Everyday Kicks

Moved blog and website: now at www.katymurr.com

2009-02-28T14:35:00.005Z

I've got out the brown boxes, and now I'm over here at http://www.katymurr.com/

Come and join me!

Why the move? The gentle sliding into journo-world. See my latest article at The Independent.

Duffy: Balancing Power & Tripping It Up

2009-01-10T22:36:00.002Z

Whether considering differences between abuser and victim in ‘Lizzie, six’, the woman posing ‘nude’ as opposed to the artist who is ‘possessing’ her in ‘Standing Female Nude’, or the distinction between the more experienced and less-experiences lesbians in ‘Oppenheim’s Cup and Saucer’, Duffy delves into the power imbalances within relationships.

In ‘Lizzie, Six’ the most obvious power imbalance is the young girl’s lack of physical space to speak; for every three lines her abuser has, she is permitted only one. The distinction between these two voices is heightened by Duffy’s italicisation of Lizzie’s speech, which visually clarifies the polarisation of the two characters. Indeed, Lizzie is shown to be overpowered by the prominent speaker of her abuser, who simultaneously interrogates, instructs, and threatens. Parallelism of various ‘what...’ and ‘where...’ questions highlights the overwhelming question of the final stanza, which shows the abuser’s complete inability to empathise for what he is doing to the victim. Through a structural patterning of a question followed by a response, Duffy increases our awareness of the abuser and victim’s dialogue, going on to use the poem’s form against the unsettling subject matter.

References to fairytales arise with the image of the ‘moon’, ‘wood’, and the ‘fields’, an illusion to a sense of innocence encouraged by iambic lines that give a nursery-rhyme like feel. And yet the form simulatenously disturbs, for by presenting such even quatrains it is almost as if Duffy stresses the inevitability of abuse. The imbalance of power is obvious through the several threatening allusions to sexual abuse:‘when I get up there’, ‘when your bottom’s bare’, ‘I’ll give you the dark’, plus a reshaping of the connotations of ‘love’. Looking at the verbs we can see how passivity is enforced on ‘Lizzie’; the abuser seems to be chasing the girl, following her up ‘stairs’, and the continuous repetition of ‘I’ll give’ leaves no doubt about who holds the power to ‘give’. In fact, this idea of ‘giving’ is made all the more ironic as the abuser is actually deliberately confiscating any power ‘Lizzie’ might have been allowed.

In ‘Standing Female Nude’ Duffy shows us a greater fight for power between the two characters, the ‘nude’ woman and the male artist. Nevertheless, the woman is once again shown to be subordinated to the male’s wants (yawn yawn, I know – hold your horses for ‘Oppenheim’s Cup and Saucer’!) Even though the female speaker remarks, ‘It does not look like me,’ the artist wants her to be ‘represented analytically’. Through the dramatic monologue, the woman’s self-awareness and direct tone provides liberty of power through language; she possesses the litanies of titillation, ‘Belly nipple arse’, the way they run without punctuation making it sound routine, a daily occurrence. Her body, perhaps, does not have as much value because she prostitutes it, whether to be ‘hung/ in great museums’, or to ‘sell’ the ‘arts’ of ‘a river-whore.’ She is not represented truthfully, but as the cubist ideal, which yields back to the adverb ‘analytically’, since cubism used to sometimes be called ‘analytic’. The ‘nude’, then, has been duly appropriated for the artist’s own purposes, ‘for a few francs’.

Whereas the artist and the gallery go-ers ‘gaze’ or speak indirectly, ‘You’re getting thin,/ Madame, this is not good’, the female speaker ridicules and holds the situation up to light (wahey!). She uses the diminutive ‘little’ to reduce the artist (Freudian thought, anyone?), sceptical about what they call ‘Art’; ‘Maybe’, she says. And yet despite being an object of exploitation, possessed ‘on canvas’, despite the imbalances of power, both male and female aligned: ‘Both poor, we make our living how we can’. As the artist remarks, ‘There’s no choice’. Still, the ‘female nude’ has words and language as a way to ‘possess’ and ‘concentrate’ on showing the artist. As much as the artist is attracted to her, ‘stiffen[ing] for [her] warmth’, or showing her the painting ‘proudly’, the woman holds triumphant power over the man. She is deliberately illusive, her ‘smile confuses him’. He ‘lights a cigarette’, reminiscent of post-coital moments, whereas she concentrates on her ‘few francs’, bringing the poem to its cyclical finality: ‘twelve francs’ and a ‘Standing Female Nude’ that does not look like her, but what the ‘bourgeoisie’ will pay to ‘call’ ‘Art’.

In ‘Oppenheim’s Cup and Saucer’, Duffy revels in the eroticism of seduction which lies in power shifts and role play, extending these ideas as she recounts a lesbian encounter. Through naming the poem after the fur cup and saucer, there is an immediate subtext of expectation; connotations of hair, namely pubic hair, are raised, as Duffy arguably refers to what Freud called the ‘Fetish Object.’ This idea of dining blurs naturally into the concept of sexual appetite/ hunger, and the normality of human sexual desires. Sexual experience becomes encoded in the everyday, just as we drink or have lunch, suggesting the normality and necessity of such. By constructing the encounter through delicate couplets, Duffy slows down the action, increasing the tension and the idea of an inevitable climatic build-up: there is time for the reader to pause, to ‘remember’, to imagine. Moreover, the deixis of paralleled ‘this’ brings an immediacy to the situation.

From the first couplet, women hold the power: they choose to remove themselves from the unsubtly of ‘loud’ men, taking their sexual pleasures ‘Far from’ this. The idea of a ‘secret life’ sounds exciting and illicit (quite true, no?), a combination of meetings which brings a sense of being alive and awake to the mundane repetition of other daily events. The metaphor of a ‘slim rope of her spine’ (dun-dun-dun...), which is heightened by the seductive, suggestive sibilance, creates an image of potential bondage or restraint. No doubt, power exchanges and power negotiations already figure. Although both women are active, the ‘She’ of this poem is leading, suggesting more, asking and encouraging. She prompts with ‘fur’, ‘rope’, and a ‘cup’. In this poem Duffy revels (she revels twice?! Twice, thrice...) in appreciating that power exchanges are not necessarily demeaning, hurtful or abusive, but can be extremely pleasurable if negotiated: notably, ‘She asked’, and did not presume.

