Welcome to justthoughtsnstuff

I started posting to jtns on 20 February 2010 with just one word, 'Mosaic'. This seemed an appropriate introduction to a blog that would juxtapose fragments of memoir and life-writing. Since 1996, I'd been coming to terms with the consequences of emotional and economic abuse that had begun in childhood, and which, amongst other things, had sought to stifle self-expression. While I'd explored some aspects of my life through fiction and, to a lesser extent, journalism, it was only in 2010 that I felt confident enough to write openly about myself. I believed this was an important part of the healing process. Yet within weeks, the final scenes of my family's fifty-year nightmare started to play themselves out and the purpose of the blog became one of survival through writing. Although some posts are about my family's suffering - most explicitly, Life-Writing Talk, with Reference to Trust: A family story - the majority are about happier subjects (including, Bampton in rural west Oxfordshire, where I live, Oxford, where I work, the seasons and the countryside, walking and cycling) and I hope that these, together with their accompanying photos, are enjoyable and positive. Note: In February 2020, on jtns' tenth birthday, I stopped posting to this blog. It is now a contained work of life-writing about ten years of my life. Frank, 21 February 2020.

New blog: morethoughtsnstuff.com.

Friday 6 July 2012

saturated, bistro, essay, shock, swan

Really heavy rain earlier. Lighter now but everything in Oxford is saturated. Miserable.

The last couple of bright days were bliss. Sitting with a friend on Wednesday evening, drinking wine at a bistro, doors open to the pavement, seems a world away.

We talked about screenwriting for a while then turned to that essay I wrote at Easter. I was shocked by how shocked she was at what I had written. Perhaps I am still numb from the horror of what happened over the past two decades. Though I am sure that I am happier than I was. It was good to talk--just as it had been good to write down the events. Part of the strange mixing by which I (and writers generally?) make sense of things. But I still find it hard to understand how the people involved did what they did.

Meanwhile, on the Oxford canal this morning, even the swan looked pissed off with the weather.
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