ABOUT
PEOPLE AND PLACES
Reading books and observing life illuminates how places are made up by the people who live in them, whilst people are heavily constituted by the places with which they associate. This journal explores people and places, keeping in mind questions and themes of travelling, settling, belonging, freedom, and where someone may or may not call 'home'.
Hello, my name is...
...Megan Chester and I am from Chester.
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I am a student at Oxford University studying English Language and Literature. I love God, people, words and travel. The list could go on!
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Tugboat is my new venture. I have been dreaming it up and mulling it over for a while, and now, thanks to the stories and support of so many, am pushing it out to sea.
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Please enjoy wandering about this site. Take your time - have a rummage through the journal and gander in the gallery. I hope you find something good.
Inspiration and anchors
For depth and solidity, every good boat needs an anchor. Here are some writers, texts and quotes that have influenced my thinking and Tugboat ideas.
"I... a tugboat in a dry dock, while she, glittery voyager of secure destination, steamed down the harbour with whistles whistling and confetti in the air."
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"It nagged me like a tune: Miss Holiday Golightly, Travelling."
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"I don't want to own anything until I know I've found the place where me and things belong together."
"...she leaned constantly forward as to peer out the windows, as if she were hunting an address - or, I decided, taking a last impression of a scene she wanted to remember."
"What childishness it is that while there's a breath of life
in our bodies, we are determined to rush
to see the sun the other way around?"
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"Think of the long trip home"
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"Is it lack of imagination that makes us come
to imagined places, not just stay at home?
Or could Pascal have been not entirely right
about just sitting quietly in one's room?"
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"She was not looking at the sculpture... her large eyes were fixed dreamily on a streak of sunlight which fell across the floor."
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"Kindly mornings when autumn and winter seemed to go hand in hand like a happy aged couple one of whom would presently survive in chiller loneliness"
"Language is a finer medium."...
"Yes, for those who can't paint"...
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"Language gives a fuller image, which is all the better for being vague... the true seeing is within"
"The great restlessness of a great city, and the way in which it tumbles and tosses before it can get to sleep"
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"...waking life... rekindled with the fires of the first street-corner breakfast sellers."
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"...the day came, and I was tired and could sleep."
THE MAP,
ELIZABETH BISHOP
"The names of seashore towns run out to sea,
the names of cities cross the neighbouring mountains"
"It's a myth, the city... for anyone, everyone, a different myth..."
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"...she'd hear it said that most of the people lived underground or... in the sky"
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"...above that garage she contrives a momentary sense of security, and for all a feeling of having roots."