Although there is a power imbalance with regards to one of the women being in charge, using imperatives, ‘Place’, and directing, ‘that’s right. Yes’, physically the two women are balanced. They both have the ‘sweet hot liquid’ which seems to connote cunnilingus, ‘her breasts were a mirror’ of the speaker’s own physical self, extended by the idea of ‘mirrors in the bed.’ The eroticism and sexual response comes from the a realisation and appreciation of women’s own physical identity, which is rooted in the recognition of physical sameness, rather than that of ‘the other’, i.e. the men.* Whereas in ‘Standing Female Nude’ the woman does not enjoy being objectified by the male painter, here the two lovers eroticise the act by deliberately objectifying it (choice, what a delightful thing!) and having the power to watch what they are doing.

The resounding ‘Yes’ can be seen as a response to the initial question of an initiation into a lesbian encounter which ‘Stirred’, just beginning. Contrary to both ‘Lizzie, Six’ and ‘Standing Female Nude’, ‘Oppenheim’s Cup and Saucer’ is the only poem (out of these lot, ye understand) which celebrates potential power imbalances, recognising the mutual agreement and underlying balance. Certainly, the leading woman has power and control: ‘she undressed me’, explains the speaker, yet this is sexy because it is agreed and allowed. Duffy shows us how power can, and is abused, by those who ‘do not care’ about consent or the other in the relationship, just as the ‘female nude’ loses eroticism through what is primarily only a power exchange for money: ‘for a few francs’, to then ‘wine and dance’ and forget about having prostituted one’s body. Crucially (dazzling lights and curtains open please!), in ‘Oppenheim’s Cup and Saucer’ it is only ‘Far from’ men that power imbalances can be successful negotiated to create something ‘sweet hot’ and seductive, rather than something that reeks of abuse, be it a male painter telling a woman that her body is ‘not good’, or chasing a six year old child till her ‘bottom’s bare’ and she’s ‘crying’, rightly ‘afraid’ of her abuser’.

*Interesting point of contrast is almost all descriptions of hetero relationships. Check out attention to 'the other'. Simone de Beauvoir's 'The Second Sex' springs to mind as fantastic theory on this, and the delightful Desdemona's ruminations on her darling Othello would prove interesting too.

--

Pro or anti essay? I might make more of a thing of this. Show off some other stuff, not just Duffy essays.

Everyday Kicks

2009-01-10T22:35:00.001Z

how do you like the new name? (Or not?)

I think it's more appropriate - it's what art, for me at least, is all about - reliant, exciting everyday kicks. What more could anyone dream of?

Unwanted Christmas present? Clothes that don't fit?

2009-01-06T21:35:00.003Z

Stuff you're thinking about chucking away?

Don't add to the statistics.

Resist the allure of the bins!

Look here if you want someone locally to come and pick them up from you and put them to good use, or here if you fancy getting rid of them yourself and plumping up the shelves at your local Oxfam.

remember those sweets you haven't eaten for years?

2008-12-01T20:01:00.002Z

Walking home, a girl passed me who smelt of refreshers. Refreshers the sweets, the ones which fizz and feel like they're bubbling in your nose. Beautiful.

The name in my inbox. It lights up all on its own. Magic!

2008-11-12T22:24:00.002Z

Several emails lately from friends who I've not spoken to in a while. People with whom I have very erratic correspondence, but that's okay with, because neither of us gets angsty about it.

Beautiful to see the initials and names flash up. Probably more so than getting a buzz on your phone and seeing the name. Handwriting on envelopes, however, that's a whole new matter...

(Especially when there's an invitation to visit a place which, in one of my friend's words, 'may actually be the prettiest place in the world'.)

Bought new for £2.95 - how many years ago?

2008-11-12T21:50:00.004Z

I'm reading a book which is enjoyable. It's exciting, quite frivolous, and not too hardcore. It's not particularly experimental, it doesn't try to be very flashy; it's actually understated. Not the best of her works maybe, but still worthwhile I'd say, especially to provide the context of the others. My problem isn't with the novel itself at all - rather, I'm curious about why it has never been taken out of the library before. Why, to be precise, this has gone unread by so many potential readers.

This is a pretty key author I'm talking about; someone who's neither obscure nor rarely discussed. Not one of her key works, but still, why hasn't it been read before me? If the book (a beautiful hardback, with an equally glorious cover - have to admit it!) was bought for £2.95 new, then it must have been bought several years ago.

Problem is, this book isn't on the shelves. Instead of being on the shelves (where there is lots of nice, 'light' reading) it is rejected, only allowed space in the basement. My quarrel with this is that, as someone who largely discovered reading through picking stuff up off the shelves (in libraries, second-hand bookshops, charity shops, shelves of my friends' parents etc.) I worry that people are missing out.

Sure, it's a good feeling when the pages are untouched, nice and clean, unsmudged, without any wear... but it begs the question of why these books are going unread, and what people are missing out on.

I admit it freely: if I find witty or pertinent annotations in a book, or perhaps even a post-it stuck in or a note referencing another work or an essay, I am intrigued. I'm nosy, curious, whatever you want to call it: I want to know. About books, and about what the people before me have thought. I like picking up a book and having some kind of a link between the people who've enjoyed it (or not, as the case may be) before.

We need to bring these books up from the basement. Put them in between the trash (like in charity shops, sometimes!) Put them amongst the chick lit or smuggle a few into the precious 'teenager literature' section. Let people find them and develop their own tastes for what they enjoy. Let them have a choice to read the amazing literature, to write faint comments in the margins, to pause and think and go back and read again and keep on discovering.

