Day one?

 

Rather amusingly it also doesn't work...but I now quite like the geat big long blue line of stuffed animals you're all going to have on your flist...

 Ok so this is a little I've written as part of the character development for something I'm working on at the minute, copyright to me on this day etc etc, it's a stream of consciousness and I have, rather shamefully, for the first time since primary school, begun mixing my positioning of there/their in the last few things I've written (please have me tortured at your convenience) so apologies for that and other grammatical errors which glare out at you; opinions on the style, the character, the storyline shown, anything at all, very gratefully received. Thankingyou. 

My name is Maurice. That wasn’t what my parents called me, and since I’m never going to see them again it doesn’t matter to you what they did. Nor does any surname; I am simple Maurice. Since I am the only Maurice the School has ever had I don’t think my name needs any further embellishment.

I was born to a fisherman and his simple wife – my mother was simple in every sense of the word. A sweet woman, but a woman who was challenged on a daily basis simply running her home. I was there only child, which means I feel bad from time to time that I’m not there to help her out with things any more, but I suppose she had to learn how to be independent some time.

In a way, though to begin with I did feel very strange to have left home, it was brief and I have found myself considerably less unhappy than my peers to have been brought here. Many of them still weep into their cots at night, I hear them, their grief echoing down the corridor. Then there are those who are proud to be here, those who feel that the world should owe them some greater respect for their newfound position. I don’t think they see how weak they really are. Those are the people who will, doubtlessly, grow into positions of authority here. Most of those in authority show little skill or power, apart from that of manipulation and self promotion, which is all that has got the people in those roles now there, and so the cycle will continue.

I don’t really fit with either group. I am not one of those who has studied and mastered basic skills and politics and talked my way in. Nor do I think that I am one of those who has shown gifts and skills that I never understood, like most of those in my dorm group, and who are now being trained to control things they don’t and will never understand. I think many of them will have their potential quashed by this school. The things they teach here are old, and complicated. I don’t think that they have me in the right group. I don’t show any special skill, and there’s certainly nothing I need to learn to control. All I need to learn is how to survive their attempts at teaching long enough to be a teacher myself, then I can show them where they’ve been going wrong all these years.

They constantly and consistently fail to appreciate that just because something has been done a certain way for centuries does not mean that it is the best way to do something.

It bothers me to see them forcing these children, these young minds who can’t comprehend what is happening to them and are terrified at things that have happened around them which apparently they are responsible for, and they are being drilled in ancient texts and theory from men who never dared to experiment with what they had.

The lessons are all about control-you have to learn to control the power within, to bend it to fit into the size of their minds. Small minds. Why, I keep trying to ask them, are we wrapping our powers in these iron bands and constricting them to these small minds and these dusty text books, why are we allowing a mere two each cycle to progress to the delicate and equally restrictive ‘exploration’ when there is so much potential sitting in these rooms each day? I don’t want to learn how to switch my mind to making my power move an apple. Why on earth would I put so much effort into moving an apple? An apple is so small, so insignificant. The universe, the dimensions, the law of gravity itself, do not CARE where that apple is. All you need to do is remove the apple from their awareness. They have enough to be aware of, and the removal of something so insignificant will go unnoticed.

My first lesson here I was placed with children, people far younger than myself. I had only just been discovered, at the age of 14, and as a new find I was simply placed with others of the same stage; new, raw, uncontrolled. The lesson was transportation, and the Elder in charge was berating a stocky infant for throwing the apple when he couldn’t get it to levitate naturally. I sat quietly and watched the Elder demonstrate, his eyes bulging and veins visibly throbbing at his temples with the effort as he grunted sharp instructions to the assembled Raws, who attempted to recreate the same with their own apples. The Elders apple dropped to the floor and bruised nicely when he was distracted by the same stocky youngster exploding his apple; (“No Niall, you’re STILL not thinking it through properly; you need to think your power under the apple, cup it, and raise it. Now take another from the basket and try again. BENEATH, not INSIDE”) and I remember the shocked silence in the class when I spoke up “Why do it that way?”

I hadn’t been there long enough, or heard enough, to know that I was speaking out of turn. The others thought me incredibly brave to address an Elder so directly, without first seeking permission to do so, and looking him in the face whilst I did; of course it wasn’t brave, I just knew too little to know how much it was frowned upon, and the rituals that the Elders insist upon to maintain their otherworldliness and superiority over the rest of us depend entirely upon our being overawed by them, and our being overawed by them depended upon their rituals...they forget that for most people they have been brought here in infancy, there are very few of us who come later, and those who do have been brought up to be afraid because their late arrival is from their family trying to hide them from the Elders and the School. Those rituals are even more effective on those others who have come late – a lifetime of fear had ingrained that respect in them. I had none of that. My parents didn’t know that I had powers, they didn’t know much about the School. It was a world they had never touched, a world of stories for around the camp fire which were shrouded in unreality, for how can something so far detached be real. So no, I wasn’t hidden. They knew that I wasn’t entirely like them, I didn’t fit with the children of the other fishermen, I didn’t fit with them. They knew that the work I did in father’s ramshackle shed was different to anything they had seen before, but they thought I was good with my hands, and that I had found pictures of the things I created in the books I always bought from the water gypsies that passed through our port. They couldn’t read themselves, so thought my books magical, but it never occurred to them they really were in the true sense. I hid myself, but not through fear; merely through absorption in whatever I was doing at the time, be it a new fishing reel for Father or a new way of getting Mother’s groceries home. I hope that the cart I made her with the direction changer still works now that I’m not there to simply transport it all home for her.

In that first lesson when the Elder had recovered from the shock of my speaking out of turn his lip had curled with scorn and he had asked “and do you think you, Raw, know a better way?”

There was another shocked gasp when I replied “of course”, confusion running through my head. “Just, erm, shift it...” I struggled with vocabulary to describe something so simple. “you just have to make things forget it’s there. An apple is easy. It’s only small.”

The Elder was laughing, but he didn’t look amused. “easy? Boy, I have been at the School for nearly a century, you have been here less than a day; you saw the work that it took to move that apple and you tell me that it’s easy. If it’s so easy, let me see you move it.”

So I did. I looked at the apple, and I suggested it move. When it vanished with, I thought,  a rather satisfying little pop, the Elder nearly exploded with rage. “A GLAMOUR IS NOT THE SAME AS A TRANSPORTATION YOU IGNORANT RAW” and I asked him what a glamour was. I thought he was going to have a heart attack, and had to remind myself not to stare. He said that I had simply made the apple appear invisible, and had put a glamour on it that hid it from everyone’s minds. He marched to the desk and make to pick up this so called invisible apple, and when his hand swiped at nothing the blood that I had been admiring as it filled his face very quickly drained away.

“Where is it?”

“You told me to move it...”

“WHERE IS IT?” he screamed.

“It’s in your desk drawer.” As he went to open the drawer I added “Next Thursday.”

The class erupted as the Elder fainted. Since then I was never left to study with other Raws. Apparently I disturbed them, and interrupted the time honoured teaching methods. I was happy that I got to study more challenging things, but it still frustrates me that they insist on their old methods, and get upset when I do something an easier way. Apparently I’m meant to be learning how to control my power. But even with that said, the Elders do like to make use of me from time to time, for tracking, spying, politics, and to make the vegetables they buy from the traders last longer. I suppose I’m easier than the labour of digging a potato cellar. It’s a little hypocritical though. At least they’ve stopped pretending I can’t do it...
 

Today mylkes that this round of anti biotics are going to make me all better. 
Today mylikes the freaky blank canvas my face became after putting on my make up (Molly - Bumble went to the body shop and bought me some of your foundation - he'm a keeper - and I am today mostly beautiful because of it.) 
Today mylkes all the ways I've found that might make me money from writing after some serious online research (check me out) 
Today mylikes that there's a possibility of me getting tutoring work from a place up the road and I can tutor small people in English (may have to learn it first but it's a bridge I shall cross when I come to it!)
Today mylikes that people are joining my forum (MOLLY COME BACK) [url]http://ladiesbehave.com/index.php[/url] which is a place for social empowerment and development, and which I would like you all to look at and join and post thankyouplease (and not post for a day and leave, Molly! We need intelligent strong women, as which you qualify) 
Today mylikes contact lenses
Today mylikes all the writing I've done and an excerpt of which I shall post shortly (first draft, please rip it apart/advise)

Today mynolikes cranberry juice. 
Today mynolikes peeing so much
Today mynolikes my laptop
Today mynolikes how much weight I've put on

That be it for now

This is the last time I'm going to be ill. I'm BORED of being ill. 
Kidneys are over rated, I'm sure. But I have a cat here (who is apparently made of carpet-very cuddly) and friends on TV (I was watching Queer as Folk before but there's only so much you can take in one day) and cocodamol which is greatness. 

I have many ideas for writing but I don't know where to start-I know that there is museteasers which I'm going to pop along to but if anyone has any suggestions which I can use to get myself back into the flow of things that would be great, it's been a long time!

