Things have changed

Petty things first: 9st 7lb!

I've lost a stone (it's taken 9 1/2 months) which means now my wonderful Mountain Equipment jacket (got as a bargain for £90 struck down from £170, end-of-line) doesn't stretch around my gut (I prefer Deutsch: bauch) when I sit down. This is a very small thing, but it means a lot to me as I've tried bloody hard to get where I am, and if it's only a symbol of willpower, so be it - the willpower is the thing. Besides, barring cut-price bargains I'd have to spend another £150 at the very least to get a shell jacket as good (outdoor people will know what I mean) - and one in dark green as well (I'm not keen on looking like a glow-worm).

My last training walk was 8 1/4 miles carrying a 25lb pack, in 3 hours and 10 minutes, at about 2.6mph (I have a spreadsheet to record and calculate all of this); this makes my lower legs ache like the devil, but this is because the insoles I bought with my boots are all squashed out - the repeated shocks knacker my flat-footed skeleton badly. With new Bridgedales and some Superfeet (bought today), I hope to crack 12 miles in a day as a short-term target - working up to 15 miles, and 20 miles ultimately.

My resting heart rate is in the region of 60bpm - some of this may be due to a slight overdose of ibuprofen & codeine a few months ago, but mostly it's due to my regular application in exerting myself up to, but not beyond, a certain limit whenever I walk. There's a certain sweet spot at the limit of aerobic exercise where I find a rhythm - it hurts, but not too bad, it doesn't get worse, and I find freedom in a mild trance.

I've also nearly come to the end of my epic spending spree on outdoor gear: I have clothing, sleeping bag & mat, torch, stove, etc - I only need a tent, bothy bag, water purification and a few spare items of clothing, and I'm pretty much set up for multi-day hikes.

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I'm sounding out the probabilities of doing an undergraduate degree in literature. The reasons for this are manifold: I need to use my brain to every possible extent; I need also to know that I'm as informed as I possibly can be; and I need to break the spell of silence.

What I really want is to train myself physically to write by taking up an intellectual challenge, and meeting its concomitant deadline - I want to learn as much as I can of the history, ethos, craft and essentiality of writing, by writing.

Recently I found, in the library at Great Malvern, Reading Poetry: An Introduction (Tom Furniss and Mike Bath, Longman, 2007). Reading it from cover to cover, I found a lot that I previously knew (partly from reading fragments of post-structuralism at art college, partly from my scattered but intent reading of modernist and proto-modernist novels, and a few like poets) and a lot that I didn't: Andrew Marvell, John Donne, John Milton, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Adrienne Rich and Derek Walcott were all previously to some extent closed to me.

As further reading I've ordered from the library Modern Criticism and Theory (David Lodge & Nigel Wood, eds., Longman, 2008) and Twentieth Century Literary Criticism (David Lodge, ed., Longman, 1972); and will in the next few minutes order online a copy of Image-Music-Text (Roland Barthes, Fontana Press, 1993).

I'm not consciously attempting to sound excessively learned by quoting publishers and dates of editions; it seems appropriate, though, and if it's not entirely relevant or necessary, it can be put down to enthusiasm - something of which I have over the past decade been in dire need, and which perhaps deserves a little latitude.

The real test will consist in the ability of my green and unshielded hope to weather eleven months until the beginning of an access course in September next year, and then a year of conforming to its no doubt banal intellectual requirements. On second thoughts though, given that my academic record, such as it is, reflects enough of my ability significantly to sway a decision of admission as a mature student, I may attempt to get straight onto the September 2009 BA(hons) at the University of Worcester (I love my flat, it's the foundation of my current wellbeing; I need to study within a commuting radius at least) by writing a test essay - it would cut out a year of pointless bother, I'm sure, and anything I don't know how to do, I can find out.

Of course I know that the undergraduate degree will also involve a lot of banal requirements, but I think I am mature enough, and finally sane (in the sense of 'mentally healthy') enough, to accept unpleasant tasks in the pursuit of subtler rewards.

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Reading my earlier posts, I find that there was a lot more lot more high-voltage arcing going on - if anti-depressants can be said to change a person by making them numb in a certain way, then perhaps mirtazapine has made me so; but I couldn't have carried on like I was. What I've written here is generally the skimmed top layer of a rather horrible vat, and a few more bolts of stunning vehemence would have cost a few more months of throttled failure, a thousand more hours of glacial horror.

I don't believe that an artist's suffering makes good practice. There is a particular kind of suffering which is inextricable from the teleology of creation, and the necessity of wielding the scalpel without anaesthetic makes courage a necessity for an artist - but no-one can do good things whilst destroying themselves. In order to do 'good works', what one needs is fortitude - to which one can then introduce the proper admixture of sensibility.