Skinning Moles

Today’s been a productive day. I’ve prepared dinner, stuck it in the oven to slow-cook all afternoon, cleaned up the kitchen, sent some emails and organised my laundry. Now I’m sat here doing two things that I deeply love; watching rugby league and writing in my journal. The match is St Helens VS Wigan, one of the great derbies of the sport, and St Helens are having a new stadium constructed right now so they’re playing their home games in my home town, Widnes, and seeing it on TV again is making me homesick. Not terribly so, but a tiny bit. Widnes isn’t a big town, which makes it so strange to see it televised, and even though all you can really see are the stadium’s stands and a little house in the corner it feels good to see home turf again. Can’t wait watch a few matches in person again. I’d played rugby league as a kid but despite being a monster of a child, bumped up into the team a year older than me because I was so tall, I was never much good at it on account of being too soft; I’d slow down when I ran into people, for example. I didn’t grow up in a house where sports were on TV all that much and I never really took any up as a kid when I gave up playing rugby, but as I turned 18 I started watching sports more, and the sport I started out playing was the one I ended up liking the most.

The journal is something I started 3 years ago. When I first went away on my travels I was given a journal as a gift from some friends on my very last night in the UK. A yellow paperback book with ruled paper, I shoved it into my backpack when I got home along with a cheap ballpoint pen, not having much time before I had to rest up before my flight. I hadn’t considered doing any kind of diarising before but as I thought about the book it made complete sense to record my summer abroad. Those first few days after arriving at summer camp were so overwhelming, everything being brand new, that I didn’t even pick the book up, it was only after a few days in when I found a little time to myself that I was able to start writing down my thoughts. My writing was awful; hastily written phrases with no description or sentence structure. Even my handwriting was markedly poor and oversized because I’d spent little time holding a pen in the years since I’d left sixth form. As the time at camp went along they both started to improve a little, but the real difference came after I’d left, and I was travelling. With the extra time to myself and having this real feeling of being out on my own adventure, I took to writing much more. It’s amazing when I look at this journal now to see how the writing looked on the very first page compared to the last – I never actually wrote about the final day when I flew back home so it’s the final day of fun in Boston, saying goodbye to people and the like. The journal wasn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination, it was my first real foray into writing so it wasn’t too creative or well done, there are big stretches where I’d just forget to write and miss days on end, and (probably the thing I regret the most) rather than dating each entry I’d mark them by counting how many days I’d been out there, so now, looking back, I have to do some mental gymnastics to figure out when exactly I’d written it.

I get home, and I give it up. What’s the point of keeping a journal back home after all? It’s not like I’m doing anything exciting if I’m just sat around at home. I picked up a shitty job at a supermarket to pull me through ‘til next summer, when I was going to go back to camp and then go to Canada after that, try and get a job there and stay as long as I could. In late spring, as the build up to the summer began again, I decided it was time to pick up pen and paper once more, so I went out and bought a journal myself; a large ruled moleskine notebook. Such a great book! I fell in love with them straight away, and they’ve been my journal book of choice ever since. I noted all the things I did before I went back across the pond; the trip to London for my visa, the goodbyes and fears, then the time I spent in Boston before going to camp, the day-to-day routine of camp. The journal double up as a scrapbook; as I’d gone along and found little things I’d taped them into the journal, things like tickets from gigs and my flights, a map of Boston’s mass transit system, etc. And then, suddenly, it just stopped. I can’t explain why but it came to a shuddering halt, and never started up again. Those experiences in Canada, the leaving of camp, it was never written down (though blogged about a little). I never threw the books away, but I didn’t pick them back up, I just brought them home with me and put them in my bookshelf.