In the last year I have had seven addresses. In two months I will be moving again.
That's it. Always a roamer, and always will be, but I'm settling down and all is very, very well with me right now.

I'm going to be doing my MA, and I now live near London (whoop) and I'm going to be doing a lot more writing which, once I'm back in the swing of things, will be on here.

Jelly is back.

ETA  chuffing heck, how very very strange it's a year to the day since my last entry...

been an interesting year to say the least!

well this has been a WIERD week, that's for sure.

I moved out of blokey's house on tuesday last week and I'm splitting my time between my Dad's house and my friend's spare room (wherever there's likely to be nobody else in because I'm rather enjoying being alone a lot!) but we get on so brilliantly now that it's lovely when i DO see blokey because I know we're going to enjoy each other's company without any of that relationship bollocks getting in the way of being friends. 

So tonight, since it was my day off and I didn't have to get up early for work, I skipped my new morning routine (I get up at six, go for a run, have a shower and head to work nice and early cos that's where I keep my porrige and by half eight I'm famished!) and so have just got back from my run now (damn I'm sweaty! I know...not sexy...maybe an overshare?) and now I'm going to have a nice long bath with the expensive smellies and then head for a nice early night-with my knitting.

Rock and roll! 

Love 
xxx

There are places buried

Deep within

The emptiness of memory

That close beside the places that you share

Behind the walls of shadow

And despair

Are filled with all those painful things

You know you never could

Forget

And each and every day

You lie awake to walk the

Labyrinth

Of half submerged

Remembrances

Only to awake and

Put the mask of daytime

On your face

To walk to streets

Outside

Yourself.

I'm officially rubbish at this whole livejournal thingy...
Mainly because I always think "I'll update when I've done some writing and put that on there rather than just rant about my rather dull life" but then I never do any writing, so meh! 

My rather dull life is actually quite pleasant at the moment, I'm enjoying my job very much, and love all the people that I work with (the best part is of course getting to wear keys on my belt that go jingle jangle when I walk...it makes me feel important) and I enjoy getting there, getting the sales assistants set up on the till and giving them a job to do then sitting in the staff room with the manager and assistant manager and eating cake, drinking tea, putting the world to rights and giggling...a lot...and I get paid for that! I always knew the management did nothing all day. 
Himself might be getting a new job running a private club, which comes with a three bedroom house and many pennies as well as lots of daytime to do what you like with, and if he gets that I'll be going there with him to work too (he'd run the bar and I'd run the housekeeping side and the catering) but the people in charge of hiring are faffing about a lot so we're not sure what's happening there yet. I'll keep you posted.
It would be good if he did get it, but if he didn't I know we wouldn't have to worry too much; my manager is moving on to pastures new soon, so the assistant manager will get her job and they've suggested I apply for assistant manager if blokey doesn't go ahead with the club, so either way things are looking better. 

Writing still isn't really happening, but I'm busying myself with stuff...I knit myself a bag last week (it's green and furry and mad) and already two people have asked me to knit them one and said they'd pay me for them, so that's cool.
And my friend has asked me to make her a book (cos I do that from time to time) and fill it's pages with an illustrated copy of Blake's The Tyger-which is such a brilliant poem. I love Blake. 

Other than that not a lot happening here, that's all I've got for you :-D 

Love all xxx

http://drawapig.desktopcreatures.com/gallery/large.asp?id=1349470&p=0&hof=1&q=personality+test 

This here is my Pig. It says much about me, apparently!

Unemployment. 
Well, what can I say? It sucks. It sucks old man's ass. It sucks sweaty old man's ass. 
I HATE being unemployed. It got to the point that I just HAD to apply for jobseakers allowence, what with the bills and all that jazz, and that takes AGES to get through with about fourteen tons of paperwork to sign (can you believe you only have to apply for one job a week to get the money!? why bother!?) but tuesday was my signing final bits of paper day and apparently NEXT tuesday I MIGHT get some money, maybe...only today I had a job interview for a job I suspect I'll get meaning that I'll start next week and...and...and...arse! So do I go anyway, do I call, what do I do?! Will they give me the money back dated for the last three weeks so that I can pay some bills before I get paid from the new job that I might have got?

Also, more importantly, writer's block.
Not a fan of that.
It appears that not only am I rather talentless, I'm also lacking in imagination.

Big with the lethargy and the indifference at the minute.
Blah. Etc. 

That is all.

