it's now heading to the end of october and i have been in Exeter almost a month...

Thank you R for your comment, lovely to hear from you.... particularly as you share those memories of The Mermaid in the 70's!!

Tho' today, instead of heading to the north coast to surf, I am hiding away in my flat nursing a sore throat...

The exploration of society/geography seems to be now looking under the tablecloths, exploring the deeper recesses and coming up with the realisation that magic never went away!!! Just read Enchantment of Modernity and it's quite a magical read

still to decide which field my dissertation is to be in, tho' I have the idea that it will be something to do with landscape....

but what happened yesterday was exciting too as I discovered that derrida is on youtube!!!! I can sit and hear the master talk in my own lounge!!! and it is all starting to make sense!!!!

i have been reading derrida this morning and I feel like I am running through an early morning woodland trying to grasp the mist that floats freely around me.... I can see it, I can feel it but cant quite get it!!!!

also remembered my 15 year old self sitting in The Mermaid listening to the conversation of the worldly, wordy Irish Trinity College undergraduates (oh they were so grown up!!)... I was determined to discover for myself the meanings of their words and spent the summer fetching such books from the library as Herman Hesse's Glass bead Game and Steppenwolf, Sartre's Nausea and Roads to Freedom and reading reading reading... by the time I had some idea of what it was about and a casual familiarity with the text the summer was over and the students back to their studies... so yesterday there I was in the post-grad coffee room, oh yes a very exclusive little area... and I was sitting listening to conversation about derrida, about post-post structuralism and what have I done...? yes indeed..... rushed off to the library to re-discover these ideas these words... today I have a 'critical theory cluster to attend... I have read the text, re-read the text and I have referred to text describing the text and do I get it???.... ha no it's like grasping mist

the second week is almost done and I have been reading, oh have I been reading! Sort of realise that I have spent a fortune, moved myself to the other side of the country away from all that I know in order to .... read.

and is it all starting to make sense....

are the hybrids coming out of the woodwork and starting to be familiar? Is the Other really there and am I enchanted or dis-illusioned by the process of modernity???? hmmmmmmm maybe my sense of or for my-self needs polishing, mirabilis, mira-cle, mirror.... is it the reflexive and cursive self that is screaming or is my ethnography too disabled by my lack of difference... if I keep writing I might persuade myself I have some clue as to some meaning, or is it all in the end meaningless.....

perhaps

quite simply

I

am

lost

ahhhhh it's been soooooo long! But once again I feel the need to communicate via Delilah...

so here i am sitting in the lounge of my new flat in central exeter. I have a seminar to attend later this afternoon but for most of today I have been enjoying the luxury of broadband at home. So I am about to book a cottage on the north coast for xmas week and am looking around for a decent yoga class... not much studying going on just yet but hopefully it will kick in ... have a couple of papers to read and finding it all rather scary really. Will my failing memory be up to a Masters in Research followed by a PhD I wonder??? Can only try

Sooooo to the actual experience! Being a student again and after such a long time is simply marvellous! But this time is fraught with the additional lack of knowledge of the town, the campus or any people, a bit like being 18 and heading off into the wide world alone... but this time with the uncomfortable baggage of 30 yrs of cynicism, a bad back and greying hair! and the total inability to drink more than 2 glasses of wine and remember anything of conversations. My first intro day ended in a local pub where I apparently had an excellent conversation with a Professor and now I wouldn't recognise him if he knocked on my froont door and introduced himself... hmmmm not good, not good at all. So, is the choice give up the booze altogether or just take the risk occassionally and hope I don't say anything too stupid, or too memorable that anyone feels the need to discuss things further. One thing I have realised this time around and it's very scary indeed is that I have no nerves at all about making a fool of myself and am quite happy to pipe up opinions in class!! In fact a little too keen really... they might have to find ways of keeping me quiet!!!