PS: The book is a novel of Woolf. PPS: A great deal of what I have come to love has been through these forays where I have stumbled across works I hardly knew anything about. PPPS: I'm not too sure about defining 'key'. Maybe someone else can!

Read This magazine

2008-10-24T21:10:00.003+01:00

Up for encouraging new, fresh writing, Read This magazine is not one to be turned down. The team is an Edinburgh ensemble, with Claire Askew, who was this year's Poet in Residence at the London Poetry Festival, as chief ed. If you're up Edinburgh way, they're having a party on Wednesday 12th November. Exciting poetry, a few drinks, and a beautiful city - sounds great to me!

You can check out it's online edition which features various poets at different stages, and includes my poem 'Vodka's Punch' at the moment. Click http://www.readthismagazine.co.uk/ and have a look at the 'Poetry & Drama' which you'll find on the left.

[poem was here.]

2008-10-24T21:01:00.002+01:00

[poem was here.]

Delete, delete, and delete till they're gone.

2008-09-29T14:17:00.003+01:00

Clearing my inbox (pretty much, only 30 or so left out of hundreds of email) was surprising. I'd forgotten that some people had ever emailed me, realised I'd left far too many emails unanswered, and that horrible things such as 'social networking sites' were clogging it up. This is the first time I've ever almost-cleared my inbox; so far I've somehow managed not to. I also happened upon an email from someone whose emails I thought I'd totally got rid of. One had slipped through. I opened it - at least it was a happy email. Supposedly happy. There was talk of photos and how we look so happy on them, and aftershave, and birthday presents; an overall isn't-life-great-just-now tone. Why say it so much, if it is? Did we really need to say it? I can't remember replying to that email. Of course, I probably did. Or maybe that was when we weren't talking for a while. I can't remember, it was so many months ago. This one got deleted too.

Today, not yesterday or the next day.

2008-09-23T21:54:00.004+01:00

Following a conversation with a friend, about God and time and hope and possibility (really ought to have been a pub conversation, with empty glasses cluttering the table), I did some thinking. My friend was projecting (as far as I can tell) the idea that it is today we should think about. So although people will naturally have expectations, based on previous time spend with us, or perhaps just preconceptions, we should try to free ourselves from these expectations. We should live each day as if it is a new day, if that is possible. Which lead me to a few questions, and namely one about whether, having made what we feel are mistakes, or done stupid things, whether we ought to apologise for them, or just forge the new, forge the better and concentrate on that? Because when we apologise, even to other people, we are simultaneously solidifying regrets, or concentrating on what went wrong, rather than today, here, these minutes, this evening where the sky is dark and the streetlamps lit. I'm not sure; a lot depends on the context, as Offred discusses (or rather Atwood discusses via Offred) in The Handmaid's Tale. It is a question, like most, of interpretation, but what does saying sorry do? For the people who know you, they will probably know that you are sorry, and for those who don't, I suppose you just have to hope, and concentrate on each day as it arrives.

(And yet we plan weeks, months, years ahead. We're forced to. We can't help looking at yesterday, either: 'we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.' Incidentally, when I borrowed someone else's copy of The Great Gatsby, they'd underlined it as well.)

Language is key. The attention to detail. The peeking out of the sides of our hoods.

2008-09-23T21:27:00.002+01:00

In 'The Handmaid's Tale', the female 'handmaids' are named Of + [commander's name]. Our (for she is ours; she is the voice which Atwood has sung in knowledge that the personal is the political) protagonist is called Offred.

If she had simply named the women Mrs + [husband's name], I doubt we would have been asking where the Ms was. Especially since it seems that a lot of women in my generation are hardly aware of Ms. By subverting our traditional naming practices, however, she comments on the possessive power element embedded into our naming system through a patriarchal society. We ask, why should this women be named after a man? (A man, incidentally, with whom in Gilead she has not initially chosen to associate herself. The choice was not there.) Why, moreover, should she be defined in terms of the man? ‘Offred’ insinuates that the most important thing is that she is owned; she is someone else’s; she is Fred’s, and he has laid claim to her more publically than any wedding ring.

We turn the question to ourselves. We can’t help it. The parallel is clear. Why should we be defined (for naming is defining, see 'Translations' - Brian Friel) by our male partner? And what on earth happens if our partner isn't male? (Gilead being a puritan, Christian fundamentalist state, homosexuality or anything verging remotely away from heterosexuality is forbidden. The choice, again, is not there.)

This example from 'The Handmaid's Tale' is a small one, but it shows how Atwood is clearly tackling gender issues: question of power, possession, and patriarchy.

a poem was here...

2008-08-25T18:34:00.003+01:00

-- poem was here --

---

Maybe you need to have read Clare Pollard's poem, which is after another poem (gets confusing, doesn't it!)

An article I'd been waiting for for a long time

2008-08-18T15:26:00.001+01:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/aug/18/fashion.women

shoving your hands in the ground and finding worms, centipedes...

2008-06-19T21:41:00.002+01:00

a very good feeling. Physically exhausting, lots of aching, stomach knawing for food, but overall an immense feeling. I'd recommend it to all.

--

Yikes... I have a guest visiting soon and their room is really not tidy yet at all. I also have books (two) to read before the guest arrives. And notebooks to buy (since Tesco is categorically rubbish, after ringing up and being told the notebooks I was after were definitely in stock, when apparently they'd not been at that store for at least a week.)

Expectations, expectations, expectations.

2008-05-17T18:15:00.005+01:00

so i haven't updated this for a while. Somebody asked me why. I'm not sure. Little inclination? I think I might stop it (as if I hadn't kind of already.)

---

I should actually write something about the title. Notice the s-h-o-u... in there. Eek... time to hide, find a corner from which we can peer and hope the thing doesn't take over us.

