Rambles
I'm in London -- or rather, Loughton -- visiting Harry at East 15. He's in classes from 10-4, and for what feels like the first time in my life, I have literally nothing I need to be doing. (Apart from looking at jobs websites, of course, but I check those at least every other day anyway, and new vacancies are not going to disappear within 24 hours of being posted.) But no reading, no coursework, not even any activisty things, since I'm still new enough on the Edinburgh scene that I wasn't able to take on any of the recent tasks that needed doing, since they all required some local logistical knowledge I don't yet have.
Sadly, freeing though I suppose it is, I'm just a bit bored. Not that I haven't been feeling the same listlessness up in Edinburgh -- that's primarily why I haven't been posting much -- but at least up there there are always minor life details that need attending to, so I am seldom so completely at a loss. Here, I would walk in the forest (beautiful beautiful Epping Forest, old lovely REAL deciduous forest! Trees like I've missed with the whole of my being) but it's been too rainy. It was sunny on Sunday, and Harry and I took a little walk through the edge nearest his house, but we had to cut it short to head into London to catch a play.
I've a book I could read, too, but that feels lonely, and I crave at least imagined interaction. Hence my coming to the East 15 computer lab to suckle onto the warm breast of the internet. Such was my intention, anyway. In reality, as I write this, I'm sitting in Harry's room on his internetless laptop; I'll USB the file and upload it when I go, but for now I'm waiting for the rain to die down. For most of the morning, the sky had been clear-misting in that funny sort of way where it's not really raining but everything gets wet (there's a Scottish word for that -- of course there is -- but I've forgotten it), but about five minutes before I meant to set out, it started really pouring. I suppose it's a good thing, since otherwise I'd have been caught in it, but it still places me here and dry rather than wet and online (to be honest, I'm not sure which one I'd prefer).
The other option, of course, is to be writing something. I'm writing this, of course, but I mean writing creatively. Or at least thoughtfully, in some structured way and for more than a few paragraphs at a time. Lately the only writing I've done has been on message boards, and since that's usually spontaneous and discursive, it tends to be less structured and less well thought-out, and thus has only served to make me hyper-aware of all the flaws in my style, without necessarily highlighting any way by which I might improve it. That is, I can see what I'm doing wrong, or over-doing (and I can see it here!) but short of picking throuh every single sentence, I'm not sure how to improve it. I use far too many linking words; while I believe in beginning sentences with conjunctions where appropriate, I do it all the freaking time. I think I've been using it as a crutch, and I'm tiring of it. I also include far too many parenthetical asides, right there in the sentences rather than tidied away into their own sentences -- and I write, with or without these asides, such long and unweildy sentences. Seventeenth-century sentences, or maybe Eighteenth, sprawling out along the page, so over-gorged with clauses they can barely stand on their own twelve feet.
What, though, can I do to stop myself? (And you see that 'though' is another of those not-strictly-necessary linking words, stitching up my prose with a complex overlock, when all it really needs is a little tacking to hold it together. And there again is that unnecessary 'and', which is two faults in one; and there again, and here. And this whole three-sentence point is itself parenthetical.) Do you notice it, Dear Readers*? Or have you suddenly been made hyper-aware of my flawed prose, like I am? Are you now looking over this whole passage thinking 'oh yeah, I see what she meant there, oh and there she did it again'? Or am I just whinging into an overly self-critical void, and making myself boring in the process?
The sun's come out. Maybe I'll go take a walk in the forest after all.
* A pretentious (if ancient) convention in itself, though in this case a self-conscious one. I like it. It helps me to simultaneously imagine that vast numbers of unknown people are reading this (thus making it worthwhile) and, by its very over-the-top pretentiousness, that my entire audience is actually imaginary, despite all evidence to the contrary, thus making the whole exercise of writing this journal unintimidating enough for me to actually do it candidly.
Sadly, freeing though I suppose it is, I'm just a bit bored. Not that I haven't been feeling the same listlessness up in Edinburgh -- that's primarily why I haven't been posting much -- but at least up there there are always minor life details that need attending to, so I am seldom so completely at a loss. Here, I would walk in the forest (beautiful beautiful Epping Forest, old lovely REAL deciduous forest! Trees like I've missed with the whole of my being) but it's been too rainy. It was sunny on Sunday, and Harry and I took a little walk through the edge nearest his house, but we had to cut it short to head into London to catch a play.
I've a book I could read, too, but that feels lonely, and I crave at least imagined interaction. Hence my coming to the East 15 computer lab to suckle onto the warm breast of the internet. Such was my intention, anyway. In reality, as I write this, I'm sitting in Harry's room on his internetless laptop; I'll USB the file and upload it when I go, but for now I'm waiting for the rain to die down. For most of the morning, the sky had been clear-misting in that funny sort of way where it's not really raining but everything gets wet (there's a Scottish word for that -- of course there is -- but I've forgotten it), but about five minutes before I meant to set out, it started really pouring. I suppose it's a good thing, since otherwise I'd have been caught in it, but it still places me here and dry rather than wet and online (to be honest, I'm not sure which one I'd prefer).
The other option, of course, is to be writing something. I'm writing this, of course, but I mean writing creatively. Or at least thoughtfully, in some structured way and for more than a few paragraphs at a time. Lately the only writing I've done has been on message boards, and since that's usually spontaneous and discursive, it tends to be less structured and less well thought-out, and thus has only served to make me hyper-aware of all the flaws in my style, without necessarily highlighting any way by which I might improve it. That is, I can see what I'm doing wrong, or over-doing (and I can see it here!) but short of picking throuh every single sentence, I'm not sure how to improve it. I use far too many linking words; while I believe in beginning sentences with conjunctions where appropriate, I do it all the freaking time. I think I've been using it as a crutch, and I'm tiring of it. I also include far too many parenthetical asides, right there in the sentences rather than tidied away into their own sentences -- and I write, with or without these asides, such long and unweildy sentences. Seventeenth-century sentences, or maybe Eighteenth, sprawling out along the page, so over-gorged with clauses they can barely stand on their own twelve feet.
What, though, can I do to stop myself? (And you see that 'though' is another of those not-strictly-necessary linking words, stitching up my prose with a complex overlock, when all it really needs is a little tacking to hold it together. And there again is that unnecessary 'and', which is two faults in one; and there again, and here. And this whole three-sentence point is itself parenthetical.) Do you notice it, Dear Readers*? Or have you suddenly been made hyper-aware of my flawed prose, like I am? Are you now looking over this whole passage thinking 'oh yeah, I see what she meant there, oh and there she did it again'? Or am I just whinging into an overly self-critical void, and making myself boring in the process?
The sun's come out. Maybe I'll go take a walk in the forest after all.
* A pretentious (if ancient) convention in itself, though in this case a self-conscious one. I like it. It helps me to simultaneously imagine that vast numbers of unknown people are reading this (thus making it worthwhile) and, by its very over-the-top pretentiousness, that my entire audience is actually imaginary, despite all evidence to the contrary, thus making the whole exercise of writing this journal unintimidating enough for me to actually do it candidly.