Afternoons and coffeespoons
Aug. 19th, 2003 01:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
j4Spent most of the (long-ish) weekend staying with my parents, before heading up to Oxford for the tatmeet on Sunday.
Saw Sylvia (my best friend from school) on Friday night -- it was great to catch up with her, and reassuring to be reminded that even after months of not quite getting round to contacting each other we still feel like close friends once we start talking again. Rest of the time at home was spent talking, eating, drinking, listening to music, reading, and SLEEPING.
The tatmeet was well-attended:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bopeepsheep, imc, smallclanger (of course!), lnr, brrm, nou, monkeyhands, J-P, rejs, sion_a, aendr, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-syndicated.gif)
simoncozens, and Twofish. (Did I miss anybody? Apologies if I did!) Excellent turnout for a Deep Summer meet -- in fact that's probably more people than have posted to oxbridge.tat in the past year. The weather stayed good, it was lovely to meet smallclanger at last, and great to see everybody else again.
Feeling a bit too detached at the moment to write any more about Things That Happened. Other people have written more detailed accounts anyway.
Somehow being back at my parents' house felt different this time; normally I feel comforted by having all my childhood bits and bobs around me, but this time I felt a bit edgy about it, a bit trapped by all the Things (Mountains of Things, no less) which seem to tie me down to specific places. I sometimes wish I could just throw everything away, but then there's that one thing ... and that other thing ... and before I know it there's a huge suffocating pile of Things bearing down on me with the weight of years.
The house doesn't entirely feel like home any more -- every time my parents move an item of furniture or redecorate a room it comes as a shock. (It's a shock that passes almost as quickly as it is felt, but I still feel it, and the fact that I do so annoys me -- I don't want to resent change, and the passage of time. But the shock seems to happen at a fairly low level of consciousness.) They barely changed anything while I was there -- they didn't have the time or the money while Lorna and I were both living at home -- and now every time I go back another thing has moved, or vanished, or changed beyond recognition.
Long talks with my mum and with Sylvia helped to clarify what I'm thinking, where I'm going, and what I really want. Unfortunately the more people clarify this, the more I realise that the problem is not knowing where I'm going, but knowing how to get there. I feel like I'm trapped in some kind of Beckettian universe where all I can do is state, re-state, and otherwise narrate my current position to a variety of audiences (auditors?) ... yet I can never actually move, or change my state, or act anything other than the prescribed roles. I can't go on... I'll go on.
Saw Sylvia (my best friend from school) on Friday night -- it was great to catch up with her, and reassuring to be reminded that even after months of not quite getting round to contacting each other we still feel like close friends once we start talking again. Rest of the time at home was spent talking, eating, drinking, listening to music, reading, and SLEEPING.
The tatmeet was well-attended:
bopeepsheep, imc, smallclanger (of course!), lnr, brrm, nou, monkeyhands, J-P, rejs, sion_a, aendr, simoncozens, and Twofish. (Did I miss anybody? Apologies if I did!) Excellent turnout for a Deep Summer meet -- in fact that's probably more people than have posted to oxbridge.tat in the past year. The weather stayed good, it was lovely to meet smallclanger at last, and great to see everybody else again. Feeling a bit too detached at the moment to write any more about Things That Happened. Other people have written more detailed accounts anyway.
Somehow being back at my parents' house felt different this time; normally I feel comforted by having all my childhood bits and bobs around me, but this time I felt a bit edgy about it, a bit trapped by all the Things (Mountains of Things, no less) which seem to tie me down to specific places. I sometimes wish I could just throw everything away, but then there's that one thing ... and that other thing ... and before I know it there's a huge suffocating pile of Things bearing down on me with the weight of years.
The house doesn't entirely feel like home any more -- every time my parents move an item of furniture or redecorate a room it comes as a shock. (It's a shock that passes almost as quickly as it is felt, but I still feel it, and the fact that I do so annoys me -- I don't want to resent change, and the passage of time. But the shock seems to happen at a fairly low level of consciousness.) They barely changed anything while I was there -- they didn't have the time or the money while Lorna and I were both living at home -- and now every time I go back another thing has moved, or vanished, or changed beyond recognition.
Long talks with my mum and with Sylvia helped to clarify what I'm thinking, where I'm going, and what I really want. Unfortunately the more people clarify this, the more I realise that the problem is not knowing where I'm going, but knowing how to get there. I feel like I'm trapped in some kind of Beckettian universe where all I can do is state, re-state, and otherwise narrate my current position to a variety of audiences (auditors?) ... yet I can never actually move, or change my state, or act anything other than the prescribed roles. I can't go on... I'll go on.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-08-19 06:19 am (UTC)Do go on...
no subject
Date: 2003-08-19 06:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-08-25 03:37 pm (UTC)[sorry about lateness of reply, just realised I never followed up]
no subject
Date: 2003-08-26 05:45 am (UTC)(personally)
no subject
Date: 2003-08-19 07:20 am (UTC)My parents house doesn't feel like home anymore, either.
I've not a clue where I'm going either. Except I need to go to the co-op later. I don't feel I have a dialogue going on, but a series of scenes. Perhaps I'm more like a confused editor with some really weird text trying to remove all the eliptical sentences, arranging things into chapters, and so on?
The narration thing reminds me of 'I'm on the train' vicarious experience, reality grounded through another's experience. Like camcorders capturing places on holiday.