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Past, Present, Future.

28/4/2014

Sunday the 28th of April 2014

There are two people inside of me, the first quietly writes her internal monologue on the back of her eyelids, inside her chest and another, the second, writes about all that is irrelevant, all that is external, the time, the day, the night. I live in a one room apartment with a bathroom, on the ground floor of a Taiwanese apartment block. I work in a school. How much of anything I write is the truth? How much of the truth exists in anything we read? If I were to write the truth, it would be for my own peace of mind. I bought a Canon EOS M and watched the red sun set. Carrier bags of pineapples. Sugar on the ground. I bought a watch too.
Other people would be affected. My entire life has been about other people. Why did I come to Taiwan? I’m asked this question so often and each time I reply with something new, I forget the previous answers, I forget the question. I change the subject. The truth isn’t about all that exists externally and although it’s interesting to read, the relatable external occurrences are written for the benefit of others. Yet, the internal truth seems too dark, it is something which lives within us, our realities are controlled by conversations we have with ourselves, in our mind, the things that make us happy, the things that don’t. Every now and again it is easy to tell the truth, to externalise that which is internal but it’s always filtered through thought, it’s never emotion in its purest form. It has been written, even before it is spoken, with other people in mind.
One of my illustrations was recently featured on Tumblr, I felt quite proud and I now realise that I should probably draw more as although I don’t usually like my work (I find it so hard not to delete it), some people see things differently. A friend of mine wrote a post recently, he mentioned living alone and I realised that at the age of twenty three, I’ve spent six years doing just that with a single break in between where I lived at home. Even then, it was never my home up (I feel as though it eventually became home), which was strange as it was the home my family moved to but I didn’t. I have made and exhibited art work related to the notion of home, to being amongst worlds, military brat, a third culture kid, a global nomad, a gypsy, all of the terms I heard as a teenager. Terms which circled my mind constantly, terms I never fully understood until I began to analyse my existence, to examine my life, my behaviours, my thought processes, my rituals, my patterns, practices and my need to feel in control. A persistent lack of consistency, of stability, causes more than just stress.
Where are you from? In the UK, I found it hard to answer this question and yet here, I say the UK, or England as the language barrier prevents me from going into further detail. Where am I from? I wonder.
I called myself an amateur genealogist for a while. I loved finding historical records of houses and of the people who lived in them. I’m good at finding people, particularly those who don’t want to be found, birth records, death records, census records. I surrounded myself with information about other people’s lives as a way to escape my own. My landlord in Oxford made me feel uneasy about the room I lived in. I was a lodger. I knew it couldn’t be true and that someone had influenced his entire view of his home so I sought out to change his perception, to enable him to see beyond what was an uncomfortable past. I found everyone who had ever stayed in that house, in my room. ‘Georgian and Regency terraces, so important a feature of many towns, are thinly represented in Oxford, presumably because of the city’s lack of economic growth, and the requirement at that time that dons remain unmarried and resident in college.A few isolated groups survive, notably the late-Georgian stucco terrace at London Place, St. Clement’s.’ I lived on the end of those houses, the room on the third floor, with the window facing onto the street. Originally, there would not have been a view of the park as there is now; there would be a house in the way. The artist William Turner actually lived on London Road (not London Place) in St. Clement’s. He died at his home on St. John Street, Oxford in 1862. I have yet to decide whether or not to go into detail about the house I lived in.
The room I live in now, has no history, I am the first person to live in this room. Prior to this building being built, there may have been another home here at one time but I don’t believe this to be the case, it seems as though this space was waste land, based on the over growth remaining behind it. There is no way of accessing the back of the building and there is no roof terrace to see it clearly. I stood on a ladder at the end of the corridor the day I managed to successfully use the washing machine and was able to see out of the window properly. I acted fast though as I was unsure of whom the ladder belonged to and why it was there.
It’s 23:38PM, I finished marking three piles of exams yesterday, all of which took twice as long as they should’ve as almost all of them were written by children who should never have been allowed to move forward, there are so many children here who fail exams and are allowed to continue into the next stage of learning, rather than keeping them back in order to help and give them more time to practice. It’s absurd. They of course blame the teachers for flawed systems such as this. Parents need to understand that there is no shame in a child going backward if it will inevitably push them forward in the grand scheme of things, that it would ultimately improve their child’s life.
Sometimes I truly believe some parents are more worried about feeling embarrassed themselves than the welfare of their children. Being a slow learner doesn’t mean you’ll never amount to anything, it just means it takes a little more time for things to sink in. I was once told that I write statements as though they are true. This was said to me in a negative, critical or perhaps a constructive manner that I now recognise as being interesting information. I do write like that, I write as though a reader might be as accepting of my writing as I would be of theirs. I write without predicted contradiction or argument in mind, I write as I can, I only write as myself. I try to write for others, so that one day they might write for me.

