For the ease of future historians
Right then, Blogging
I was up at UCC today (University College Cork), where I studied Archaeology and History something like 5 years ago, and my brain was busy working on trying to make me feel sad/nostalgic through various vague recollections of my understanding of Jung archetypes. That is, as I was back in a place where I had spent quite a few happy years, Jeremiah should, by all rights, be sinking into some sort of brownish gray morass of memory.
But Jeremiah wasn't. Instead I was feeling vaguely superior. Vaguely old. And vaguely astonished I had spent so many of my days lurking about the glass confines of the student centre in which I was now sitting sipping the best coffee from a machine I had had in ages.
Outside, students wandered from lectures, stopped to rest on the piers of marble that ran parallel to the windows, chatting instead of going anywhere. The sun flared over the shoulder of the friend sitting across from me, easily evading the cupped hands I held between it and my eyes. Somewhere distant a man in shorts cycled on the spot for 12 hours. Only the occasional student dropped coins into the bucket behind him. Charity. Few seemed to notice him. A little white lame dog padded oddly amid the hoards of students. Snowy in search of Tintin.
I thought; what a waste of time. All this. What are they learning. Missing lectures, sitting about smoking and talking in the cold spring sunshine. How glorious to spend ones time happily failing to learn, with all of societies support. Life since this beautiful place seemed so much more useful then life here. Days I can hardly associate with reality. But they were good days.
Why is this relevant to blogging? Well I was in UCC meeting one of my best friends, David, hes currently doing his doctorate, on history, the Spanish Civil War to be precise, and he convinced me that my life, as it stands, runs, sits, sleeps, acts, succeeds and wanders, is something of historic interest. So he suggested I blog. Become a name in a bibliography of the future.
So theres this. The life of an emigrant. An emigrant of a particular sort. The unusual sort. Most of the time anyway. So lets see what this will be.
I was up at UCC today (University College Cork), where I studied Archaeology and History something like 5 years ago, and my brain was busy working on trying to make me feel sad/nostalgic through various vague recollections of my understanding of Jung archetypes. That is, as I was back in a place where I had spent quite a few happy years, Jeremiah should, by all rights, be sinking into some sort of brownish gray morass of memory.
But Jeremiah wasn't. Instead I was feeling vaguely superior. Vaguely old. And vaguely astonished I had spent so many of my days lurking about the glass confines of the student centre in which I was now sitting sipping the best coffee from a machine I had had in ages.
Outside, students wandered from lectures, stopped to rest on the piers of marble that ran parallel to the windows, chatting instead of going anywhere. The sun flared over the shoulder of the friend sitting across from me, easily evading the cupped hands I held between it and my eyes. Somewhere distant a man in shorts cycled on the spot for 12 hours. Only the occasional student dropped coins into the bucket behind him. Charity. Few seemed to notice him. A little white lame dog padded oddly amid the hoards of students. Snowy in search of Tintin.
I thought; what a waste of time. All this. What are they learning. Missing lectures, sitting about smoking and talking in the cold spring sunshine. How glorious to spend ones time happily failing to learn, with all of societies support. Life since this beautiful place seemed so much more useful then life here. Days I can hardly associate with reality. But they were good days.
Why is this relevant to blogging? Well I was in UCC meeting one of my best friends, David, hes currently doing his doctorate, on history, the Spanish Civil War to be precise, and he convinced me that my life, as it stands, runs, sits, sleeps, acts, succeeds and wanders, is something of historic interest. So he suggested I blog. Become a name in a bibliography of the future.
So theres this. The life of an emigrant. An emigrant of a particular sort. The unusual sort. Most of the time anyway. So lets see what this will be.
And the historian was the first to comment...
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ReplyDeleteA blog post brimming with humility and self-awareness.
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