The Experience of Work Experience

Head down. Eager eyes. Fast fingers, fast feet, think on your feet.
Concentration.
Enthusiasm.
Don't ask too many questions just get on with the task in hand.
Try and be confident, try and be a natural,
Just try.
Every work experience student knows this.
They are ordered by the voice that repeatedly clangs:
"Make the most of every opportunity!"
That deafening, deadening phrase,
That crushes as it urges on.
"Seize the here and now!"
So we do this amongst those who have long abandoned such a stifling mantra,
Those who are content to just live from day to day,
or are grateful for just surviving.
Those who are too tired to be restless.
And while we are busy being restless,
Being enthusiastic, ambitious,
Dis-contented,
Dis-satisfied,
Life passes by.

When one's sister gets a new man

She’s left me now, she’s gone.
However near she may be, she’s gone.
She’s so far gone in this new love song,
that’s come along to steal her from me.
She’s jetting away
There’s no getting her to stay,
She’s well and truly left me now, she’s gone.

Her eyes have glazed over, she’s gone.
She’s been struck, she’s been dazed, she’s gone.
She’s into the role, the devoted soul
And it’s taking the whole of her to play the part well.
There’s no time for me now
I’m on my own with me now
She’s definitely left me now, she’s gone.

The initiation into Life

Leaving University is more of an ordeal than I had expected. I was convinced that I was more than ready to escape from the fairy land institution where your life trundles along to the steady beat of deadlines, dinners and discussions, but no. Without the safety net of structure I feel, well, lost. It's like waiting in the departure lounge of an airport- you know you're about to embark on an exciting and potentially frightening journey, it's just that the plane hasn't taken off yet and no-one's told you when it will.
There are so many things I want to do. I want to do everything if that's possible. Write, act, sing, volunteer for charities, give blood, set up a business..the list goes on. I am impatient and restless, unable to settle, yet knowing settling is the only option if I want to move forward. I remember the frequent times when I had two or more looming deadlines at University and I would waste endless hours worrying about them both simultaneously instead of channelling my focus onto one and beginning. Or I would start one task, but only be able to think about the other that was lying dormant, waiting impatiently to be tackled.
That's the trouble with the modern adult mind. It can't filter effectively. Children can spent an infinite amount of time absorbed in something, whereas I can't remember the last time I didn't know exactly what the time was, or when I didn't know what was coming next (until now that is). In 'Voyage in the Dark', Jean Rhys's heroine says that living a life which is meticulously planned, which lacks sponteneity, is like being half-dead. Living in the moment is something we could all learn to do better. It is considered naive or foolhardy to live solely in the present, but actually it's a gift. You'll get more lows or lower lows but you'll also get higher highs. Above all you won't miss out on you're life, you'll be living it.
This is my new mantra: "Revel in uncertainty. Don't fear it." And I absolutely plan to live by this principal for this year...if I don't have a nervous breakdown first, that is.

The First Blog

I have to admit that this is not my first Blog, it's actually my third. I have another going on a different website. I'm still new to the blogging game though and I'm loving the experience. Everyone who can type or get to a computer can now be an author which is fantastic. This is one of the few great things about computer technology. It stimulates communication, it unites. It brings an individual into existence.

I think I'll start with a poem by another writer W.B Yeats, which is one of my favourites. It's not about love, but the death of love and the reigning in of natural passion. I think it captures everything that is true about modern attitudes to relationships.

Never give all the heart, for love
Will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women if it seem
Certain, and they never dream
That it fades out from kiss to kiss;
For everything that's lovely is
But a brief, dreamy, kind delight.
O never give the heart outright,
For they, for all smooth lips can say,
Have given their hearts up to the play.
And who can play it well enough
If deaf and dumb and blind with love?
He that made this knows all the cost,
For he gave all his heart and Lost.