Shifting Grains

How long has it been since we chatted? I’m sorry I left you forlorn for so long. I was going through so many changes that my existence was just off-kilter. That is to say I had a grand vision of where I was heading but the everyday minutiae had me worried. Since my last post I’ve:

1. spent six months as an in-house Business English teacher in Pointe Noire, Republic of Congo for an Oil and Gas Exploration company;
2. been accepted onto an M.A. Linguistics course at the University of Vienna with a view to continuing onto a PhD;
3. lost the place on the M.A. in Vienna because I was unable to confirm acceptance from Congo;
4. felt a personal loss at not being able to experience an academic existence in Vienna (it is such a beautiful, historic city);
5. returned to Munich to work and also did one or two-week long teaching seminar stints in Vienna;
6. successfully applied for an M.A. with a view to a PhD in Linguistics/Language Acquisition at Newcastle University;
7. applied for and gained a pre-sessional teaching contract for Academic English to Newcastle University post-graduate students.

So, being keen to avoid the South East of England (since I always felt I was treated like an unwanted step-child down south), I’m now in Newcastle and I’m loving it. Everything is still very new and the work load is pretty heavy so it will take me a while to get my bearing. The creative writing scene seems very lively here so I really need to get my network on. Beyond that comes the need to secure a part-time teaching job for the post pre-sessional post period and all will be right with the world. Did you like my little consonance play there? No, I agree. It’s not my best work.

So listen, I’m not really sure how many of you out there are still actively following the blog but I’ve got to love you and leave you for now. I’ll be taking pictures of Newcastle for the blog and I hope to explore the north of England and Edinburgh as time goes by. It’ll be good to visit the lake district to see if I can rediscover the England I found in books before I ever came to England. The South East (more accurately, sections of the South East) managed to kill the England of my childhood imagination the first few times I was racially profiled as a pre-pubescent child. That’s why over the years I’ve travelled so much… because I love to love. I love to love mankind, landscapes, architecture, culture but the South East drove me perilously close to hating. By travelling I could hold on to what was best about England, allow the negative to float away and continue to love from a distance. So far, the north has shown me nothing but love. I’m still afraid to totally let go and to accept that people will just allow me to be me and to blossom. Imprisoning oneself in a cage while waiting for the other shoe to drop is no way to live however.

Irrespective of how I’m treated over the next few years (because I tend to get ultra-sensitive to slurs and insults whenever I step on British soil) I must remember that I’m responsible for my own actions. Irrespective of the potential provocations of others I just have to remind myself that I am happiest and most at peace when I continue to love to love – in the purest, most unselfish sense of the word love. As we part I will say, “Thank you for showing me love Newcastle. I love you back with both your positive features and your flaws”.

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