G. Michael Vasey's Blog: The Wacky World of Dr. Vasey, page 49

Off To Aston…

I remember being very keen to escape from Hull and Willerby. At age 18, my chance had arrived. I was off to Aston University in Birmingham for 3-years. It wasn’t my family I wanted to escape from it was the place. There was a big world to explore and I wanted to have a fresh start. Be the person that I was instead of the person people thought I was. Back then, Birmingham seemed miles and miles away. The train ride was via Doncaster and Sheffield and it was tremendously exciting…..

Birmingham itself was like a concrete jungle. Aston is near the city center and then it literally was concrete underpasses, concrete walkways, concrete bull ring and … well, it was all so much concrete really! Did I care? Hell no. I loved it there. I opened a bank account at Barclays and for 6-years lived off an overdraft paid off each semester by receipt of my grant monies (Thank you Barclays!). Aston is also like concrete. Huge, massive concrete and brick buildings with high ceilings and six or seven stories. Investment in this new University had however commenced and so there was a new glassy modern library and other buildings going up. The geology department was different. It was situated in what had been a small Victorian house by the library and what can only be termed a long pre-fabricated building (see photo at bottom). It had character.

It was a different world back then it really was. No cell phones or computers meant we had to do everything the old fashioned way. It was also safer or I was naive? I would hitch hike home for a weekend. I would just decide Friday afternoon to go home and would set off walking from the city center with my thumb signal. I recall one day a guy in a small red vintage sports car stopped and drove me to Sheffield… that was fun. I always made it in 4-5 hours and would hitch hike back again on the Sunday afternoon….

Of course, it took me a while to understand people in Birmingham. A buzz was, I soon learned, what I might get at a bus stop… for example. It also took me the first year to truly settle in. It wasn’t as easy as I had imagined moving away and living on your own. But by my second year, I was stage manager at Aston Campus Entertainments in the Students Union, on Student Council and I had moved off campus to a flat in west Brom. that I shared with Brendan.

The first night that we moved in we thought we would go for a beer. Down the high street we went and the sound of reggae music ushered us into a pub. We opened the door talking animatedly and walked in. Then there was that moment when we realised that the music had stopped and that, apart from our chatter, there was total silence. We looked up and around. Every single person in that pub was black….. except us. And every single one of them was staring at us. I think we reacted the right way as we decided in for a penny, in for a pound and went to the bar. We ordered a beer. The chattering recommenced, the music came back on and within 30-minutes, Brendan and I were chit chatting away to everyone inside…….It turned out to be a really great place full of great people!

Naive? Probably….. but we had fun.

The Geology class of 1981. Yours truly is top row second from the left…..

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I Am A Stage

The light shines in my face

The rock n roll is loud here

Guitar screams and bass thunders

Reverberating in my head

Stereo composition drives

The beat is sensual and strong

This is my own made up song

Making it up as I go along

There are no rules

Cos’ rules are for Fools

There are no requirements

Except to entertain

The song in my head

Doesn’t actually exist

And yet that song rocks

I am a stage – a venue

I am all the rage – rocking too

A driving beat moves me

It is the engine of my life

Pumping, thumping along

It’s the heart that drives this song

Making it up as I go along

I can’t do anything wrong

Life throbs and pulses

Mind over matter

Inside over outside

A rock n roll ride

That song inside

Keeps me jiving

I am the Lord of the dance, said He

But, the dance is inside of me

In my heart

Tiphareth rocks

To the song of life

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Death on the Beach

Sunlight shimmers on churning waters

Sand glitters like gold dust rolling with the waves

An azure sky, brilliant colors brightened

There is a surreal element to this surf

Tumbling over, erosive currents pull

Unreal, it seems to be so unreal

Like a waking lucid dream

Dreamt by this dreamer

Experienced in this place

A moment of time trapped

In my memory forever

So that when I endeavor

To recall

It’s there

Yet again

Like an aging photo

In a photo album

Faded at the edges

Handled too many times

Deeply etched lines

On paper and my face

As the years have passed by

Faster, ever faster

To that ultimate destination

Without silly recrimination

Giving in to the tidal pull

Sand gold swirling around me

Sunlight tuning blue

Dragged away by the tide that brought me

Tumbling over, erosive currents pull

Unreal, it seems so unreal

Life passing away

Into a waking lucid dream

Dreamt by this dreamer

On the other side of life

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No One Will Remember

And when we are gone

It will be like we didn’t exist

All the trials, tribulations

All the joy, the jubilation

A life of toil and achievement

Forgotten and gone

No one will remember deeds

No one will know the impact

Written only in the dust of death

After that final breath

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She’s Out There

I came across the hand written lyrics to a song that I wrote in 1976! I can still play it and one day I will record it as it is actually quite good even if I say so myself. It is rock reggae like the Police but predates them and it is what I played in their dressing room at Aston University…. but that is another story that you can read here..

