farawayness

What it is to be happy, feels so sweet. Sort of surprising, to suddenly just feel so happy. A cloudy Sunday night, the moon rose while I was inside. And then walking across the quad again, the grass glistens beneath the patchy sky.

But it's not even that. It's not that things look pretty tonight. It's just that feeling of being happy to be somewhere -- to be here. Or perhaps maybe just happy to be. To be.

It's a very simple feeling, disarmingly simple. And I think it's probably as much of a point as I can gather from all of this. And I'll just take a couple of moments to taste it. First the sweetness on the tip of my tongue and then bitterness at the back, then the whole mix of it. All of it.

It feels the same way when I'd leave work, storm up Mass Ave, then to Dupont, turn the corner on the Circle and find the jazz band. Blazin' away, jammin' true, trumpets and trombones in front of the doughnut shop. Finding a stranger to dance with before filing underground, a small smile waiting for the Red Line.........listening to the people's stories of the day and the night.

An orange tea pot, like my old Grandma's saucepan, as bright as orange can be. Lady Grey tea, yes, some milk, and sit out on that old rotten wooden balcony, watching the birds rustling up in the eaves.

Seeking out the bearded musicman downstairs, see his painted drums and guitar amidst the dirty laundry. Sit and watch the looping machine, sippin' Blue Moon and taking photos of socks a'drying on a fan.

We all left the house, I was the last to leave. And I'm here now, faraway from all that. My, tonight is sweet though, despite our interminable farawayness.

1st week...

Right. I suppose it is about time that I wrote something here...time has been flowing around my thoughts and I was left a bit behind the present. I am almost caught up I think and getting more of a grip on what I am doing and where I am, which is useful for living a somewhat organised life. Hmmm. Not that I am organised enough to do my laundry on time or make sure that I don't just eat porridge and cheese sandwiches for 90% of my meals.

Yes, so I find myself back in the town of "gaping spires and dreaming tourists", though I see few of either, being mainly in the northern suburbs. It's good to be back, good to be thinking again -- best of all to be thrown back into a situation where I feel different every week and with every conversation I have.

Ooh, the shower is free. Exciting.

Anyway, now I am clean. Yes, so we have had one week of the course so far -- which means we've done the first unit of our first two courses. The first is a research methods course -- we discussed the invention of Africa and the insights that postcolonial literature and critical theory (and post-structuralism) gives us in discussing the way people have conceptualised the continent, different groups of people, and the way that people choose to organise and react to power and knowledge structures. The second course is very broad-- for the first week, we discussed the colonial state until 1940!

This week in particular I started to concentrate on one question that has started to occupy my thoughts whenever they are not thinking about whether I should eat another chocolate biscuit (four already today and they are the serious kind of chocolate biscuits, more chocolate than biscuit) or how to ride my bike with a bus about two inches away from my ear.

And that is -- how are scholarship and activism connected? What implications does the quest for social justice have for my studies? How can you keep your viewpoint and not betray your ideals....how do you have ideals after you've deconstructed them? Do they stand the test?

.......