and I think there is a lot to be said about contact with people we do not know at all. I think that when we deal with those people we know and who know us, we are dealing with their perceptions of us and juggle this along with conversation allowing how we are perceived to control our interaction. We are never the same person with any two of our friends. We are multifaceted beings and our communication reflects that. But so many people keep diaries or journals in which they pour out emotions and secrets that they could never tell to those who know them. Why not confide in a stranger? Why not spill out your words onto the blank canvas of a stranger? With a stranger you are a stranger too. They have no expectations of you. You need not impress them. You don’t need to fill the roles that you fill in your other day to day interactions. So go and talk to a stranger. Go and do it now and I bet you feel a benefit.

xx

Monday, October 30, 2006

Dinner date.

I've just finished an essay titled ‘Cannibalism is a Good Thing.’ The intention of this essay, along with any other in this module of my course, was to persuade. Regardless of your personal belief you have to write listing the pros and cons before coming to a conclusion that agrees with your title. Alarmingly, I have convinced myself that cannibalism is indeed a good thing. When I first started this essay I have to say that I was a bit anxious as to what to say, not really knowing where to start or where to finish for that matter.

However, having written just over the allotted two pages I feel as if I have a better view on cannibalism. One of the elements that I wasn’t able to go into because of the space restriction was the idea that cannibalism is disrespectful to the human body. I think that many people think that eating another person is degrading, for both the eater and the eatee. But I have been thinking about this and how we often see people as simply a ‘piece of meat.’ Go into any bar in the centre of town on a Friday or Saturday night and you will inevitably see near naked flesh being oggled at by hungry eyes. This often results in a one night stand in which two people treat each others bodies as nothing more than a carcass, poking, prodding and penetrating with no care for the emotions. I guess this is kind of similar in the sense that the actual soul of the body is just disregarded and complete attention is given to the body and the body alone. Not that I’m saying one-night stands equal cannibalism. I just wanted to make an observation.

xx

Friday, October 27, 2006

The slow kid.

I feel like the slow kid from school; the one who never really caught up with the rest of the class. The reason being, to my knowledge, I am the last in my peers to start my blogging. So I have a lot to catch up with but, as my PE teacher used to say, it's not the winning or the losing but the taking part.

To be honest though, that's harldy true is it? That's just the advice you give to the person who was picked last in PE, before the boy who ran like an ironing board. And, yes, I know how that feels. I was always the last person to be picked in PE. In fact, to be precise, I wasn't even picked but instead allocated to a team. I was about as welcome as a bad case of scabies. I was never very good at PE and at one point someone actually asked the teacher if they could swap me with a wet melon because that would be of more use. Not nice. But to be fair, probably fair enough. In PE I was no use at all. I'd run away from the ball in PE, miss the ball in whatever rounders for boys is called and point blank refuse to move in rugby. I dreaded every Wednesday and Friday afternoon and would often pretend to forget my kit which meant I was allowed to miss the lesson. Unless we had the other teacher. In which case I would have to wear something from the lost property box which consisted of filthy shorts and rigid with stale sweat shirts. So not only was I useless at the sport but I also smelt like a walking corpse.

Once, I sprained my wrist falling out of a tree so I had a small bandage which I kept beyond my wrist having healed. I was quite a wise kid at school, so every so often I would don this bandage which got filthier and filthier as the year went on. If you had physical proof that you were unable to take part in PE then they would allow you to sit it out. So, in year nine straight after English I would put on this grubby bandage and tell the teacher I couldn't take part. I thought this was a pretty good idea until I was caught out and confronted by another pupil who said, 'You didn't have that on in English.' I was busted. I won't forget that day.

Anyway, let's talk about the present and not the past. How has my day been today? Well, I haven't had to wear either a scabby bandage or pair of second hand skidmarked shorts, so that's good. However, I have had to do battle with Itunes on my computer which nearly killed me. I have loads of work to do for the weekend but earlier today I went to Itunes and saw that all my music was gone. It was horrible. Anyway, I had to put ot all back on from my external hard drive. It was all very painful and I kept telling myself that I would stop after ten minutes but I ended up doing the whole lot and not doing any work. During this horrific episode of my life I made the mistake of drinking about 6 cups of coffee which led me to feel as if I had been wired to a pylon. I was buzzing, which meant I was worried sick about not having done any work. I panicked, realised I needed some air and power walked to campus.

Since I dont have the internet at home at the moment I am only able to check emails etc here on campus and today I had lots of emails from my friends from my old job. It was great to hear from them and so I spent time emailing back before some man on a power trip came storming into the room declaring that the library was going to close in 5 minutes so we all should save our work and move away. 5 minutes felt kind of short notice but I didn't want to kick up a stink so I left quietly. Inside, however, I was seething.

Right, one of my hands feels like its going to give way so I will call it a day for now but start again tomorrow sometime.

xx