Here are the lyrics….

She’s out there

She’s out there

She’s out there

Somewhere

She was one them girls

She was good looking and she knew it

She was oh so so cool

But there was something missing

With that chick oooooh

She’s out there

She’s out there

She’s out there

Somewhere

She was out on the town

She was grooving around but she blew it

She was oh so so rude

But there was something missing

With that chick ooooooh

She’s out there

She’s out there

She’s out there

Somewhere

Brings back memories…..

Punk Girl by Jakob west.

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Memories of Another Me?

There are moments when I am overwhelmed with a strange feeling. It’s as if I remember events or things or perhaps hints of events or things that never actually happened. Sometimes, it’s like an ache yearning for something that seems lost or unclear. The feeling that there is something strange about things is a part of this sensation. Bizarre?

To be honest, I think it is this feeling that I had as a child that lead me to imagine that I was not really here at all but instead I was sat in a small room hooked up to a machine through which I experienced a virtual life knowing that outside my room was an endless corridor of such rooms….

The feeling sometimes is so strong that I am sad for whatever I have lost. The half memories of somewhere make me yearn for wherever it was.

I have wondered if I am remembering dreams? Did I dream these things? Or am I in the dream now yearning for my waking life elsewhere? Other times I wonder if I am recalling experiences from another me in a parallel Universe!

Whatever this feeling is I find that as I grow older the feeling is stronger and comes to me more often. It’s so difficult to describe but does anyone else ever feel this way?

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Ghosts, Reality and Long-Leggety Beasties

My summer cold of course decided to move into to my larynx and set up shop resulting in the last few days feeling distinctly unwell. The antibiotics are now kicking in and I’m recovering nicely. Meanwhile, I launched a new ghost and paranormal website at My Haunted Life Too. Why I did so I don’t really know as there are more than enough such sites around already but actually, I did it because I enjoy the stories and because I could. I do hope that over time, it will blossom into a real presence on the paranormal side of the web. Meanwhile, I am hard at work on my last book for a little while. Another ghost story book actually but I will say no more until it is out. Then it will be summer holiday and finally a determined push to finish The Lord of the Elements……

Meanwhile, the last two days have been very gloomy here in Brno. The contrast between last week and this couldn’t be greater and I am reminded forcibly about how weather can impact mood. While last week, I was feeling full of the joys of spring and taking in the blossoms and the colors of green and so on while feeling like it simply couldn’t be any better, this week I feel as if a heavy weight is hanging over me and something bad is about to happen. I think it can all be put down simply to the weather. Weather it seems can also have an impact on how we see the world and how we feel about it.

The new book is out and slowly selling and picking up steam. No reviews yet so I have no idea how it is being received. But, I will create my own reality and say it is a wonderful book and will be well received – of course, in my reality there is alway an exception…….

Finally, Alienora Taylor‘s excellent and wonderfully funny book – Long-Leggety Beasties – is available for free on Kindle and #1 in its category on both sides of the Atlantic. Deserved congratulations to her and I really really do recommend the book……

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How Different Are People

If you needed a reminder of just how different people are take a look at any book on Amazon with a number of reviews – even Shakespeare’s sonnets. There you will find the entire gamut of people’s perceptions as reviews. The Last Observer, my paranormal novella, has quite a lot of reviews as well and I was just going through them on Amazon and Goodreads to see what people thought. There are 25 reviews on Amazon.com and it has an average of 4.4 out of five which I will happily take all day. The book has 17 5-star reviews, 4 four-star, 2 3-star and 2 one-star reviews and no two-star reviews as yet. But consider some of the comments….

We have this on the one hand – “This book was a blast to read! With 114 pages of pure mind bending content, my restless modern soundbite trained brain was totally engaged for the two nights I read it. I have to admit I was upset that bedtime on a work night came at page 65 because I wanted to continue the story.”

