Essay Period Thoughts: Attempts to Keep Sane No.3

The third entry in my essay-period journal, following my stream of conscious to the places too distracting not to write down.

4.05.2017

4. ON GLANCING AT MOVING STRANGERS

            I walk past an open doorway where a facilities worker suddenly glances at me. Obviously I walk on, and rumenate that almost every time someone walks past a window or enters a room, I glance at them. In rooms of people. I scan all faces. I am struck with the realization, the remembrance (see ‘2. SURPRISE WITH BEING’) that we are animals. The facilities man would not simply engage fully with whatever task he was approaching, as he is not an automaton. Outside of my knowledge he has friends and family, he has a running plethora of observations and ideas. We do not glide through human life in the roles we have won or been dealt with; we scuttle, our ears pricking up at sudden noises, our eyes snap our necks to pinpoints of flickering movement. We are more genetically disposed to hunt or even more to tense and scatter at signs of danger, than to fulfil our role of postman/ firefighter/ receptionist with the focus we are expected to have.

5. ON WALKING IN THE WOODS (WHERE ARE THEY ARE?)

            Where are the woods? The woods I know all have litter, ruined walls, unused building foundations. They inspire nostalgia in me; nostalgia for the previous woods I have walked in with their similar spreadings of concrete overgrown with moss and glass bottles filled with mildew, and also nostalgia for the archaic, the romantic; that which was, the ruined castle/ rusty red stripe can returned to nature. This is all (not) very well, but where are the woods? The ones with mainly trees, no paths, no rubble no woodland café. Are there any woods?