I had a few thoughts recently, about why people do things, and how sad (depressing? miserable? unhopeful?) it is that some people do things just for someone else to gratify them, to say that they have 'reached' whatever it is that they are supposed to reach, even though of course they can never 'reach' enough. This is people who are never content/ happy/ satisfied who I'm talking about. People who feel so strongly unsettled and unsure, that they strive to be 'enough', foregoing basic pleasures. Someone who will deny themselves things if there is no 'purpose' or supposed academic 'gain'. They like to collect. People, facts, books, so-called knowledge. They can never collect enough, and whatever they do, it has to somehow relate back to trying to prove themselves. Sure, it's not physical posturing, but is it much better? Attempts at intellectual posturing, reading because they have been told, or because someone else (a friend, perhaps) has read the book, and, God forbid, they haven't. Where does it go? When do they realise?

Or do they just deny? Pretend they're learning for learning's sake, or because they enjoy it... enjoy it at the expense of any social inclinations, or any basic enjoyment. Pretend they like not going out to watch a film because they can't let themselves get over the fact that - shock horror - they've spent 2 hours doing something which wasn't 'productive'.

I have nothing against learning. Really. I enjoy some sorts of it a lot, and I like reading. But I also like to think that I'm reading for me, that I'm doing it for me, because, you know, we don't really have a great deal of time here, in fact, we have relatively little, and so why would I waste it away on trying to prove? Might I not just give up on this? Or realise the futility of it, learn to learn because I want to, and if that's not whatever subject I've applied for, then so be it. It's not so tragic if one fails sometimes. If we realise that we cannot be the best categorically, and that maybe what is best, is beginning to wake up to these expectations and learn to move beyond them.

Will we flap our arms? Will we forget how to tread water when the mark on the results sheet isn't an A? Will we push the heads of those who read the book/ knew the 'facts' before us under the water? Will we trip our friends up, as we push to read the end of the lane? Will we stop? Will we watch the rain pouring out over drains outside, the diggers bludgeoning through gravel, and the sun warming that particular spot in the top right-hand corner of the pool? Will we lie, naked, and learn to float? Will we learn to be, without having a purpose or goal or aim for everything?

Man on the train.

2008-04-13T17:20:00.004+01:00

So, the scene goes like this. There's one of my friends and me. We're sat on a train. Maybe we have our feet up on the seats; probably we have our feet up. On the cluster of seats opposite sits a man, reading a book. Which book,I don't know. I remember trying to read the cover but unfortunately my eyesight didn't succeed that time. Anyway, so we're chatting, me and my friend.

Bla bla bla bla ensues. And I mention how people tell me to spend time/ make effort with person X (this is easiest), but I don't feel like making effort with person X anymore because I'm all out of making effort for person X and there are other people I'd rather give my effort to.

Man on the seats opposite is clearly listening. I don't mind too much, nor does my friend. It's not a particularly private conversation, and it's not as if anybody on the train is going to know this person X.

Man on the train glances up from his book every so often and is clearly listening more. Then, about a stop away from where me and my friend get off, he says that it sounds like I'm trying to convince myself about something when I've already made my mind up. Then we say some other things.

But, you know, I kind of like that the stranger actually said something. I don't mind it when strangers do, unless they're obviously very weird or you've made it clear you don't want to chat. Anyway, lots of people tell me they think it's rude to chime into a conversation like that. I'm not sure. Sometimes people are just too stuffy and unfriendly, especially if you're only trying to be nice.

Plus, through my talking on trains I've met so many interesting people. Like the other day I was at an art gallery and met someone who makes sculptures and is running for a big art prize. Good things can come from talking or just being friendly, I suppose it just depends who you choose to talk to.

Sprinting.

2008-04-13T17:09:00.002+01:00

Today I re-realised my love of the thing that is sprinting. It's almost as good as diving into a swimming pool, and feeling the oxygen running out, your body climbing to the surface as the supply of bubbles becomes exhausted.

I like the way it makes my throat hurt, my legs ache and feel jellified, and my head rush with the pressure afterwards; the way my body feels so powerful when I sprint, and knowing that I can sprint. I think I'm getting hooked on exercise... if I don't run/ cycle/ walk/ swim I end up unable to just sit down and study. I can't sit and study unless my body is tired, and I like that feeling. Feeling that you can't give it much more. Then having a long, long bath at the end of the day, or a shower when you get back and having the spray on high on my muscles on my back.

I wholly recommend it. Not jogging (that effect is no where near as strong), but sprinting. Sprint, sprint, sprint...

A post I wrote a while ago and hesitated about posting.

2008-04-01T21:46:00.002+01:00

it is the holidays. Which means no more college (6th form/ school... glad I'm not one of those poor buggers who still have a uniform and perky year 7s not yet dulled by years of the mundane, poke-my-head-with-some-thing-other-than-hoop-jumping routine.)

It is now that I realise that, potentially, I learn more at home than at school or college. Does writing this put my under some legal thing to be kicked out? Possibly. Oh well. Not too long left now (just a year... but that's probably not too many actual years of school). I don't like hoop-jumping, or phrase-reciting, or being stuck in a room with other people who don't want to be there (because this most certainly was true; whether it is now, I'm not 100%. I don't think EMA is the best invention either, but that's due for another post.) Here's a statement that's true, reasonably: I like learning, I dislike school. Does there seem anything remotely sniffy about that? A faint whif of something not-quite-right?

Maybe education as coursework rehashed (not mine, but plenty of other peoples) by teachers, or the majority of the lesson being spent trying to persuade a few of the really noisy kids to shut up, sit down, get out a pen and start copying the notes isn't quite right? (Why they don't just give up and tell them to piss off out of the classroom, I don't know. Don't confuse this with some kind of conservative 'let them be fucked up if they will' view. It's not. I agree with giving them support, but not at the expense of the supposed teaching of other kids.)

Who do we blame? The government? The teachers? The other kids? The other kids' parents? Maybe you have a better idea than me. But it's not right, it's really, really not.

Sartre: Existentialism & Humanism

2008-03-27T22:56:00.004Z

It's appealing if you don't have a religion. It's appealing, I'd imagine, for many teenagers; 'Life is nothing until it is lived; but it is yours to make sense of, and the value of it is nothing else but the sense that you choose.' It's also - bearing in mind that I'm reading it in English translation this time - concisely written, with lots of yummy rhetoric.