Christmas has gone, I got  a guitar (wohoo!) and a box full of James Herbert (WOHOO!) Himself got Terry Pratchett galore and a magical wireless thingymabob for his amp (also wohoo!) 

Today I am mostly eating chocolate cake. Yes, with cream. Yes, with double cream. What of it? 

That is all.

Christmas is coming and I'm almost done with the shopping, apart from the important stuff for blokey.
I spent a lot of yesterday making big fat origami stars to paint and cover in glitter to put on our tree because I can't find any in the shops that look right and I want this christmas to be perfect. This is our last unmarried christmas together, and I want it to sparkle right through, even when I don't feel sparkly myself.

Once the stars are finished I'll post pics on here, cos they're brill (I'm so modest!) 

Mollinda, you sexy thing, I need your address, I have a little something for you...Rosie, same to you...(now that I've called you both sexy things I'm having a bizarre mental image of the two of you in a beauty pagent and trying to make me pick a winner...evil girls...and now also giggling at Rosie in a ballgown talking about world peace...)

hey all. 
Fell off the face of the Earth a couple of weeks ago. I had the graduation on the sat (lovely to see Rosie again, though now she's only half of Rosie, because she appears to have shed a few layers of Rosie skin and is looking super duper) then had a mad busy day on the sunday.
Nanny B, who I mentioned had cancer, passed away on the monday morning, very suddenly and thankfully with as little pain as could be expected, and had family all about her, which was a relief. I hadn't got the call to say she'd been taken back into hospital because I started my new job that day, but my brother came and took me out of work when she'd passed away, and I had a week of going, leaving, going in some more, then on tuesday night this week, having cried myself sick about it, just left the job altogether.
Even without Nanny dying and how incredibly horrible that is, and how hard it is to cope with, I think the job would have been too far from what I was expecting it to be, from what I was told it was, and from what I am for me to have stuck out for long. It turns out I'm not that great at stealing people's souls for money.
(if you own a small business and UFINDUS call you it's not going to advertise your business and guarentee you more work, it's a directory and can only promise that people look at that directory. If you DO want to be on that directory hold out, because the 300 they quote as your sign up fee can be completely erased if you're stubborn enough, and you can sign up for just the monthly fee-just hold out! And don't say I told you that...) 

So that's where I've been, and why I'm probably going to vanish off the planet again for a wee while.
For those who'd met Nanny, and those I'd spoken to about her, you'll know how empty the world seems without her, because she was such a gigantic personality.
Luckily her death hasn't given me the crisis of faith that seems so common, it's merely concreted what I do believe, and that's comforted me very much.
And no. I still don't believe in Jesus. 
Good job he wasn't there waiting for her with open arms-cos he'd only annoy her! Never did like goody two shoes...

I'm a very happy girl today, I got myself a new job, and one week from now I'm NEVER going to have to work in a spar shop again as long as I live!!!
WOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


The job is with ufindus.com and I'll be one of those horrible people calling up and making you buy my product but don't worry, I'll not be calling you at home and interrupting corrie, I'll be calling businesses all day. And getting abused. And sworn at. And threatened. A lot. But it's not spar!!!! WOHOO. 

In  case you hadn't guessed, I'm a bit chuffed.

http://ebaumsworld.com/2006/10/biff-question-song.html

This is totally brilliant.

Sorry Boxbrown but I had to pinch it, it made my grumpy face vanish for whole minutes!

So, the many thousands of pounds debt I'm in clearly isn't enough for the people who got me into this state, they're out for blood.

Graduation.

Not only am I going to HAVE to go, though I don't want to, it's going to cost me a fortune. 

My family insist I go, so that's £32 to gire my stupid looking gown and hat which will not suit me, then they want another £18 to go to the party (I'm not going) and then the photo package they recommend is £70-definitely not!

This is not my happy face!

Rosie me thee and anyone else we can steal are doing a runner as soon as possible, I'll buy you a pub meal!

it appears I've actually only written one poem in two weeks, which is bizarre...where have I BEEN?! 

Anyhoo...



I'm a traitor to myself,
my kind
my heart and soul
which harboured dreams
so many years 
that every day
I throw away.

I'm a traitor to myself
and to the girl
I always thought
that I would be
could be
should be

I'm a traitor to my Self.

Apparently I'm 7.6% hot. Which is nice. I was also told this week that my bottom is perfect, which was also nice.

This week I am mostly being sexy. 


I've not been doing a huge amount of writing this week but I'll get some poems up, honest guv!

http://roughly.beasts.org/

I got 12%. Go me!