And yet this on the other – “This is Vasey’s first book. It should have never made it out of his word processing application. You know how hundreds of thousands of little girls go to dance school, and eventually they have a recital? Well the sad truth is that 99 percent of them are terrible dancers and no one would want to pay to see them perform. Similarly, one must have the wisdom to be able to discern if a book is ready to publish. This one was not.”

OK. Wow – two very extreme opinions. The latter reviewer even goes so far as to suggest “But seeing eight 5-star reviews, the low cost of the Kindle edition, and the fact that this was in my “recommended” stream tricked me into buying this horrendous waste of zeroes and ones.”

Meanwhile another reviewer has this to say …”Vasey is swift and clean in his writing, both in the scene descriptions and dialogue, making The Last Observer a book that comes in at under 120 pages and can be read in an hour or two. That said, a small part of me would love to see the dialogue in Chapter Twenty – Zeltan Speaks performed by Al Pacino just as he did his famous defense of the human condition as Satan in the movie version of The Devil’s Advocate. If you liked that scene, you’ll enjoy this strikingly honest appraisal of modern magic.”

Do you get my drift? For one person I cannot write at all and the book is so bad it should never have been published and yet for another my writing is swift and clean….

Another reviewer says .. “I gave Mr. Vasey’s book a 5 star rating. The reason is simple. It reads well on many levels.” while yet another has this to say “Interesting premise, if not particularly original, but the writing is incredibly awkward and I could not get past that.”

Finally consider this review – “Some of his other pieces are also primarily fluff, but they were fluff in a more cerebral fashion.” A reader’s comment about me? Why No, it’s about William Shakespeare and Romeo and Juliet!!!

To be honest, I rarely read reviews of my books anymore. The fact is some people love what I write and others hate it and wish I would stop already LOL! Luckily, the latter are a small minority compared to the former and I have no intention of stopping putting out books and writing. People are simply different and I often think a review says as much about the person writing it as it does about the book being reviewed. In the end, if the books find a market, a readership, and people enjoy them then that is what it all about. I do not pretend to be Shakespeare nor even one of those serious high-brow writers that win serious book prizes but barely sell a book. I write because I want to and I can and I fully recognize these days that each book will have a broad range of reactions from the readers.

Why not write a review of one of my books? They are important in the total scale of things. You could even pick up a Kindle copy of the Last Observer and decide for yourself…..

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The Dead

Somewhere there is a place

The dead must go

Once here, but now residing

Somewhere there

Cut off and isolated from the living

It used to be called Hades

A shadow land full of shadow people

And when the sun shines

They shimmer like rising heat

The dead are fast on their feet

Fleet of foot and silent too

A higher frequency of life

Is that what death truly is?

All around us they play

Thoughts trapped in the ether

And when the light is just right

We may gain a glimpse or two

A flickering shadow plays

Radiating under Sun rays

The faint echo of laughter

Or a hint of foot steps on ice

A face stares back in the mirror

A voice speaking starkly

From within incandescent static

They are there and they stare

They watch and still do they care

But they know it’s simply a matter

Of time and we will be there

To share eternity with them

As a ray of light, a fire spark

Spirit in perpetual motion

Eternally playing as the light

Effervescent with laughter

Joyfully lost in eternity

Pulled back to the One

 

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A Summer Cold

The summer cold. What a contradiction of terms that is huh? I managed to avoid cold and flu through the winter but apparently I now have the summer cold caught from my daughter who caught it at school. I can barely swallow because there seems to be a mini version of Mount Everest in my throat right now complete with a bunch of annoying people determined to climb the bugger – or at least that is what it feels like.

Yes Summer and cold are two words that simply do not belong together. Summer colds should be banned or made illegal. Sneezing, coughing and constantly blowing one’s nose is something that should only happen in the winter or on a particularly horrendous pollen-filled day in Springtime.

However, I let the bugger in. I must have taken my guard down and I forgot to pop the C and Zinc tablets I had been dropping all winter long. I guess I allowed the virus into my reality and now it is quite difficult not to give the bugger attention and that only makes the thing worse.  So I am now shoveling C and Zinc tablets like Francis Rossi sniffed Coke (gave him a hole in his septum too apparently!). It’ll be gone in a few days I guess and then summer can resume in orderly fashion once more.

By the way – did I tell you that my new book – How to create your own reality – is now out? I did? So why didn’t you buy it then???? eh? eh?

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