A friend (who lives in the states, so I've not seen him for a long time) talked to me about his interpretation and readings of Sartre a couple of years ago. Now I finally read it, and I can see why.

I like the idea that you are who you are in the actions that you make (or don't, as the case may be) right now. But it doesn't work like that in reality, does it? People hardly take you for what you're actually doing right now - and to ask them to would be impossible. But maybe we're supposed to just tell them where to go? I'm not sure. I need to re-read it. It's hopeful, anyway. A text I began in the early hours and, after sleep, finished in the bath.

I still can't get away from the 'man' and 'for all men' etc annoying me. Yes, I can't change it in what's already written, blah blah, but I somehow think that 'one' - at the risk of sounding stuffy - is more equal. I hate the way language excludes women. And why is God always 'he'? What about a 'she'?

Too bad it's not a set text of mine. The discussions, I imagine, would've been great.

(there was a poem title here)

2008-02-18T21:13:00.002Z

(and a poem's body here.)

the most fantastic things ever (some of...)

2008-02-15T17:26:00.003Z

Walking into a place, and - if it is possible to say a place is humming with ideas - knowing that this place in which you step is.

Meeting people and being able to talk and joke and laugh without any kind of awkwardness bar the surprise that this is someone you have only just met; and it not mattering that you will probably never meet them again (although often, it seems, you somehow do end up meeting them again) all that is important is that it is there, you know you have had it, you are so sure of this, and that even if it is fleeting, which you know it is, for it cannot be anything but a temporary lull, and that other people would say it is silly that it can leave such an impression, beyond all this, that it is possible is what you hold most tightly. That it is possible to now and then exist in this that comes and goes, which you never know when it will occur, and due to such utter lack of knowledge, you can only be utterly overwhelmed when it does.

Walking, cycling, swimming – exercise altogether. Why don't people do more of it? It doesn't cost much – if anything – and it feels fantastic. Plus, work-wise, the benefits are huge. If I've reached a block with some work, I go for a walk; when I return to it, it is inevitably easier.

The way things collide; mixes, matchings, collisions. Chance meetings, chance overhearings, chance opportunities and lands you never before knew existed simultaneously unlocking themselves in your mind, without any effort or will on your part. Life, for all the shit we get thrown, refusing to let you give up on it. It swings over you, showing what could and can be, laughing as you try to sleep and you think how finite, finite mortals we are, and what fools for wasting so much of it – for the lack of self-indulgence, the lack of selfishness, the pretending that others needs/ wants/ wishes are our own and allowing them to be imposed up on us. And now I am surprised at how surprising my days are. So many things have happened recently which surprise me and push at disbelief that the world can, could, possibly be real. I am surprised. Truly, truly surprised, and so happy that I can only wait for the (inevitable?) tip - it will, it must come. When, like so much else, I do not know.

There needs to be another word for stranger; for the kind of stranger who you see/ overheard/ read/ meet and instantly know.

Alcohol and Poetry Readings.

2008-02-15T17:17:00.003Z

Scene: people sat around, chairs, tables, and someone reading poems. Said poem-reader is sipping water inbetween poems.

Interlude. Unfortunately not an overly musical one, but an interlude nonetheless. Now the poet returns to the music-stand, posture considerably relaxed, to read some more poems.

But! ah! In his hand, this time he holds an almost-finished glass of red wine.

I enjoys/ I likes/ I loves... etc.

2008-02-05T18:12:00.001Z

having had my hair cut (it is much better. Feels lovely!)
reading some older poetry (Metaphysical and Victorian stuff)
a book called 'Mastering Poetry' by Sara Thornes. It's written succinctly, arranged neatly, and goes into enough detail. It's not a 'here, this is what you must believe' sort of book...
dunking brioche in hot chocolate
walking for a long time, just walking, no where in particular
waking up without quickly having to get up (a favourite ;))
explaining to hairdressers that I do, quite literally, nothing with my hair apart from washing and brushing now and then: no mousse, no product, no straightners (I would rather sleep or watch a film)
eating really good food. Recent things include some wonderful monkfish with a great tomato sauce, squash mash, carrot cake... bread and butter pudding (with croissants, real custard, lemon, currants and nutmeg)
wearing my new - hand-knitted (and holy!) - scarf
wearing a certain pair of trainers (which are now so worn out. I would buy the same ones again. Must have a look to see if I can get them... whenever I next go clothes/ shoe shopping, which has actually not been for a long, long time)
drinking green and blacks' hot chocolate (it's a substitute until I go to France and stock up again)
walks in the evening with friends
impromptu trips
pendants. Necklaces. I'm looking out for some new ones!
lying on cushions on the floor, doing absolutely nothing (try it, then tell me if you don't like it)

it's been a long time since a 70-line poem.

2008-02-02T12:32:00.001Z

(there was a poem here.)
---

just a bit of it.

Today

2008-02-02T11:21:00.000Z

we have snow, obvious white on the green of boring mowed lawns, on the lines of houses blocking the hills and the parks
we also have sun, which is a pleasant change in the corner of England where rain is expected
And wind, but not overly so.

Ideal cycling scenery, really, which is a good thing also, considering my bike has not been stolen, despite my dreaming last night that it had (although this reminds me that it needs fixing. But so long as it is in covered-in-mud condition, I like to think it is less likely to be nicked? Hmm... I also need a better lock.)

Of course, we have a lot of that bit where snow melts and turns into slippy pearly gloop on our pavements. I also got a new book of poems today. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Public-Dream-Frances-Leviston/dp/0330440543/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=gateway&qid=1201951662&sr=8-1 It doesn't compensate for last night, although it goes some way to a private comfort. Poetry often does that... get fed up with people, go somewhere, and sit and read. Then read some more... until sufficiently brimming with poems and lines swimming around your mind. (See! The reason I read so much! Partially, please... it is partially why. There are other reasons too, but necessity hits pretty high on the list.) I like the way the lines move - doesn't sound forced at all - makes me want to learn how to do that. Maybe I will find out where she's reading next. And go all on my onio. And not have to bother with anyone else, or making conversation with new people, unless I really really want to. (I don't mean this post to give the impression I'm unsociable - I wouldn't actually say I am - I just, like most people probably do, get fed up of bothering sometimes.)