Saturday the 19th of April 2014

I woke up early today; I showered, got dressed, stripped my bed and opened my door. I walked into the corridor of my ground floor apartment, a corridor I share with seven other people. There is a washing machine at the end of the corridor and the main doors into the building at the other end. The washing machine is something I tried to use once, failed and decided never to use again. However, my landlady insists it will only cost me NT $20 and that I should follow her four steps, put the money in, press the red button, put the clothes in, add detergent and decide how much water you want, close the lid and press the green button. I say four steps as she told me about the NT $20, the red button, the green button and the water amount. I just presumed the detergent and clothes should go in before the water…

I opened the washing machine lid, there were clothes inside. Wet clothes, belonging to one of my neighbours… now, I don’t know how long they’ve been in there or whether or not I should’ve taken them out but I genuinely felt like I should’ve just washed all of my clothes, by hand, as I had been doing previously rather than attempting to use the communal washing machine of doom which has thus far been nothing but a disappointment to me.

It’s 11:30AM, I don’t have any exams to mark this weekend (a rarity), I don’t have any presentation cards to write and I don’t have anywhere to be which means, I have plenty of time to read and write. Reading and writing? Aren’t you an English teacher? Yes, I am but there is nothing worse (ok, there is) than feeling as though your own vocabulary is slipping as you constantly repeat the words “blue, Sue, glue, true…” etc. day in, day out, for six months.

Six months? Is that how long I’ve been here? It is.

…man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world - and defines himself afterwards.

(Sartre, 1946)

However, I should come clean and admit, publicly, that I handed in my letter of resignation on Sunday. There are a number of reasons for this, all of which will surface at a later date. Nothing causes you to evaluate your own existence like moving ten thousand kilometres from home. The above quote refers to man, meaning either man or woman. I feel as though I should point that out as it bothers me when people (usually women) make ridiculous comments about use of the word man. There’s something about blog trolling pseudo third-wave feminists, as it were, that really grinds my gears. Have another quote:

Think about the moments when you have been happily lost in a task - unaware of time passing and impervious distraction. That’s when you’ve experienced the absorption and concentration that psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi famously identified as “flow”. Such moments point the way to goals that are fulfilling because they’re tied to your identity. Contrary to conventional wisdom - which holds that the harder the goal, the greater the accomplishment - flow leads you to consider where you already excel and to build your goals from there.

(Streep and Bernstein, 2013)

I have been thinking a lot about my own goals recently, specifically who I am, where I live, who I want to be and where I want to live. I have come to a number of interesting conclusions. The first being that I no longer want to be here, I’ve said this plenty of times this week but it’s just not for me. I’m a great teacher, my students are wonderful (most of the time) and in terms of their language skills, they’re improving greatly but it’s just not for me.

I studied art for ten years, three years in high school, three years in college, three years at university and then a one year post graduate course in focusing on aesthetics, art theory, the philosophy of art, curating and cultural institutions. It feels as though, although over one hundred and eighty job unsuccessful applications forced me into this position (travelling to the other side of the world to ‘find myself’, just kidding, to ‘find work’) and I don’t regret it, I would’ve been better off (financially) had I been on the dole… I make about £500 a month here. My rent is about £110 a month and it’s really hard to save money and live like a normal person if you plan on eventually leaving Taiwan.