After the mess of an experience I had in Canada I went to university, and about 5 months into that I decided to unearth that journal once more and start writing again. I was writing regularly with my studies now, after all, picking it up again would be easy, and I’ve finally kept it going. It’s now been 18 months solid of journaling my experiences. Spending an academic year abroad has probably made it easier because it’s packed with so many new experiences, but even without that I feel like I’m writing solidly, confidently, and enjoying it. I finished off that old journal and started a new one, a moleskine again but a smaller one, better suited to travel, that I finished in the space of 8 months. I read recently that the act of keeping a journal is an act of producing legacy, that though our day-to-day lives may not seem all that interesting to us right now, our grandchildren and great-grandchildren would find them fascinating in the same way we’d find a journal a relative had written in the late 1800’s absolutely enthralling. Whether I keep it up for years to come or it starts to come to an end when I’m finished with my degree, keeping a journal is one of the things I’m going to be really glad I did for years to come.

Three of my journals - one for the past, the present, and the future. The plain one on the left is the journal I started when I came to Plattsburgh last August, and finished it this March. The pac man journal in the middle is my current journal, it's about half-full by now, and the one on the right is a spare for me to use when I travel next (I have a larger spare journal that I'm going to use while I'm at home)

Solitaire with a blue pig

The sun is here, the weather’s warm, and I’m a lot more relaxed than I was this time last month. I’m spending my days cooking and cleaning, being the little housewife that no man wants to admit to being whilst finding ways to coexist with a cat that hates me with every cruel atom of its soul. And it’s not that bad, really; it’s a very simple life leaving me with lots of time to stay in touch with people and write, play music, and read. I’m completely broke, which is a downer on things, but it’s not the end of the world, and I’m still enjoying myself regardless of my poverty, it’s nice to slow down a little and relax. So here I am, sat at my laptop listening to a radio tribute to Gil Scott-Heron, who died just last week. He’s been a huge influence on me, and I’m forever grateful that I got the chance to go and see him perform last year in Manchester. They’re playing what’s probably Gil’s most famous song: ‘The Bottle’, all about alcohol addiction, Gil being someone who suffered from various addictions through his whole life. A blessing of mine is I’ve always been aware that I have an addictive personality and so I’ve known to avoid certain things that friends of mine may or may not have experimented with. That being said, I can still end up hooked on the dumbest of things, such as playing solitaire.

Anyone who’s ever owned a Windows computer will have played around with the little free games that come with it. I could never get to grips with minesweeper but I played a lot of solitaire and ended up getting really good at it. It got to a point where if I was sat at my computer at any moment of absent-mindedness I’d instinctively start up a solitaire game and start shifting cards around with haste. I wasn’t enjoying it, or even playing, it had become a reflex and a pursuit of improving on my prior top score, probably what it’s like playing video games in Korea. Exam season at university broke that cycle, finally, with final essays and revision taking much higher priority, and these days I’ll play a game every now and then but I’ve all but lost interest. Recently, however, with the spare time I’ve had on my hands, I’ve taken to playing solitaire with real cards on a table to pass the time.

Whilst it’s not an addiction, writing for my other blog, Bluepig, has become a big element of my life. Some people spend their entire lives trying to get the pink elephant off their backs; I’m usually trying to find ways to keep the blue pig on mine. At times it feels as though there’s nothing more difficult that keeping a blog running with a good dose of regularity, taking the things you see and do day-to-day, converting it into interesting prose, and doing this often enough that you can post something once a week – every Friday on Bluepig. Never been easy but two years down the line I’ve never seriously thought about just giving it up and closing the blog down for good. It’s like keeping a journal; if you do it long enough you don’t have to force yourself to write in it, the journal will make you write instead.

Bluepig’s diversified a little recently, and I think it’s done the blog a lot of good. One post I’ve been considering writing in this pattern of variation is a post about just that – how I make my posts. I decided to make it on here instead though, I haven’t posted on here since I left Plattsburgh and it seems right to write about it on here rather than the blog in question. So as I shuffle my deck and lay out another solitaire game, let’s take a look at the process of writing up a post for the Bluepig.

Though in recent times I’ve become a devoted convert to the school of solid pre-planning and note-taking, drafting and editing, when writing for Bluepig I don’t tend to do much of these things. The main focus of the blog is the photography and the writing is supplementary; it’s more often than not about filling in the gaps. If I’m out getting pictures for a post, though, I’ll often bullet point a basic structure for a post in a little notebook if I stop off somewhere for coffee. In the past I’ve used whatever cheap notepads I can get my hands on but in the last 4 months I’ve gathered a bunch of these miniature composition books, which are really cheap and have pages that tear out easily, so I’ve stuck with them. If I’m writing a larger post, such as the two-parters I did in Ottawa and Quebec City, I’ll make a checklist of things I want to get pictures of in my notebook.

Originally, when I’d write a post I’d write it straight into BlogSpot, but now I use a word processor instead. It serves a double purpose; I find it easier to review and compose when writing on a word processor, and it also means I can save copies of my writing to my hard drive, so that if anything ever happened to my blog or BlogSpot as a whole I’ll always have my work. Whether people read my work or not, I’d like to keep a hold of it.

The camera that does all of the work. It’s a Kodak EasyShare C9, nothing fancy but it does the job and the battery life is pretty good. A nicer camera may produce better quality pictures but for these small, user-friendly cameras this one works great (there’s not much difference between them all really), and an SLR would be too unwieldy because all of my photos have to be taken one-handed, the other holding the pig of course. Sometimes it gives me grief with its auto-focus but I’ve never gone somewhere and not been able to get the pictures I’ve wanted. Before I got this camera I used my camera-phone instead (a Sony-Ericcson something or other, I don’t have it to hand), which really did produce lesser quality pictures but it also produced some really great shots, too.

And finally, the subject of all the attention, the pig himself. He’s about 3 inches long and an inch and a half tall, not big at all which makes him portable enough to take him to the places I want to and get the shots needed for the blog. He’s actually a stress toy, though I’m very protective of people actually squeezing him for fear of his head coming off or something like that. I was given him by my auntie for reasons unknown to me; he’s a promotional stress toy for ‘NiQuitin CQ’ a company that sell nicotine patches. I don’t smoke and I never have, so I’ve no idea why it ended up with me, but I’m not complaining. When a friend asked if I’d take a photograph of them away with me and take pictures of said photo in famous places I realised that I could instead take the pig, and make a blog out of it, which is how it all began. I wrote some entry posts to have a little of a foundation before telling people about the blog, then started writing seriously in my build-up to going to summer camp in 2009, the first real post of travel being my trip to London to get my visa for camp. That was all the way back in May 2009, and now, 2 years down the line, I’m still going, and writing more than ever.

Notes from a greyhound station in the Adirondacks

So that’s it, I’m done, c’est finit, no more Plattsburgh, probably forever. This afternoon I took my last exam here, I packed up the last of my things and now I’m sat in a coach station fused onto the side of a hotel, waiting for my midnight bus to take me away from upstate New York and back down to Massachusetts. Hard to believe that it’s been a solid ten months since I left England to come here now, hard to comprehend just how many days I’ve spent in this town, the people I’ve met, the ways we passed the time. Hard to do anything right now in this balmy heat; even nature itself is pleased to see me leave, the sun blaring all day and blanketing the region in humidity tonight. All of my clothes are packed away and I’m sat here, grossly overdressed in a long-sleeve T shirt and jeans, wool jacket and wool flat cap, wishing it would rain again. Rain like it has done almost every day these final two weeks when I’ve yearned for sunshine, but no matter what the weather is it seems I’m destined to be drenched.

It was hard to leave tonight. Much harder than I expected it to be; much of my time here has been spent with indifference to the people and the place, but of course when you go to leave somewhere people make their feelings apparent. Hugs, handshakes, kind words and melancholy smiles were shared as I looked at my room, now completely lacking any kind of personality I’d once tried to grant upon it. It’s a strange feeling, seeing a place you’ve spent months of your life living in suddenly be wiped clean, as if you were never there in the first place, and then to think of how many people have done that before I have, how many backs have lain upon the bed, how many shirts hung within the curtained wardrobes, you feel insignificant; the brick walls of the dormitory have stood for fifty years before I arrived and will stand for many years to come, they were here before I was born and may last longer than me, too. Now though I sit here in the coach station, a chapter of my life shut.

