Un-Becoming

I wish I had a photo of the grove I found today. I wish I had a photo of a lot of things, but sometimes your camera battery runs out, you think you left your mobile at home and you accidently delete the photos you take, anyway.

One from today which did not happen to disappear back into the space of pixels.

Those are just wishes and mistakes to do with photography and searing this adventure into my visual brain. Though really, it's more the minty after-taste of memory which you remember. I mean, how often do you actually dig back through your 5000 plus photos?

When I'm in dire need of some photoshop entertainment and I am lacking in current images to play with, yes, but generally, no. You move on with life. Every day has something different happening. Even if you did have a picture for every second you stepped, you still would just have a minty after-taste of memory. Nothing is the same as sitting on that wood bench that is so far off the ground, a height of 5'7'' still leaves my feet (being rather a bit sore from a four hour hike through parks, side-streets and a highway halfway to the nearest village), dangling in contentment. The ground is literally a blanket of leaves, dirt and acorns, plys five or so squirrels hoping in and about the scenery. Green bark trees stretch and scraggle their way into a yellow sky making it look as if their branches were a Japanese ink painting.

Today I learned the real meaning behind "going on a journey." I meant, when I stepped out of my door, to go to a particular nature park that sits a couple miles outside of Bury St Edmunds which meant it would take around an hour and half to walk there, so long as I stayed on the right path. Just past the centre of town, as I slowed my lopping walk, I panicked. I had forgotten my phone. Now, note that I dug around in that pit of receipts, notes, 20 pence, used tissues, a jacket, camera, tangled earbuds and other odds. I did not upend the thing or properly dig about. I sighed and went on. I did not want to waste time searching for it, and hey, I knew the general direction, right?

Wrong. Well, not entirely. I came to a five way which terrified me, as most multi-way stops still do around here and I judged the sign pointing down the street I was meant to turn too. I waffled. These signs are not very clear and streets like to change names halfway down them. I convinced myself it was up one way and not continuing down. My inituition twigged. But I trekked on anyway. I eventually found myself in the direction of another park and I knew I had gone off course. I could still backtrack though, just lower down and through that park. It would work out. I discovered bits of amusement, like a field of sheep and perfect paths with tree tunnels. I ended up in a residential area I had gotten lost in back in September but I knew I was still moving in the right direction. I kept on.

On and on. Until I passed a sign stating I was leaving Bury St Edmunds and I began down the highway, which, in general are never the best places to be walking. In England it's just as shifty as any other place where vehicles are allowed. Except they can go faster here. Also, it was open farmland, few signs and place names I recognised but wasn't comfortably familiar with. So I turned back. And I walked and walked. Up and up. Into more residential areas but I kept on because I knew I was back in the town, I had passed the River Linnet, which marks the south end of the area and eventually I should get back to familar territory. Thing is, when you map something out. Look at a map. Or even picture paths in your mind, they always, always look a lot shorter than they actually are.

On and on. Up and up. The only thing that vaguely consoled me that I wasn't getting caught in the tangled masses of residential side-streets, alleyways and walking paths was the water tower in the distance. I couldn't see the abbey though and that's been my main compass point until now.

The houses, as character-driven as they were, still left me on edge.

I was biting my lip and checking my watch, it wasn't anywhere near dinner time, but when wandering off my track, I get nervous.

There I was, in the astoundingly hot 17 degree sun of October, distracting my mind with "what a pretty garden...oh a castle."

A castle.

On a side-note I'd like to mention how, since coming to England, there are certain things that are still so amazing but so common that you cannot wrap you mind around it, and so, like a character thrown into a chaotic battle in a fantasy novel, you just go with it.

Whatever. It's a castle.

Que me zeroing in on the building.

Wherein I found a sign pointing down the road from it stating "town centre," finding the castle to be part of a university I didn't know existed here and then the aforementioned bench in the middle of a copse of trees where I spent some time chatting to the foliage and musing on journey's.

I wondered where that street that went down from the five way stop would have led me if I had gone on it. I wondered if I had kept trekking down the highway going away from Bury, where I would have ended up.

Then I realised all that wondering did not good. I could wish, wonder and muse all I desired but nothing would change from how things went until that very second.

I have always said I love to explore and wander and yet I always find myself, even when I leave full days for it, getting nervous, worried and concerned when my directions take me to entirely unexpected places.

Ironically I later realised I had my phone in my purse the entire time, and I had kept going on the highway, I would have ended up at the 200 acre nature park I had originally been aiming for.

Instead I wandered in another park and through the west side of the city more.

I was somewhat disappointed. And yet, had I not ended up doing what I did I would not have found that glorious bench, in that entirely deserted copse of trees on that universe campus where I had the revelation that no matter what I do, it does not deserve or receive fantastic fanfare. No matter what I do, it is just stuff. No matter what I do, it is just another day. Nothing is special.

I have always been so concerned about making things count, of making the most of situations, of being curious and adventurous and pushing myself to extremes, all in the name of building foundations toward something great.

The thing is, nothing I do is anything better than anyone else. Nothing I will do will be better. The key is how I live it.

I haven't quite figured out who I really am, under all the things I have become, but hopefully I'll dig it up one of these days.

I was told recently by a fellow teacher that the best way to get anywhere with some of my struggles with the students' behaviour is to act. I need to practice the art of putting on a character in order to better control the situation.

And yet, today, the earth-bound character I am, attached to a phone like it's a life-line and attached to accomplishing certain things, or else a day is considered a waste, is not who I am. Not really.

I am an imaginist who sits on benches and has a conversation with the trees while feet kept snug in lace boots, swing back and forth and I feel like I am ten years-old and pretending I am everything from a detective, to a secret agent, to a space explorer or a faerie.

