I'm on my way to New roots. I've got a shift working there. I meet a poor asian lady outside living in a tiny room single room, she has a wounded sick child at her feet. I see the child has lost his legs, and the wounds are wrapped up and bloody bankets. It looks horrific to say the least. I give her bag of food, which I leave at the entrance to the room. She finds the bag and doesn't know who has put it there so she comes out looking for the person to return the food to... No its yours I tell her when she finds me " have it" I say. She looks into the shop, and becomes inquisitive as to what's inside... she now has a slightly better child and she comes into the shop to look around. So much food, I bet she's thinking... and its my work day and now there's an asian family in the shop, looking around, and the kid has wandered off somewhere, walking happily on two healthy legs....
The front of the shop has been made into a cafe sitting area. It just so happened that the shop had aways owned this front area but had never expanded it. Now there are round tables and chairs under a canopy to shelter them. There's also a new sign for the shop and a graffiti board for artists to put info and art about. Sara has stuck something up, a piece of art about A3 size that says something like Love or Love is the Way.
Outside the back of the shop is a playing field, and there's a big game of football going on. I get involved and get distracted to the point of not remembering to do my cooking shift at ten o'clock, - its raining but warm, and something magical is happening - the players are becoming super skilled..
Now I'm wandering back across the playing field, leaving the game un-finnished, to the classroom to get some work done. Back in the class room 3 or 4 of my friends are sat with an old guy who looks like a teacher. He's telling us about short story writing. He's been reading our attempts and is frustrated with the way we have been taught to write. So, now he just starts improvising us a story off the top of his head and tells me to write it down as I listen, "there was once a ..." I'm hearing the words but my pen doesn't want to write, and neither do my hands or my brain. I forget the words as soon as they have been spoken, and also my hands just can't seem to form the letters... I feel like its dyslexia or something very similar... The letters are such a mess...
".. Along the way we came across..." I'm hearing it but then it goes, and I write -loalgg ht ewwa.... No, its not working I say...
The old man is now Paul Grassick, from Porter valley Transition, and he decides to tell us stories of what he used to get up to when he was at school, and as a kid...
"We use to just wander out across the fields and not come back for sometimes days,... When I got a bit older I began to just hop rides on trains,,", yes, these stories he's telling us are good, I nod my head in approval to the others....now he shows us that he learnt this special way of writing stories, and making them sound really exciting by having many different ways of describing each situation - he writes down -"sometimes I".. And then writes "walk down, and "climb up" and "decide to" all next to the first word, - he's building stories like architecture - many layers, reading between the lines....
Now I've left the room and enter into a bigger classroom with more people in. I think its a maths class or a science class. I sit down, but am immediately bored to death so I leave to go back to the other room, the story room. My friends that were in there have changed and now there are a few people playing christian hippy rock songs. I recognise t melody, and think I could join in since its better than maths and science, but then I don't like the words or the people singing them much.. So I leave this situation as well.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment