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Shift

Shift.

Just a quick post before the beginning of a very hectic but exciting week, as it’s most likely I wont have a second to blog until at least Sunday. This is what I’m going to be getting up to:

Monday and Tuesday I will be attending/working at Shift Happens 2.0, Pilot Theatre’s conference about digital media in the arts. I’ll be there as a sort of Twitter ‘specialist’, as well as in my capacity as a burgeoning PhD student, soaking up as much as I can in the run up to the beginning of my Theatre and Technology research. The event looks extremely exciting, particularly looking forward to hearing more from Hide and Seek, the live streaming of Catcher In Their Eye, and the New playgrounds… Places and spaces, real and virtual panel. You can follow the conference with the hashtags #shifthappens and #shift2 I think.

Wednesday will be spent sightseeing in York (I haven’t been there since I was very young, Jorvik Viking Centre, anyone?) and then coming back to Lincoln in time for a showing of The Age of Stupid at the Drill Hall. I may also buy a big hat. I quite want a bit hat.

Thursday will be my first dedicated day working on the online communication strategy for TWP, and will be the day I set out all of my plans, hopefully informed by the Shift conference

Friday I am temping for some money to cover my activities on…

Saturday! 4 hours on 5 trains leaving at 5am to go to Greenpeace’s Mili-band, which is aiming to “bring together over a thousand people from across the country to create a human band around Kingsnorth power station to show our opposition to new dirty coal plants.” There’s the protest itself, as well as a fete, and a chance to meet up with all the green folk I’ve been following on Twitter, which should be good. This is my first attempt at following through on my previous decision to start actively demonstrating, rather than passively participating in advocating the political and social change that I believe in. It should hopefully be a nice gentle introduction before Climate Camp at the end of August. If I buy a big hat, I will try wearing it here.

And then Sunday, I may be visiting my brother in Leeds, or I may be readying myself for a full week of 8.30-5 temping with Interserve (for those who follow me on Twitter, it’s the place of #thewoodlouse) which is so dull that they actually advise you to bring a book. Might actually afford me a decent chance to get some writing done I suppose.

So yes, that is my week, all of which is apparently going to take place on the hottest week in the UK for a very long time. I shall try and catch up with everything and blog about Shift, and the Mili-band thing in a weeks time. In the meantime, you can always follow me on Twitter. I have also just sorted myself a Tumblr on which you will find links and other things of interest from the internets, and a Flickr account, on which I’ve put a few of my nicer photos, and on which I shall definitely put up anything decent that I take over the next week or so.

Thanks for reading.

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Here

– for someone who lost someone recently.

Here, where the land meets the sky, here. Where the landscape leans back and the world opens up, past where the cliff drops away. Stumbling and kicking stones away down the path that leads to the sea. The languid beauty of a still day, the water whispering what it sometimes roars. We came from there. Staggering, gasping, dying for air, thrust out of the warm, wet place where we were not one thing, or another, but everywhere.

I haven’t felt a loss like this before.

I realise I’ve stopped. That my pause has coincided with a lull in the air, his face swims in front of me, wrought out of the hot vapour that hangs in the air and the tears don’t want to let go of my cheek, they hang on for as long as they can until too heavy, dully they fall to the sand.

It doesn’t feel wrong – it feels like a sharp pain, like vinegar and lemon, like salt water, like a headache and like a memory I’d forgotten. But it doesn’t feel wrong, this loss. It feels like tears to the sea.

I stagger, though I don’t move. The wind stirs, and I walk on. It is all I can do. Move. Let the sea air wipe the salt water from my face, I breathe in.

It’s right that I feel this, and it will fade. But this is my offering to him – my tears – I’m returning like him, to the sea.