Dreaming of Conversation

Back in Dubai now I am finding it hard to sleep. My excellent reading habit has continued from Canada and my mind is engaged each day. It is becoming the most important thing I do, and the fountain from which my day becomes meaningful. 

Part of my sleep issue is the continued jetlag, especially if I don't speak others. That conversation tires me out. Last night I slept at 1am. I woke up from my alarm at 7am. There was no way I was moving at that time, my sleep sickness was profound. Instead, I enjoyed bonus sleep until 11:30am. In that time, I dream deeply and evocatively, remembering my dreams as I once did.

I dream of old friends and enemies. Enemies is a strong word for people with whom I have no contact: of old enmity instead. Over the past two nights of sleep, I experienced travels to places new and old. Faces I once knew came to me, most notably an old alcoholic housemate who once trashed my house and exploited my kindness. He was remarkably selfish yet enjoyed an interesting mind. I do not miss his company but I do miss that kind of conversation. 

In one dream two nights ago I strode a pavilion like Scarborough's, golden light strolling over the marbled ground. I didn't perceive the beauty at the time as I was rushing to find somewhere to do something. When do I build in time to perceive? My phone finds far less time in my hand these past two months. 

Another dream last night saw me sleeping in bed with shoes on, resting until work started again the next day. I was with two people who were warm in body and mind. It was friendly. Outside, however, earthquakes had wrecked the world or at least mildly displaced some cars in the Western streets. 

My feeling was ultimately of waiting for something to happen. I was not sentient. I was not composed. 

Yet the final dream that provoked me into finally waking saw me speaking to a young man about being smart and being Northern. He had a calm manner about him, a readiness to wait and to let others speak. The environments in which I am in, now and before, rely upon me battling to be heard. He had an assurance I admired. 

When he did speak, he was clearly smart and quietly engaging. He spoke about his experience of being an educated Northerner. In return, I was aware of how desperate I was to speak, a bubbling urge of communication threatening to burst my throat. The quickness of my mind, of needing to express myself, was overwhelming.  I spoke about how being Northern was to be perceived as a cultural outsider. It wasn't a bad thing. It meant an extra layer of reflection, of removal from self-appointed cultural arbiters. It meant being aware that I was not positioned with the privilege of direct connection to power and importance. However, he embraced that position, or at least accepted it for what it is.

My intensity of expression overrode the others who sat with us. It felt like the first day at university. I was aware of a girl that wanted to speak too, and how she was opening her mouth to interject. She waited a few moments and then wondered off. Good for her, I feel in retrospect. I am thirsty for such conversation now; in lieu of those friends being here, I guess I have to have it with myself and with my books. They are a poor substitue, but are a balm for now.  

Aiming for a Lifestyle back at work in Dubai

As I sit here in Wolverhampton, having enjoyed friendly company while watching Wolves play Everton, I consider the kind of lifestyle I expect over the next ten months or so. I consider my mother's endeavours, her retirement and travelling and living with ongoing health and social challenges that she continues to carry heartily.

Any consideration of lifestyle choices should not be simply about making a better life for me. I detest the Hollywood spin of how 'breaking the rules' leads to a better lifestyle for that person alone. The implication is, of course, that others are foolish and naive for keeping to the rules, and that the best lifestyles require the subversion of a community's norms for personal betterment. That probably isn't incorrect: it just doesn't really sit well with me. I detest a lifestyle that might benefit me without benefitting a community. What communities are these? My colleagues? Those I live near? My immediate family? My current communities are necessarily transitory (based on travel and reading for example), but that also means I don't seem to need a huge community that grants profound worth. I am quite self-sufficient in that regard. My job gives me a feeling of purpose and well-being that works both ways. Without that nurturing of others, I would find my bachelor lifestyle right now to be remarkably barren. 

Of course any lifestyle that is socially nourishing requires a rudeness of health. Any kind of well-being that exists without health is, in contrast, short-lived, literally. Walking, eating well, taking time to talk to others: these are essential to any kind of a good life. These are things I want to do more of next year... small steps and ambitions.

Of most worthy exclamation this holiday is how I am reading well, the best I have ever done. Literally every time I read, I feel enriched afterwards. I worry sometimes that it will take too much energy: a true introvert! Yet I feel enriched after. Conditioning myself to read when tired is another ambition next year. To be raised through reading is an experience of thought and being that I have lacked for too long: too much of my reading is of the work of novices etc. I do worry if I have will have the emotional and social space to read whilst teaching... that is key.

In terms of communities, I do I wonder what kind of community I want to find or to create. Yesterday I spent time in the pub just being with people. At one point I fell silent for ten minutes. Yet I didn't feel a sense of displacement: I was just there. It was a great experience that rewrote the narrative of my teenage life in Wolverhampton and one that makes me realise more how being older makes life better, especially for someone of my background. The urgency of talk and thought to which I feel compelled when with others can make some social events ardous. 

And so tomorrow I return. 