With it being the last time I’ll probably ever be in Plattsburgh I’d considered doing something to my roommate. Nothing major, but a prank of some sort: a note about how I feel about him or hide/take something of his. Of all of the factors here my roommate has been the most negative throughout; he’s rude, antisocial, has no manners, and is constantly chewing on something. If it weren’t for him I feel as though I would’ve been a good deal more social, I know for a fact that a lot of the friends I’d made weren’t comfortable coming to visit me in my dorm because of him. I wanted some kind of payback, everybody in the building was very uncomfortable with him around which made it feel much more deserved, vindicated almost, but I didn’t do it. These last few nights I’ve had untold trouble sleeping, and as I lay there mulling over whatever came into my mind it dawned on me that I hated what I’d become. I used to pride myself on the fact that I hated no one, yet here I was so twisted with animosity that I was ready to steal from this person just because I didn’t like them. He’s already messed up enough, I decided, I’ll just leave him be. When I said goodbye tonight he just looked at me, but I still felt the better man inside, I’d done the right thing.

Like so many times over the last three years, I find myself sat in a Greyhound station once again. The one in Plattsburgh is little more than a 10’ x 10’ waiting room in a hotel. I get here early, always do. Greyhound buses deliberately overbook and make no qualms about it, so if you get here late and it’s a busy day there’s a good chance you’re not getting on the bus and won’t be refunded for it, so I like to be prepared. I don’t have the money to be buying new tickets on the day. There’s no sound other than the whirr of the refrigerated vending machines and as I sit here I find myself with the urge to take out my guitar and play, but I’m no Robert Johnson and these aren’t my crossroads, and chances are the staff working the night shift are already pissed off about being here enough, they don’t need me adding musical frustration to their evenings. Instead I took out my laptop and started hammering out whatever thoughts came into my mind, as you can see here. It helps pass the time and the patter of the keys keeps me sane. Not like there’s anybody here to talk to, after all.

Having made the trip up to Plattsburgh by coach a few times I know very well just how beautiful the Adirondacks are, but I’m much more content to be travelling at night, when it’s too dark to see and I can sleep, than at day. I’m a nervy passenger at the best of times and travelling on mountain roads does not do much for my manner. When I travelled down to Boston in March the mountains were still very much covered in snow with occasional snow showers as we passed through them, and to be able to see your coach swaying and shifting as we’d travel along mountain roads with drops to the sides really shot my nerves badly. I’m a dependable person in a crisis, but I don’t like being in a situation like that where, though nothing happened, you can think of nothing else. The only experience I’ve had that’s comparable is when I flight I was on hit turbulence so rough that the plane just dropped for a few seconds. Going from being on a bumpy plane ride to the blood rushing from your legs as if you’d jumped off a ledge leaves you paralysed with fear because there’s nothing you can do, you just have to sit there and hope for the best.

Though obviously it’s not evident on here because I never got around to writing here, much of my time up in Plattsburgh has felt negative, and with the benefit of hindsight I’m starting to think that’s a little unfair. I’ve had trouble since I got here, with everything from money to visas, which will always put a downer on things, but there’s plenty of good that can be taken from these ten months, too. I’ve broadened my horizons, learnt about subjects I never would’ve had the opportunity to study back home, met lots and lots of new people, become more mature. Most importantly though is I’ve proven to myself I can do this. I can go out into a foreign country completely on my own and live for a long period of time, and not just fall apart. It may not be the same as holding down a job and paying the rent but it’s a stepping stone to that, I can tell I’ve become so much more mature simply by being here, so much more responsible, productive, just simply more adult. No matter how many negatives there have been, how many shit nights or days spent on my own, I’ve gained enough that all the negatives are cancelled out instantly. I might be a few years behind my peers, but I’m finally starting to feel as though I’m growing up.