Category
Reflections
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01.01.03Home AbstractMore images...When I was a kid, in bed and unable to sleep at night, I would look up at the ceiling and imagine what it would be like if the world was turned on its head, studying the shape of the room from the perspective of the empty expanse of the ceiling. If I lived on the ceiling, how would I get through the door? I'd need to clamber up to the doorway, suspended a couple of feet from the floor (ceiling) surface. The windows would be low the walls. The lightswitch high up. I'd need to avoid the light ...
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01.01.03On Visual MemoryAt one point, a few years ago, my friends used to poke gentle fun at me for always drawing maps using the objects on the table: "So imagine that this salt cellar is me, and that ashtray is the corner of the road...hand on, can you pass that fork? Ok, that fork is the zebra crossing, and the mug, I mean the bus was going along here like this..." My listening friends would start to chip in usefully: "What's this pepper pot?" "How about my lasagne?" "Can this glass be a bus stop?" and so on. Smart arses. But I can't help it: ...
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01.01.03On Voting, and Political PartiesIt was really hot that week. I remember the weather with the kind of clarity that comes with being a final year student living in a flat overlooking a park, watching people play frisbee, drink lager and loll about in the sunshine while I studied for my finals and wished plagues of pollen and midges upon them. Bastards. It was the second election I'd voted in, but the first I'd paid much attention to. In 1992, I'd been living in the Tory-for-ever-and-ever constituency of Kensington and Chelsea. I sent in my vote in a tatty envelope from Mexico - taking part ...
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01.01.03Person, Not ProductConclusion #1:This site is about me. Don't forget the crucial "about". It's a little word, but it makes a big difference. I am not my website.Conclusion #2:I love the internet. I love the medium and the possibilities and the potential and the people.Conclusion #3:Writing will always be my first love.Conclusion #4:I need to reconcile the things I love in order to be happy.Conclusion #5:If you are trying to read between the lines, don't bother. There's nothing there but white space. I'm back.As you may have been aware, I've been thinking. I needed to take a step back, reconcile the public and ...
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01.01.03The CrackI remember the exact moment when the world cracked. We'd been drinking over at a friend's house in Cochabamba for a whole long, hot afternoon. Rum and orange juice on a rooftop, with the gentle hum of the market four stories below, an unrelenting sun, little shade and the ice melting quickly in our glasses. After a few hours, our heads started to throb with sun and rum, and we decided to seek shelter in the only air-conditioned place in town: the cinema. Walking through the town centre towards the cinema, the sun was hot on my head, and the paving ...
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01.01.03On TeachersThe best teacher I ever had, since you ask, was not one of the obvious ones. I had some cracking teachers in college and university - Sylla (Spanish), Theo (English), Rosie (Sociolinguistics and Quechua) - in their own ways, each of them inspired me to learn, extending the student-teacher relationship into friendship (whether that meant eating chocolate fondue at their flat or lending favourite books and urging me to read them) and I have to thank them. But the best teacher I ever had was not my favourite. She was a woman called Ms Stacke and she was not an ...
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01.01.03On Public RecognitionI remember having an argument with a very worthy activist friend when I was studying in Canada all those years ago. He was always organising petitions, protests, rallies, demonstrations, hunger-strikes and whatnot, against logging, war, poverty, homophobia, whaling, environmental waste...you name it. If there was a cause, he was up in arms about it. I was happy and eager much of the time to participate in the things he co-ordinated, and even took on some responsibilites myself, because I believed strongly in the causes involved. But the argument came about when one day we had organised a huge beach-cleaning operation ...
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01.01.03On StuffPacking while moving house. We love it. Sample conversation with my mum, knee deep in packing tissues and cardboard boxes:Me: Oh, what's this long thin piece of material I've just found tucked away in a box in the attic?Mum: That's the hem off those curtains we used to have in the spare room in St Quintin Avenue, you know the ones - they were a bit too long so I had to take them up.Me: Oh right. Where are the curtains then?Mum: Goodness knows. No idea. I think we gave them away when we moved from that house, must have ...
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12.19.02Why are we waiting?I hate waiting. I'm really bad at it. See, I'm impatient at the best of times, and P frequently accuses me of wanting everything at once. It's true. Despite my previous assertion that I measure out life in doses of delayed gratification, the truth is that that's fine as long as I'm the one delaying it. Making myself wait, fine. Other people making me wait, very unfine indeed. If someone says they'll pop over this afternoon sometime, I'm completely stuck. Since they might arrive and interrupt me at any time, it's difficult to start anything properly - you can't embark on ...
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12.16.02Say CheeseI saw a photo the other day in which I was snapped while on the phone to my sister. My eyes are closed, and I am gesticulating. Caught in mid speech, I look scarily like my mother. My mum cannot have her picture taken without talking, or waving her arms about. I think it's a nerves thing. As soon as you point a camera in her direction, she starts speaking and gesticulating, saying, "oh, what do you want me to do?" or "ok, I'm waiting," or "oh no, I feel silly, just hurry up and take it." Consequently, in every photo ...
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