But is even that who I am?

After all, that is I when I am alone with myself and me. Who am I when it is just I?

Brain racing faster than the Orient Express,
Moony

Unpacking People's Perspectives

"A philosopher once asked, "Are we human because we gaze at the stars, or do we gaze at them because we are human?"

Pointless, really..."Do the stars gaze back?" Now that's a question." 
— Neil Gaiman (Stardust)

I love to imagine the sort of people statues like this one in Athens see on a daily basis.

Haven't done a quote of the week post in a long time so this is me getting back on that particular train after I stumbled across this gem, scrolling GoodReads between writing CV's the other day. 

Today's feature is another one of my favourite authors. Known for Stardust, Coraline, American Gods, Neverwhere, episodes of Doctor Who, among many other things. This is one of my favourite quotes because depending on how you read it or what you focus on, you could take it multiple different ways. Sometimes I take it to mean we should wonder, we should imagine. Today I took it as being aware of the perspectives of ourselves and others in the world.  

I'd don't have any piquant tale, nothing that deals with dark and cruel issues, from the world's and my own perspective I am a middle-class Caucasian Canadian female; in reality, I should have nothing to say in terms of bad perspectives, I have no right to say anything really. I'm one step down from the top of priviledge, which, if I had been male, would have been it.

Then again, I am writing this as me, authentic with my "curious way of viewing the world" as someone recently said to me. I couldn't tell you what is so curious about my perspective though, because it is my perspective. I can however recognize there are faults in my perspective, and at the least, that is a good start to always learning how to having a less judgemental one, whether the perspective is being turned on yourself, on others, or one which others turn on you.

I have two experiences which involve someone's perspective of me and how I took the words from my perspective. From your perspective you might feel they were completely deserved and I overeacted and that is your perspective and that's okay.

"You're too mousey. Fix it."

One of my managers said this to me a couple years ago. It hurt. Badly. It hit all the corners I knew were holding me back, all the corners which had always left me in shadows, forgotten, even by individuals I called friends. I know I am an Introvert (yeah, blog title a giveaway much?), I know I have a tendancy to be shy and it takes time before I'm comfortable with a person, especially when I am aware they are sonic-scanning my every move for some fault. Like not giving good eye-contact, apparently I visibly shake, rambling, mumbling and speaking in a breathy voice. I've been shot down all the time because of those first impressions that failed, even though I know, give me time to get comfortable, get me focused on something, so I forget I'm being stared at (like with piano performances or Irish dancing), and I'll be a fantastic at whatever you want me to be. Sadly, the business world doesn't have the time or patience to allow that and I live in fear because of that knowledge, when logically I know, they are just as human too.

After all, I look back on that experience now and I realize, she said it probably to help me. She was a blunt individual and working in the Wal-mart PhotoCentre as your main job is going to do that to anyone after a while anyway. Businesses don't have time or energy to be quiet and kind. She also might have just been having a bad day and I was a week into being new and wasn't "perfect" enough with a few of the processes. It happens.
 
What have employers said to you in your past that hurt? Why do you think they said it? How did you react? Have you let it go or is it still dragging you down? 

"Hahaha! Stupid elephant ears! You shouldn't wear it up."

Second day of high school, my hair in a French braid. I wore a pink collared shirt, practical beige shorts and Teva sandals. I look back on it now, mortified that I didn't have a better backbone to not just wear what I thought my mom would want me to, or that I didn't have enought of a perspective to know what I truly wanted to wear. Either way, I was thirteen, impressionable and still very, very shy.

That didn't go very well with the boy in science class who sat next to me and made the comment when he saw my hair (and ears). I later pegged him as a trouble student who was always mouthy to teachers, got suspended a lot, somehow graduated and I haven't a clue what he's doing today. Either way, he was my bain of existence for the first few years of high school, after which he got bored when I would just mumble a response back or ignore his shoving and pushing.

I know now he probably said that stuff because he was trying to make himself feel better for who knows what reasons. He might have done it because he thought he was funny. Most of the guys in high school tended to say rude or mean things, flat out ignore me or would gang up to pull my hair at my locker (yay for curls, not). I still haven't cracked their perspectives and don't know what prompted those words or actions, but I moved on. I ignored it and stuck it all into a box in my mind.

However, I never, ever did wear my hair up again in high school or around high school people. (Nor have I spoken to many since graduating). It took until about two years ago that I finally was confident to wear it up in public. I let someone else's words dictate me into a state of fear.

Fear. That is all perspective come down to. It might be your self-perspective, which is actually by far the harshest because it takes your own voice and the things you've learned and experienced in the outside world. Then it becomes internalized, running a marathon of self-hatred 24/7.

It might be the perspective of others on you, which comes out of their own internalizations of self-perspective and of their present emotions, because humans are quite fantastic at just blurting things without thinking of the ramifications first.

It might be your perspective of others, which could be skewed because you are not that individual person. I'll never know why that manager said what she said or why she was the way she was, let alone whatever went on in the head of that hormone-raging trouble boy (and his friends). Even my friends of the time. Though they are a huge anomaly of confusion and misunderstandings that will probably wait for another day to explore.

It has however kept me aware that I am a very shy individual who finds it hard to be comfortable around people until some time and acquaintance passes. Get to that point and I'm an intuitive and intelligent conversationalist. However I'm also abnormally sensitive to words, invasions of space, and especially jabs on my ability to perform exceptionally at whatever task I am set.

For now, I invite you to think back on things people have said to you, or how they've acted around you.

How have those words or actions impacted you?

Think about what they may have taught you about yourself and your own perspectives. Grow from these experiences. However small, however serious. Grow. Don't stop. Open your leaves to the sun and learn lots.

Always observing.
Moony.