I work in Bloomsbury, where there is a university full of students, and also a charity training guide dogs for the blind. When I’ve been thinking about transformation, and transformative experiences, I’ve tended to think of them in the abstract, or taking place within an individual interior life, untethered to a particular time or place. But term has started in Bloomsbury, and while waiting to cross the road next to a guide dog and their trainer, looking at the crowd of new students opposite, I was struck by the fact that both the students and the dogs were each likely to be going through some kind of transformative pedagogic experience, one that would leave each of them a very different being, and, further, that they will share a particular time and place during which this happened. It seemed marvellous, really, that you could be on the street briefly accompanying two beings going through some sort of transformation, each utterly incomprehensible to the other, but meaningful to each of them. What other transformations were taking place on the same street? Bloomsbury suddenly seemed utterly different to me, full of these transformations, all taking place within individuals, all surrounded by others going through something similar, special to them and shared with everyone.
each utterly incomprehensible to the other, but meaningful to each of them – Velcro City Tourist Board