A friend text me telling me they like trains. I presume she's on one. Lucky... Where would you take a train/ trains to, if you could go anywhere? Which reminds me to also ask, have you ever tried interrail?

(Another added comfort last night was reading essays on The Catcher in The Rye. You might think the book itself would be more interesting, but it was extremely fun reading this, as I'd never read much criticism on the book before, despite having read it so many times. I really enjoyed the previous readers' witty notes too... they were oh-so-inventive... *raises eyebrow*) Oh, I have work to do. AS work, versus essays, versus poems, versus cycling, versus running (can I even run properly anymore? I doubt I have the stamina. Cycling is an easier option) ... decisions, decisions.

at what point do you give up

2008-02-01T19:05:00.001Z

on people, or one particular person? how many chances can you really let yourself give to them, offer out to them, putting your time, your hopes, yourself on the line, before you are fed-up and tired of hoping for change which will never come?

I don't think I actually want the answer.

Much Ado About Nothing - plays/ texts for comparison?

2008-01-29T17:31:00.000Z

I have an essay to write on Much Ado About Nothing. Am thinking I could 'compare + contrast' with another comedy, perhaps written around a similar time, or maybe a bit later. Any ideas? I'm stuck - this is an area of literature which I really need to find out more about. By comparing and contrasting, I could write about the way the form is used, the comedy, effects of his contemporaries perhaps...

suggestions? I would even consider poetry. Or something in translation. Very much open to ideas. Of course, I could do another question, rather than the one about it being a comedy, but seeing as my weak point is genre, it would make sense to stretch myself a bit more, do some reading (albeit quickly and intensely!), and find out some things.

What would you do?

2008-01-29T17:25:00.000Z

Let's imagine there's a form which needs filling out. You're female, and don't want to be given the title Miss, as you obviously prefer Ms (we don't really need to go into the reasons why, do we?) Now, on this darling form, sit merely two options: Miss, or Mr. Said form demands that you tick the appropriate box. Since Ms is Miss/ Mrs contracted, I suppose Miss is technically correct. On principle, however, I hate to have to use Miss.

This is quite an important form, which does actually exist. And, surprise surprise, it also needs filling in soon. Do I cross out the Miss and write Ms, or resign myself to Miss?

I want to know what you'd do!

Things I have learnt recently include...

2008-01-26T19:29:00.000Z

cherries + fruity red wine = wonderful combination
restaurants which shut at 2pm (end of the lunch time slot) actually often shut earlier
with some people one can argue, probe, poke, and it can all be okay afterwards (almost immediately)
lots of new French and German words
that I actually quite like Yeats. (!) Particularly the Cloths of Heaven one, and a few others. (I tried him about a year ago properly, and didn't quite get it. Tried again last night and had to force myself off to bed. Now there are lots of page markers in my copy.)
sushi = yum.
that I drink a considerable amount more water than most people (through the oh-so-scientific personal surveys...)
that I miss France, and speaking French. And I miss being surrounded by people talking about poems
receiving mail is really delightful. Especially when it involves poetry which I don't have to pay more than stamps for, which includes lines bits like 'Accident, arrogant. Call it love.'
that I would really, really like to have my own swimming pool one day (why do the public ones have stuff shut off for schools, or OAPs so often? They are meant to be encouraging people to swim, not putting them off! Private gyms cost too much, although that would be an alternative for some people, just not me)
home made bread = hard crusts (have not yet found a way to avoid this.)
that a book of mine which includes my hand-written essays does not seem to be turning up, despite my wishing for it (it will be utterly SHIT if it does not; even more work to do)
reorganising books, and reorganising my room in general = very relaxing
phone calls are quite helpful. It doesn't matter if you're in your PJs, or have just woken up, or anything like that, because the other person doesn't have to know.
if I continue buying/ reading books at my current rate, by the time I am old enough/ financially-stable enough to buy somewhere of my own to live, I will have enough books for a library. How exciting!
paperbacks take up substantially less room on my bookcase = good thing!

I am putting this under the tag 'favourite things' because quite a few of these things are included in my favourite things, currently. Which can only be a good thing, right?

Since when did post arrive at 5pm?

2008-01-19T17:01:00.000Z

Despite crappy postal service, a most wonderful letter has arrived; 'So good to hear from you! What a delightful way to start a new year, I must say. And scented paper too! (I thought it smelt peculiar, so I sprayed it with perfume.) It's good to kow that there are still people in England doing things properly...' Oh yes, killing trees isn't so awful if wonderful letters are made of them... much, much better than email.

The letter gets better:

'Atheism... arrogant, agnosticism is cowardice, theism all too often falls prey to the folly of man...'

and the PS? 'yes... written on pages torn out of my exercise book'. (Nice, weighty paper though, so no complaints.)

Gosh. Exciting getting letters. Especially when you were wondering an hour ago whether they got yours, which was a reply about two months late. (This one will be quicker, I promise myself.)

My PS: then asking about Orwell and Wilde occurs, along with talk of becoming a recluse as a result...

now, I shall go out.

Clare Pollard's Bedtime

2008-01-17T20:42:00.000Z

Borrowed this from the library. After reading, I'm surprised it hasn't been taken out more. You know when something which you read excited you so much you want to palm it off on people, even people who don't 'do' poetry? That. It gave me a lot of that.

