On becoming.

After no doubt lengthy discussion and debate, they settled on giving me the name of my father's defunct dog: Simon.





One doesn't get to choose one's tags for quite a while, if ever.

Never mind, that's how it is.

I have never had a problem with the dog-tag.

For reasons unknown, but no doubt analysable I wasn't what they expected.

I never really fit in...it hurt.

I did the analysis over many years.

It doesn't matter now...

Now I am here to write here...for reasons unknown, but no doubt analysable. It wasn't what I expected.

I am beginning to put together pieces of puzzle.

Such work is impossible alone, one must do it connected.

I enjoy puzzles. 

The ones I prefer are the ones that can be put together in ever so many ways, generally with colour, improvisation, and why not music and laughter and a strong sense of the absurd.

Note to self:
If only I could include a bit of theatre. That would be marvellous! I miss that.

I don't like conforming to a model.

They can measure me later.

I am just so.

I am becoming...

How many uniforms are we given to wear?
How can we be free to become what we will?

I did their education. I felt it had to do with them.

I did my research.  I feel it has to do with me.

I read their learned papers. I felt it had to do with a kit.

I never liked kits.
You spend hours sticking fiddly bits of plastic together to build their bloody Spitfire.

It is never as good as the picture on the packet, beautifully coloured, zooming through the skies, guns blazing shooting up Fokkers.

There's always some clever clogs who shows off his obsessionally finicketedly constructed plastic scale model.

I just can't be bothered, it is no doubt to my detriment, never mind.

I am not up to their standards for now.
Maybe tomorrow?
Who cares?
I shall improvise.
Maybe one day, I will be up to my standards...and they will have to change theirs!

Hurrah!!

That's the spirit. Sod the Spitfire!!

I like writing this, I love stories.

I like working stuff out, trying to figure out how it is put together.

I don't want to build bloody kits of bloody Spitfires.

They seemed harmless at the time but then little boys get to fly them real-scale and kill other little boys who only have bits of wood to represent Kalashnikovs.

I like working with others who challenge me to travel to places I would never be able to glimpse without their eyes.

I like to do stuff that I would never have been able to do alone. I have no idea where all of this is leading...but it appears to keep on. This is fun. What will appear next from this mind-field?

I love adventure. 

Thank you.
Maha you and many others are helping me to make some sense of it.
What ever it is.

How strange, I was not expecting that to come out. 
Never mind, it did. It's here now.
I don't mind you knowing.

Here's a quote: (Note to self: that will look seriously learned)

“The goal is to practice an artful, poetic, and empathic social science in which readers can keep in their minds and feel in their bodies the complexities of concrete moments of lived experience”
Geist-Martin et al cite Ellis (2004, p. 30)