Whilst I am sad that I haven't seen friends as much as I desired, I am happy to be going back to Dubai. I intend to begin calendaring life again, and to tackling some of the structure of my To-Do list... to tick off the thousands of ''someday tasks'' is a very good idea as well. The pragmatic obsession of some of my colleagues will be a judiciusly useful influence, in that, at least, presumably.  

Writing the 3-4 reviews, and beginning to write and plan essays for the books I am teaching next year, is a worthy ambition too. Let's see what we do, and let's hope that I benefit others more openly with that, too. 

Leaving Canada after a fantastic recuperation and family connection

Leaving Canada

Here in my brother's kitchen, I sit and see a soft cake of chocolate cooling from last night. I am due to leave this house in seven hours and to enjoy the wait and sleep on the plane. I have given some of my good time to my family, and I am the better for it.

My health has improved through simply walking well and enjoying warm breezes. Beijing was a Mordor; Dubai is Dante’s pit. Canada and the UK are softer, greener places to breath my air until death. Those million breaths are ready to stop too soon. 

This breathing has also being enjoyed indoors, with the rhythm of my chest rising to the flow of words from the page of my mind. This rising flow has danced in my mind, a tremendous experience of sitting and reading. I experienced a different rhythm two years ago. Two years ago I spent an entire summer meeting people on MeetUps and cafe dates, enjoying the vast possibilities a place like Toronto could offer. People and bars and metro stops seemed endless. In a desire to experience this place further, I willfully undercut my position with the stay-at-homes at work by declaring my intent to leave Dubai to come here. That didn’t go down well, as expected, and I suffered for that tremendously with inglorious blockings of promotion, and strange underminings when that did happen. Still, like toothache, when that is removed I will feel happy. I cannot define myself on them, however. 

What I can define myself on is my reading and my writing. Such reading as I am enjoying now is the best in my career. I can read hundreds of pages a day and have enjoyed almost all the NEA texts. I am now focused on the texts I am due to read, and I am reviewing every text I have read. This is in contrast to the times I struggled to read foolishly one book in weeks before. My attention has been in pieces before, poisoned by phones and naivety. 

More than any of this, I fantasise about doing nothing else but reading for a year. Could I manage this? Would it be helpful? To read and place such reading at the heart of what I do… that would be a refocusing worth prizing.

Another sharp enjoyment this holiday has been the mocking of life coaches. This is somewhat close to home as I:

a) Have a coaching qualification and believe in its usefulness.

b) Enjoy the personalities of life coaches and appreciate what they try to do.

My two main gripes with life coaches are they're pious self- aggrandizement, and their lack of situated commentary. Firstly, the life coaches I meet seem to work only within their own field. They train other lifecoaches, or offer unqualified counselling. Their very manner reeks of presenting themselves as fledged human beings who have reached a self-defined point of actualisation. Very often, this freedom and power is economic: like all great philanthropists and colonialists, such position has been gained at the expense of others. The act of coaching is a kind of assuaging for economic guilt, yet filled with economic power.

Secondly, the lack of situated commentary sits uncomfortably with me. Giving metaphors about lights on a car being like life says nothing of action to anyone: it sounds good though. And without situation, it cannot be contested. It sounds grand, like Shakespeare. But its meaning falls between thought and action. As long as you buy the book, all is well...

Still, being able to laugh at what they do makes me realise better how it is to guide a good life. And in contrast to my university musings on what could be, situating my life in the pragmatic realities of teaching is the strongest, highest path I can take right now.

On a distinct aside, I remember in the Dubai art gallery thinking that all of life is a reduction from the infinite to the specific. This occured whilst watching the Japanese digital fixtures changing in size and space. As we live and as we act, our options are reduced. We are on this world corporal for a finite time. The finite urgency I experienced when first writing this blog wanes more than it waxes. Choices, if not made, are made for us. I choose to wait, I choose to stay in Dubai. To survive, at least with some of my immediate colleagues, I have been making little choices. Still, as Kant and Foucault say, be good with the institution, for it brings civilization to that which would gladly be chaos.

The pragmatics of my situation are clear. if I am able to live internationally for ten to fifteen more years, then I will enjoy a fairly substantial pot of money. Meeting a companion along the way is ideal: one whose situation and values can dance with mine. Better to be single in a campbed, though, than next to someone whose crushing will demands daily defiance. I also give myself a great choice of what I might be able to do, as well. But specifically, I am seeking to lead well the KS5 curriculum, to keep my universe open with reading and reviewing, and to seek wisely an interesting new post. The nature of how I choose that post is important to me

Most pertinently, I have enjoyed sharing the new life of my beautiful niece. I am somewhat harsher without a child that is not mine: my patience and sympathies to childhood are surprisingly finite. I am also glad that I didn't donate to make that child, for I would not be able to leave Canada if so. She is a delight and my in-laws are great parents. I look forward to influencing her life for the better and to being a good uncle. As ever, reading and language make for a better person.

The tiredness of her parents is, however, a terrible price for modern parenthood. What does it mean to be alive when you are exhausted? Is this something that I can do? I guess no-one chooses to be tired. It happens, and you deal with it.

And so before I want to leave today I wish to walk the rocky path by the lake and to strafe the sandy beach once more. I want to appreciate how this holiday has been a fantastical recuperation, and how I am in a momentum of reading that I do not wish to lose... I want to write regularly and to avoid the poisonous addiction of quick information.  

Feeling a little better lying in Canada

I write this sat on a warm sofa in Canada, my wonderful brother and his delightful wife and child having set off for a family holiday in a cottage.

I have finished a good few books the past few days. I speak so often of how much cultural capital is needed if you wish to engage with history and culture as a form of study. Given a man of my background, perhaps a more mathematical or scientific field would have had more utility. It wouldn't have fallen on the rocks of my Wolverhampton and Hull heritage and floundered in the wake of my social quirks and eccentric disposition. Instead I have found myself returning more intensely to the field I have chosen: literature.

Each day I wish to walk, to read and to write somewhat.

I wish I had a wider range of reading friends; they are there (and have been there). It is up to me to nurture those relationships.

This holiday I have managed to read almost a book every 2-3 days. This time last holiday I felt the time would last forever. That feeling has moulded into finite urgency, and I am happier for it.

And now?

I have five distinct projects:

1) Look at developing a passive income through selling resources on the TES: I need to investigate tax to see how this works.

2) Write and publish a book on computer games, inspiration and humanities education.

3) Creating the Modern Text booklet and more.

4) Train for my CV with the Microsoft Educator etc.

A diet of reading and writing each day will do well here, particularly one in which I am able to look at a small, focused list. Let's try this...

Maintaining the Momentum of Attention in The Holidays

Momentum in the teaching holidays is hard to maintain, nor particularly desirable. I have passed the midway point of my holiday now, and we have three weeks until I begin again in Dubai in earnest.

Having suffered debilitating sickness in the first three weeks of my holiday, I am happy now to be a little healthier, and certainly with the kind of space and expansive flourishing of the mind needed to approach this time and to be with people in a nourishing fashion.

I have stopped using a calendar at the moment and rely only upon my To-Do list and a countdown app. I have consolidated my summer tasks into one task: will I get some of these things done? Write a book? Train for Microsoft and Apple qualifications? If I want to exert my will over anyone it should be myself. I remember writing about this in a previous blogpost: such organization should gain spirit, not lose it. Reading of such work and reading by others on Twitter is, though, surprisingly annoying. I was bathing today when I thought of an old boss, a desperate woman whose child committed suicide whilst she was nursing a scraped face from too much drinking. She derided my enthusiasm privately, calling it puppyish. Whatever it might be, that school and this one have shaped how I might express my practice to others, and to be a better judge as to whom I should express.

Teaching, like some of my travelling, aims for improvement. To appreciate the mundane; to be monastic in the mind – these are worthy ambitions. If my work is to save time for others, then that is worth sharing. All will appreciate that.

The most important aspect of my time here now is being able to love my family. With their flaws and quirks they are wonderful, powerful and full of integrity. The mean and utilitarian cynicism I suffer in my current place is no more than to be expected in such a barren environment. To square that with the love and warmth I see now is to imbibe delight after a desperate thirst. My wonderful niece, in particular, is loving and is growing every day, testing boundaries and becoming more part of the world. Her parents want her to become resilient, and to process what has happened before.

Such resilience and processing is desirable for all thinking people. I wonder here, in this cold kitchen and a cleared wooden table, of how I would like to deal with my exes? Should I want to meet them? Converse with them? Should I want to speak to all people from my past with whom I might have a broken connection? Without a fruitful intention in my conversation, I am perhaps best letting such things simply lay. That is a later conversation – for now, I am focused on creation.

This holiday I have read more than I have ever done in my life. That I suffer from an atrophied concentration is almost without doubt. The lack of attention and care I experienced at home (not through any machination, just through the busy nature of survival), and the lack of support and nourishment in school, both as a pupil, a student and as a teacher, is not to blame for this lack of concentration. Now, I can read and can read for hours. Whether this remains the case when I start teaching again will remain to be seen. I hope so.

My reading ambitions have meant I have almost moved through my list of NEA books. Reviewing them afterwards is taking a long time, but again is worth it to consolidate understanding. My education in such literature now is superior to my time at university, with better, if equally distant, online peers on Goodreads.com.

Such reading makes me realise how much knowing the texts myself is empowering: if I am continually able to write essays and paragraphs etc, then I will be happier. That will be my focus, along with vocabulary aspects etc. There are interesting ambitions I have.

So, overall, my prime purpose next year is to strengthen attention.

With 335 days left, I intend to read a few more books in Dubai. I want to find Arab books, maybe attend more bookclubs. I need to monitor my mind and my body and to see what happens. What cultural experiences do I want to have? Will I stay in the other Emirates?

All such ambitions lead me to the most important thing next year – to plan my CV to take an interesting step elsewhere. I did not really choose this place inasmuch as I chose love and accepted the consequences. Such different lives can lay out ahead after this year. I should see these varied places and see how and where I might go. The ease and Westernisation of my current place is, not, however, what I want.

I want to make my universe a little bigger.