Poetry like this must be good for other people's stomach muscles too. Some of the jokes and innuendo is so obvious, but she manages to get away with it. It's not poetry which is asking to be liked, I don't think. And it is putting on a show. Take a poem named 'Turn of the Screw' – now take it's last line, proudly alone, 'and me all whole beneath the weight of you'. It is poetry which is showing off in a lot of ways, there's no doubt about that, but I like that; she’s risking showing off with the language which includes the ‘mah’ so-and-so of Northern conversation. It's playful, not taking itself too serious, not scared of writing about 'Sky One' in her 'post A-level summer', or that her art was a 'selfish' one.

The poem called 'The Smear Test' could rally with Olds' work, but sounds very much Pollard’s own. And I don't mean that it's predictable, because it's certainly not: I want to say something about her having a voice, rather than sounding like she's trying out different ones but unsure of all of them, only I’m not quite sure how to get this across. Anyway –

She gives us A-level summer confessions, telling of how 'Hometown' is the place she will be glad to walk out of tomorrow, and the pain of a place she tried to make 'something to pine for', though she doesn't sound convinced this happened, plus we have Sonnets about 'childhood certainty I want back'. I love it. It's exciting, it feels real, I can imagine her saying it without having ever heard her reading or speaking, and it’s given me a line I'm determined to get into a certain essay. As for which that is, I'll leave you to guess when you read it yourself.

2008-01-16T17:11:00.000Z

Beatrice from Much Ado About Nothing is a delightful surprise after Gradgrind, and actually grinding Hard Times' itself into the mental 'swallow-me-up-now-please' ground through going over it. I presume she is the character people told me I would enjoy most... plus, it is delightful to find out that the play is quite short: no lengthy waffle, I hope. I did appreciate studying and analysing Hard Times, yet I can't imagine myself ever choosing to read it purely for pleasure: the time for a change is more than over-ripe, and Shakespearean wit wouldn't go amiss!

[there was a poem here]

2008-01-06T17:55:00.000Z

[there was a poem here]

----

There're a couple of things I'm unsure about this, but I'll wait to say what so I don't influence opinion... anymore than by saying this. Relatively new poem, by the way; only been living for a few weeks.

Chance Meetings

2008-01-04T19:55:00.001Z

For a while now I’ve been wanting to write a post about spontaneously meeting people. You know, meeting people you’ve never met before: new, exciting (or so we hope) people. Thing is, this seems to happen quite frequently. So I think of some stories to retell, some people to try and colour in truthfully, even though I’ve perhaps only spent ten minutes talking with them; but then I get some more stories, and some more. So many that I’m not sure if I can write about them all.

It’s one of the things which makes me happy. Most of us have people close to us who we like to spend time with; people who we can be in hysterics, or crying, or talking, or just sat at ease with. But, often, this takes a while to reach: it’s not something which happens easily. Anyway, I seem to meet a lot of people. I don’t know whether this is because I prefer to, and do smile when I’m happy, or that I say hello to people if they smile at me and live locally (somehow my parents know a lot of people, and so a lot of people know me through them, even though I don’t know them directly…) Or maybe I’m just sociable (when I’m having a good day.)

A couple of days ago, I ended up meeting so many people who were just fantastic that it was actually surprising. I had some great conversations with strangers, and my day could have been really quite shitty if I hadn’t had that. On the way to where I was going, with the taxi driver I chatted about reading, and having too many books so that you run out of space, and having so much paper that it clutters everywhere, and people’s aspirations, and blah like that (although this was mostly provoked by the taxi driver; when I got in the taxi I was in quite a crap mood… you know the sort of mood where you’re determined, stupidly, that ‘today will be a shit day’, because, you know, whatever you’ve got planned really isn’t that pleasant, and of course, that means today will be a shit day… essentially, where your optimism is not even attempting self-revival.) This made me happy. It’s reassuring, when people talk about how, for them, writing is the best escape, one of the greatest pleasures. I had money for the taxi, of course; but I didn’t have enough money. It was a relatively short journey (so he wasn’t earning loads out of it), but he told me to pay him over £2 less than what it was (because otherwise I wouldn’t have enough for the bus) that he didn’t really mind, and that, right now, money didn’t matter too much to him. Kind of reassuring, don’t you think?

After the thing I went to, I had to get the bus. I think I’d just missed one, because I had to wait a while. (Damn, damn de damn…) I ended up, however, chatting – in French – with a French couple who were my age. About trying to decide what to do, about holidays, about needing money, about Poitiers, about Paris, about France VS England…

The bus came. I didn’t have enough money for the bus; it was a different service to the one I typically use. Kindly, I was let off about £1.30, which meant I could get home (it was way too far to walk). On the bus, a woman began talking to me, who I discovered is an artist, speaks French and German, and lives locally (hopefully I’m going to go and have a look at some of her work sometime.)

A lot of the people most important to me now, or who have inspired me a lot, have been people I’ve met spontaneously, as a surprise. A lot have been people I’ve met on trains, or planes, or simply who’ve asked me about what book I was reading (often whilst on a train)… It’s not surprising to meet people you click with if you’re visiting places of common interest, I suppose, like a particular art gallery, or being in a certain section of the library… though I still find it encouraging. Despite all the shit out there, and all the people who shun things which are fantastic (or at least, for me, fantastic), there also exists those who are interesting, intriguing, and generous.

PS: I recently saw The Kite Runner. My recommendation goes out for everyone to see this film. http://www.kiterunnermovie.com/ I managed to see it in a fantastic, small cinema; you could hear the rest of the audience crying. I was surprised it's only rated a 12 (it is brutally violent in parts), and it is strongly a sad film, but it needs to be seen. If you are thinking about going to see a film - or even if you're not - make the choice to go and see this.

draft of a new poem.

2007-12-06T22:27:00.000Z

[poem has since been removed.]

I'm too wary about this to leave it up for long, for fear of people reading it and making assumptions. But I would like to hear any reactions/ comments you might have; else I'll send it to a few poetry friends who live a safe enough distance away.