I’m currently in the process of eating everything (dried, powdered, condiments, etc.) in my apartment so that I can start to live off fresh food that can be kept in the fridge rather than the cupboard as I’m already trying to wrap up my life here. My boyfriend bought me a toaster, I feel as though I should bring it with me. I need to clean it today, I love toast but the bread here has so much sugar in it that it’s not doing my waistline any favours. Oh, I should probably mention I’ve been eating said sugary bread for about five out of the six months I’ve been here, almost constantly, every day. The bakeries in Taiwan are amazing; they’re full of the most incredible confectionery.

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Inconsistencies.

19/4/2014

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Saturday the 19th of April 2014

I realise now that a few inconsistencies here and there on this blog in terms of date styles, italicising subheadings, punctuating titles, having titles at all and worrying about paragraph sizes is probably good for me. I’m actually starting to like it, some of the inconsistencies seem to be becoming consistent and those inconsistencies seem to be creating a more compelling blog. It feels more honest than previous blogs, not allowing me to go back and delete, correct or obsess over the posts contradicts every blog I’ve ever kept and speaking as an award winning blogger (Degrees Unedited Blogger Award as featured in A-N Magazine’s Degree Shows Guide, 2012), I’ve kept a few blogs over the years. I also enjoy posting and reblogging images I find visually appealing.

Today is the first day I’ve had to myself and by that I mean, all to myself. No work commitments, no social arrangements, no appointments and no errands outside of my apartment. It’s bliss. I understand how I’ve been affected in such a hugely negative way by this job, days like this are scarce and I’m the kind of person who really values self-reflection, this is to me what yoga and meditation are to others. I’m calmed by the screen. I’ve managed to catch up on Season 3 of Suits, I put chickpeas in water to soak for tomorrow, I cooked garlic and olive spaghetti, spent time blogging, pinning, writing, laughing, crying, singing, all in front of my laptop. As I mentioned earlier, I did go into the corridor to use the washing machine…

After waiting an hour or so I decided to bite the bullet and take the neighbours clothes out of the machine. I found the nicest carrier bag I could find and put the clothes inside. I placed them on top of what could possibly be a dryer (which I don’t know how to use). However, it wasn’t full of wet clothes as I had expected. It was a coat that stank of urine. Now, I couldn’t tell if it was human urine or that of a dog but I know that it made me very uncomfortable to have to lift it out and place it in a bag. I should’ve wiped the machine down more thoroughly than perhaps I did. I placed my bedding and clothes in with detergent, I put in two NT $10 coins, I pressed the red button, followed by the water and then finally the green button. As soon as you put the coins in, a countdown begins. Nothing happened. I went back to my room. I waited a few more minutes before deciding that not seeing water fill the machine meant that I should turn the tap at the back of the machine on. It worked. I held my breath and went back to my room.

I waited for an hour when I heard a beeping noise. It was done. I looked in the machine to find all of my clothes washed and spun to dry out a little. I have never been so happy to see clean clothes in my entire life. I mean, they weren’t as clean as perhaps they would be in my parent’s washing machine (based on the cleanliness of my neighbours) but they were clean, cleaner than they’ve been for a few months due to me washing everything by hand. Especially the bedding, being able to sleep on clean bedding is such a good feeling and it’s almost impossible to wash bedding by hand as often as one might like to. I should also point out that my bed is huge so it makes for an even more challenging task. It’s 5:00 PM now and I’m hungry, I think I’ll make some cereal. I ate the spaghetti for brunch as it was between breakfast and lunch. I might try to get my camera fixed tomorrow, I’ve owned it since 2008 (it was my eighteenth birthday present) and the flash is stuck, the card cover is broken and it really could do with a new lens and some TLC. I was told that Carrefour has a camera repair shop so I will try there.

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Past, Present, Future.

Wet Clothes.

Inconsistencies.

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