Eccentricities

Day before yesterday I spent most of the day with Professor Tim Brookes, interviewing him in the car on the way to a talk he was giving about his Endangered Alphabets project. Then a fascinating and inspiring conversation on the way back to Burlington.

Tim has done a lot of things, writing books, articles for mags including National Geographic. Sets your mind open to possibilities.

Oddly enough I also had an equally inspiring, but also heartening conversation with a woman in New York who is also making a doco about Assyrians. She is way ahead and above me, but it was so good to talk to her, especially about the engendered struggles doing this. She was a professional photographer before doing this, photographing celebrities, even for Rolling Stone, f**in ay! Hopefully am meeting up with her in person before she flies off to shoot a doco in Finland on Thurs.

On the way back from Burlington I went to this awesome museum, much like a little village, there's a blacksmiths and a general store. But they had these fantastic collections of slightly eccentric things - hatboxes, carousel horses, figureheads from ships. I loved it. The woman who donated it was a rich heiress who was a collector. Now that's something good to do with money! (Apart from feeding the poor of course).

But back to me, my travel card got declined at the petrol station, I have chewed through my finances at a great rate, feeling panicky. If I carry on the way I am going it will mean I only stay in Iraq for real short time. There's been so many delays, people being away, and expenses not considered or things just took longer. And me not really caring, and spending as I want. It's part of an ethos I've had for a while, not caring about anything, so unable to spend carefully. Can I care enough about this to make it work? Not sure what to do. Every option I think about trying to make the rest of the trip economical doesn't quite work. Have do much I want to do here...