unlock the mind

Image | | andy townend

2015_04_03_00579

So, I used to be chastised for starting sentences with that word, and in that way. Come to think of it I have always felt that my grammar skills lacked, well, lacked skills. But, no matter. I have always enjoyed writing and so, here I am doing just that.

Actually, right now, what I am doing is free writing. It is Saturday, and I am finally attending to my “homework” set on Day One (Monday) of the WordPress bl;logging u. writing 101 online course, the third such course I have taken recently in an effort to learm, or stop my braincells decaying as they will, or something.

The challenge here is the free writing means just hat, you write and write and write for a timed period with no clear plan and woithout going back to edit and chck, so please forgive the typos and Mac inspired c=sleppchecking if there is any, I m not allowed to check or go back and review – so, unusually for me, “i` will do as i am told

The rules, ssuch as there are any require you to write from the mind or heart or wherever for a fixed period and unlock water lies beneath, quite asacry prospect no?

What I am finding interesting is that I have set the timer of my phone and I will only wrote for 20 minutes and will stop and not eddf ay the end of that..And i am finding that my old exam fears have come to the fore, whenever I sat an exam, especially one that i knew i could handle and knew my stuff, i would shut down and write so fast that my fingers would ache and scream as my hand shot across the page trying to show the examiner that i really d ‘know’ , often of course that meant after the 20 allotted minutes for that question had es;asked, I would stop, look at the page and realise in a cold slimy feeling of horror, that i had answered the spring quarsion. ever been there?

So….pauses for breath, perhaps i will slow down a little, and in case you are interested, the timer now tells me there are 12 minutes and 18 seconds to go although by the time i finish writing that time will have changed

Which also reminds me how fascinated i am with time and what a strange concept it really is. What is now? Now is utterly meaningless, like schodingers cat 9yes i know i misspelled it but j am not editing tthis pieve ok? So, like the cat whose master i failed to spell, now is a hard concept to pin down, by the time we has uttered the word or considered now it is already gone, never to come back and only the future awaits, and that now rapidly becomes a memory and later fades, and yet at the times it was so very real. So, what is now?

I should also add that at school i was always told off for talking in class and generally not sitting still I remember well the time a frustrated teacher, well a dark
black clad irish priest threw a board rubber at me (ha anyone even know what one of those is) and the chalk dust exploded in my face which whitened as the prisest simply uttered my last name in a for of frustrated malevolence

And noww? Now I am writing this, against the clock, I really must get all my ideas out or i will fail and how will i survive/ And now? Now I am listening to BBC Fadio 4 listening to an article on why men once thought mullets were cool an ocasionally staring into space at the rain outside and listening to the laundry rotating in the machine behind me

Quick check on timer tells me that there are 5 minutes and 48 seconds to go, the radio is now talking about lewis caroll and I am beginning to tire, how do writers do this. And like in those examination days the point of what i am doing is lost in the moment, lost in the now as i strufggle to remember the question and try to piece together the facts and ideas whistling in my head with whatever the examiner sitting in a dusty room somehether thought it would be fun to set for students struggling in an airless room in the june sun, oh yes thanks for that memory

and so back to now, what is it, i really do love think about it, those people who say you must live in the now, not the present not the future, do they know what the are saying? like a mayfly to live in a moment that will vanish, never be there again, perhaps not even live at all because there is probably a mathemeticla equation that proves that now is an impossibility, so i must keep going, the clock is ticking my time is rnbbinyg out so this will no longer be now but added to al, the faded memories except this one with all the typos will be there for ever in cyber apace

so, i will keep writing, maybe to stay sane and then what will i do next, as now becomes yesterday

so, now that terror as the mind goes blank and i realise that i can’t remember the answer and that I will not be able to

(for wordpress writing 101 – day one)

(and for lucile’s photo101 rehab)

*precisely twenty minutes of free writing (which means no editing hence all the typos) for the first day of the wordpress writing 101 blogging u. course with a photo shot on a 32 year old olympus om10, shot in aperture priority mode with lens wide open with a roll of my favourite ilford delta 3200 inside, only edit to the images was to straighten the image in lightroom 5, after realising that i was apparently unable to stand up straight when taking the shot, go figure*

25 thoughts on “unlock the mind”

  1. Lol. this is very unedited, I’m slow at times, I can’t seem to get the meaning of what the typos were. But anyhow, would still say good job… at least you got what you have in mind to “paper”. Sometimes, for me one of the hardest things to do is put in writing what my thoughts are.

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    1. Thanks for taking the time to read my unedited “stream of consciousness”, as an exercise I can see the value in “getting things out” so they can be refined later…and yes my typos in this piece are dreadful!

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  2. I like this post a lot! I felt how you were feeling, and it was quite similar to my experience, although I did go back and check (didn´t fully realize the concept, I see). Love this in particular: “… the faded memories except this one with all the typos will be there for ever in cyber apace” 🙂

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  3. I actually liked your typos :-), esp. “Fadio” (radio is fading, isn’t it?).
    And yes, living in the now… one of life’s intriguing questions.
    Sometimes I think the meaning of it is making the most of every moment (kind of what you did here – thinking, writing, listening at the same time).
    Other times it seems as if activity is escaping the moment…

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  5. I loved this! I have read that we do not really read the letters at all that are written. we merely skim and make them say what they should. In reading your piece, which was great in that I could feel the nerve-wrackingness of watching that clock, I knew (most of the time) what you meant, and didn’t bother with the spelling. And it was glorious fun to read it a second time and then notice the spelling.
    Living in the now–crazy concept, right?

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  6. I read every word… it really is interesting to free-write like this. I HATE self-correcting features…I have my words and wording that I want to use, and no stupid machine is going to tell ME…what I meant. My computer keyboard is not allowed to mess with my words at all…no spelling checks, no “right” words. Also… I begin sentences with So a lot. So?
    Writing instructors/teachers/etc. are not interested in good writing they only want Grammar Police stuff. Grammar is good…spelling is good…but when I want to freewrite what comes out of the fingers to the screen can not be messed ith. Spell-check be damned.
    A friend told me once that when a committee was rewriting her doctoral dissertation: “they can take the most interesting material in the world and turn it into crap!” This is true.

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    2. Thank you!! What a life affirming comment, I am with you with the spellchecking thing, I hate it when I have to fight my iPhone for example when I try to type a word and it insists it knows better… So, power to the fingers!

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  7. I’m very happy to know that I am not the only one who actually makes typo mistakes when I am writing a timed writing. I had a teacher in 5th grade throw chalkboard eraser at us if she caught us talking. I got erasers thrown at me often. LOL

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  9. Fabulous piece, and also hilarious. I realized that while doing my free writing, I corrected it afterwards by deleting words that not even I knew anymore what they were doing there. I love breaking rules….
    Well done!

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  10. I cant help but think that this line :”so, i will keep writing, maybe to stay sane and then what will i do next, as now becomes yesterday” will be great for a poem to write.
    It could be divided in three parts and one could continue to think on the line’s meaning… I think that could turn out great 🙂

    Now, I guess I don’t have to add that I loved this line in particular

    See you around !

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