Inhibitions

They erected a barricade between themselves, all the while each blaming the other for it, each knowing that really they were the one responsible.  ‘If only he ...’, ‘If only she ...’ and so on and so forth, neither able, or willing to say what they really meant, really, truly wanted.

Upbringing, of course, parental ‘advice’, heavy handed, red-faced, oblique, couched in such formal twisty words, with averted eyes, that it was almost meaningless.

Peer pressure another thing that made them tongue-tied. 

How could she really be sure that what Jacky said was the best way really was, when she was such a ... well, not really someone you wanted to be copying, taking advice from.   Especially when it was couched in such a sly manner, eyes sliding to older friends, who sniggered as if they knew she was lying while you had no way of telling, because of your ignorance.
He ... well he’d claimed to have, already.   Not to her, (don’t be so effing stupid!)  but to the others.   Wasn’t sure that they’d believed him.   Part hadn’t wanted to, part had.   But he suspected they could tell it had been cobbled together from magazines and the film he’d found at the bottom of his parents’ wardrobe.

[This a Thinking Ten piece from a week or so ago. ]

Ignorance sometimes leads, if not to bliss, to creativity

The image that heads this lines of communication blog page is one I like a lot (obviously!)

It is a Photo-shopped variation of one of a series of photographs I took in my first year as a mature Fine Art degree student back in 2000.  We had been given, by our most obscure tutor, a project which, after much consultation, seemed to hinge on reflection.   I had been told specifically that I needed to 'make props' to facilitate my work.

With that sort of panic-stricken cluelessness, instilled when one does not wish to look a complete fool, I rigged up a frame, demolished a lampshade, acquired some acetate and borrowed my husband's digital camera (another previously undiscovered piece of kit).   Put the whole edifice in front of the window and snapped away merrily.   (This photo gives some idea of the thing)

Put the resulting photos on display in a 'resources' folder only to be gobsmacked (and smote again with ignorance) at my tutors' massive enthusiasm - undeserved since I hadn't had a clue that I was doing anything of merit.
But I have returned time and time again to that series of photos ... and am now much less chary of pitching in in total ignorance.

24/03 Ivan might not have been so terrible, but ...

At least they’d had the summer.

It wouldn’t be true to say that it had been entirely blissful – she hadn’t enjoyed feeling so ignorant, so stiff and unsure of what to say, how to behave, and there was always that chorus in the back of her mind, the one that said 'nice girls don’t.'

And it worried her, that she might not be a ‘nice’ girl ... but it had been nice, much nicer than she’d been led to believe.   And he had only been nice when she was ...

And since they didn’t have anything to talk about – oh how she wished she’d been blessed with that social ease which Bea had, she was sure that he’d talk to her then, but ... they had to do something to fill the time while Bea and his friend went for walks, and because they were at the far beach, where no-one else ever went, what they did did seem sort of unreal, not connected to real life.

But when Dad found out – because he’d come into Dad’s shop to speak to her when she was working there – then it had got real, real and horrible and she’d been stopped from going out and they’d looked pitying at her when she said he’d promised to marry her ... and after that, after her Dad said he’d speak to him, Ivan never spoke to her again.

[another travelling of imagination and time ...]