First things first, I think, a recap on where I've been the last five years, taking my deletion of the old webpage in Dublin as a starting point - because even though I have written on the web since then, it never really feels to me that I have, that it always ended there. I'm not sure why. (Maybe I'm just writing this for one specific person, one eager beaver reader who hasn't heard from me since then and, like really needs this information for some hitherto unknown reason that will make itself all too apparent by the time I get to the bottom of this page or something. Or not, as the case may be. Or something. Etc...)
So...
February '02 I flew to Dublin - this is after my two month visit to Canada, where I met up with Sara again, after a series of prophetic dreams and messages and... - and I stayed with my friend John for what turned into several months, sometimes wonderful (our insane busking down the Temple Bar dressed in parachutes and feathers and dancing to penny whistles and finger cymbals neither of us could play) and often maddening, because, as usual, I didn't have a clue what I was doing with my life...
By May - after a brief and unhappy trip to Paris - I was back in Yorkshire, spurred on by a message - a real, live phone, non-woowoo message from Mother Meera - to get myself a job, and I thought getting right back to where it all started from seemed to be the answer. Then I started seeing postmen on their red bikes and in their red vans and feeling bizarrely jealous, and it occurred to me that that's what I should do, so I applied for a few postie jobs, including one in Dereham, Norfolk, while on a weekend to visit an old high-school friend there. That one I got, and I promptly moved to Norfolk, staying first with my friend, and then in a rented room, and then - sickened by the feelings 'four walls' inspired - in the lovely local graveyard, which was more my cup of tea (though the post office weren't too happy when they found out). I spent my spare time in the company of lots of teenagers in another local churchyard, singing songs, doing healings, having giggles and getting merry on holy water, disappointed as I was by what I perceived of a lack of imagination in the adult population to see no further than the TV and the pub, and boring 'adult' conversation. It was a wonderful time - although I was, basically, mad. From it all, however, through one of the postmen's mums, I met a teacher, accepted an invite to go on a school trip, accepted another invite to help out a bit in the classroom, and then decided that I wanted to be a teacher, that this was my vocation. For that, though, I was told I needed a degree - so, despite lack of necessary qualifications and it being very much 'the last minute', I bagged myself a place at the University of Kent in Canterbury to do a degree in Religious Studies (I thought at the time I would teach RE in schools and blow people's minds and open them up to the marvels of spirituality beyond mere old dry religion - how naive I was!)
And so, in September '02 - after a trip to Germany to see Mother Meera - I landed in Canterbury, Kent, £3.50 in my pocket, and nothing but a guitar and a sleeping bag to my name. My plan was to live in a caravan somewhere beautiful and cheap (so as to avoit the dreaded 'student debt') - and within a few days I had found a man who owned a pinetum - a reserve for rare pine trees - which he would let me live on for five pounds a week. A few days later I bought a caravan for £60 (given to me when I opened a student back account) and I was set. I lived there my entire first year, chopping wood, cooking on open fires, running naked through the frosty morning grass, freezing my ass off through the winter, always alone, but always with lovely visitors for Sunday soup around the fire and treats brought by Sharon the American girl from her job in a cafe in town. And beautiful it was. I also went to uni, struggled with my hatred of academia, and academics, and authority, and did little work - though I did get a proper job, selling cakes - and got fairly decent grades. I overcame my need to move - almost impossibly hard at times; I hadn't stayed in one place for more then three months in over five years - and I got settled into things. I also got myself something of a girlfriend - beginning when, one day in January '03, I walked out of a class on Science Fiction and became gripped with an urge to buy a plane ticket to Canada; I consulted the I Ching, in the hope that it would disuade me, but all it could say was, "it furthers one to cross the great water" and, twenty-four hours later I was there. A few days after that I went to bed with Sara - Sara from Mexico '99, Sara from British Columbia '01 - and we got ourselves into something - initially long-distant, punctuated by fortnights together here and there, and then, starting in May '04, something more permanent. We lived in China for a few months that year, and then I took a year out from my studies to live in Ontario after that, while she finished her degree, and then in September '05 we both moved back to Canterbury so that I could finish mine. In the mean time, by hook and by crook, I had switched my degree to English and Creative Writing - which felt so right, when compared to Religious Studies - and spent my second year living in a large student house with six others - another important step in my ongoing process of getting back on the Earth - and equally as hard as breaking through the barrier of needing to always be moving somewhere new. But there was light on the other side. And in June 2006 I graduated from UKC with a 2:1 in English and American Literature and Creative Writing and, as it turned out, I wasn't even that far off a first (if only I had tried...) I also had a short story published in an anthology called 'Bracket' (Comma Press, 2005) and wrote about 20 percent of my book. And that brings us to...
June 2006, when I started work as a teacher of English in a secondary school in Folkestone - the culmination, I suppose, of what I had set myself up for four years previously. And it was good, too, at times - but incredibly and increasingly hard at others, and I only lasted until Christmas, at which time I said goodbye to the kids and to the school and to Canterbury and to Kent and I decided it was time for pastures new, and Yorkshire, and I managed to get myself a job managing an Oxfam shop in Leeds. She too got herself a job in Leeds - starting the same day - but some time between landing it and starting it something changed - something between us, I suppose - and when an offer of a better job in a better part of the country came up, she took it, and we decided to break up. It was a strange break-up really: no hard feelings, no real accusations and recriminations and massive blow-ups and fights - indeed, the week before we decided to call it quits, we had a lovely ten days in Morocco, and one last lovely weekend in Canterbury, and all was as well as it had ever been. So...strange, really - especially after all the signs and wonders and stories associated with it, but...there you go. There it goes. It goes. It's gone. Now I live alone in Wakefield - unless you count my brother - and life begins anew, and continues the same as it ever did; I moved here on February 4th; I started my new job with Oxfam the next day; I appeared on and won a Channel 5 quiz show about three weeks after that; I've acquired a new lover and re-met some old friends somewhere along the way - and I've struggled at times to adjust, to accept this loss, to get to grips with my new life, my new surroundings. I've hated it occassionally - and had fleeting thoughts about wanting to get away. Right now, though, writing this to you - writing, always, it always has to be writing - I feel suddenly okay and right with the world, like it's all in place, like things aren't really that bad after all. I crave that feeling so much - of being on track, of being where and when and how I should be - and just this moment I have it. Maybe it's the trees; maybe it's the words, the expressions, the realisations...maybe it's something else. And maybe that's just empty poetry and maybe I'm starting to dwindle now...maybe I've said all I need to say for one night...
Have I got everything? I'm sure you'll let me know if I've missed anything important! (You couldn't check my spelling/typos while you're at it, could you?) :-)
Lots of love!
Rory
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