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.

Tuesday 25 December 2012

goodnight, john mcgahern, moving forward?, contemplating the past, saying what you mean, happy days! :-)

Goodnight all. Xmas Day is almost over for another year. A warm day, both literally and metaphorically. Also a day when I began re-reading That They May Face the Rising Sun by John McGahern. In truth I began reading this book at Easter 2006 (I think it was that Easter) but set it aside about a third the way through. Somehow I believe that the interruption was significant and beginning the book again is the start of moving forward. I wonder. In any case, the prose is beautiful, characterful and redolent of place. Inevitably too this Xmas was a time for contemplating the past. In this regard, I was struck by a scene in Marigold Hotel, which we watched a bit of at the end of the day. Ronald Pickup--appropriately named--is trying to chat up a woman in a club in India. Suddenly he drops all pretence and is just himself and whereas he would have lost the woman with his dreadful 'seductive' patter, suddenly he is in with a real chance. Why do people waste so much time by talking rubbish and by not saying what they really mean or who they really are?

Happy days! :-)
--
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