Cycling

2007-12-05T20:09:00.000Z

I miss, miss it. For a few weeks I was in a cycle of cycling (haha, don't laugh too much...) about 10 miles each day, five days a week. I really, really miss it. Now I just have this constant feeling of needing to run or cycle or swim (typically cycle, it's easiest, given that I don't - unfortunately; one can dream, and does dream - have a pool in my backgarden/celler/loft), which is frustrating. Plus, I am convinced there is a direct link between exercise and writing - ie. the more exercise I do, the more writing typically, and the more motivated all round... I am properly tired, less fidgety, all round happier. Oh dear, just remembered I need to watch a film tonight... or early tomorrow... it has to be returned tomorrow. And I do want to watch it, it is French.

Poetry news? some useful comments off a poetry mag ed (nice mental kick in the right direction), and some possible work experience poetry-wise (I heart, heart poetry, and would especially love to do something like this. Let's hope my not drinking coffee/ tea personally won't mean my skills at making it are crap; I could always try giving them hot chocolate... but, in all seriousness, I would love to go away and just be surrounded mainly by poetry-ness. It sounds most appealing.) Oh, and my French seems to be getting better. Normal radio-speak is comprehendable. Yipeeeee...

(And guess what? I spy an exhibition of Blake's artwork coming up North soon - shall be going, at least once, for sure!)

'what is it to be a man that I don't want a woman to be?'

2007-12-03T20:30:00.001Z

Provocative thread at Feministing, which is where I nicked this from (in the comments...). See: http://feministing.com/archives/008165.html#more

Our ideas of masculinity and femininity seem often so confined, so limited that it must be impossible for us to do our own identities and others' any good. How does it help to define a woman as one who is less sporty/ quiter/ less aggresive/ more passive/ more 'bitchy', or more 'chatty'? Or to define a 'man' as protective, strong, sporty, aggresive? None of these things help us, yet we resort to them, right from when a new child is born, and we choose colours as well as labels. Is is actually possible to move away from this? To what extent can we resist the ideas we're handed down? These are things I'm trying, bit by bit, to work out, and things I'm sure will keep me occupied for a long time.

2007-12-01T12:49:00.000Z

woke up to the reek of stale chardonnay and dirty wine glasses... then stood on my scarf (I'm trying, trying to knit - it's very -ahem - 'handmade'). Also woke up several hours later, despite having a note on my door asking someone to wake me up. (They must've thought it safer not to...) But seriously, if you don't, I just continue sleeping. As I did... for over 12 hours...

Hmm... I've had a recent reading binge. Like, staying up till the early hours, addicted. Most recently, I reread the end of The Perks of Being a Wallflower, read some poems, and then a bit more of The Great Gatsby, which I've been wanting, really wanting to read, but not feeling in the mood. Considering it was one of two books given on loan by someone whose opinion I do generally think is rather on point... to be continued...

Autumn

2007-11-18T21:21:00.000Z

The not-quite-qualifying-for-winter, wearing jumpers, layers, scarves, shopping for gloves, losing gloves on the bus which you nicked off a train; now with the rain which seems a continuous stream, a collusion, frontal rainfall apparently; leaves of raw sienna nudging windsor violet, permanent mauve, indian yellow, on top of stagnancy – no cobalt, no blue, no reflected skies with cloud – and pushing, pushing, plucking your stare, the cadmium, always cadmium, the colour they try to put in kitchens which is only best on trees full of leaves; walking faster than cars which sit, steamed up in traffic jams, beeping softer than the city, walking and rain again so shoes are damp, wet, sodden, and on the radiator, topsy-turvy, drying off, peeling the folds of jeans, as the scarf unravels, falling to the footprinted carpet.

Portrayl of Femininity in Hard Times

2007-11-18T20:49:00.000Z

Taken to mean 'womanliness', or 'the quality of being feminine', Spark Notes' notion that 'Dickens suggests that feminine compassion is necessary to restore social harmony' is an incomplete statement. Talking about Dickens' presentation of compassion in Hard Times, the sentence given by Spark Notes is incomplete, perpetrating sexist claptrap. It is horrendously slanted, ignoring that compassion is necessary regardless of gender in order for a society to function with sufficient care, to not lose out on 'the heart'.

Spark Notes fails to account for the importance to the structure of Hard Times’ class archetypes of Gradgrind finally learning the necessity of the 'heart', and its inclusion of 'fancy', as opposed to an industrialist society focused merely on the tagline 'fact, fact, fact', where Utilitarianism is taken out of the initial suggestion and used instead for selfish self-advancement, regardless of the pain of the 'hands', or the lack of 'love' which only Sissy and her circus family (a marginalised part of society) show from their very introduction. A warning, certainly: let us not rely upon Spark Notes’ oversights. (Far too dull, anyway, for essay fodder!)

----

Do not read Spark Notes... make your own notes, or read some decent criticism of the text...

Possible link...

2007-11-14T20:47:00.000Z

between perpetual editing and procrastination? What do you reckon?

Theology Essay

2007-11-14T20:26:00.000Z

http://www.heythrop.ac.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=828&Itemid=266

Should I get some more reading and thinking done, I would like to enter this. [literary quote] + 'discuss' = fantastic derailing of AS level work, opportunity to take the essay where you want.

What I find most difficult, typically, is working out exactly where that is: it reminds me of the struggle to decide GCSE and AS level subjects; you don't want to narrow, and enjoy a lot, so which do you plump for? I suppose I can always write more essays, solely for me, but this one seems like a particularly good idea. Victorian poetry, too, is something I've been meaning to look at more. Plus, there's money up for grabs. Why ever not?!

Banal event, you might say.

2007-11-07T19:17:00.000Z

One of my friends had his bike stolen this week. No big deal, right? Forget about it, people have insurance, and it mustn’t have been locked properly if it managed to get stolen! This time, I do think, yes, actually it is a big deal for me. He uses it a lot normally, he enjoys using it, and it was his. He’s not a rich bastard living in a big house who can easily afford to buy a new one, he’s a typical student; and the crappy insurance (this is something which really pisses me off about insurance!) makes it so that it’s ‘not worth claiming’. Useful, eh?

People would inevitably reply with saying how there are things more important, with a wise look intact; how I shouldn’t let me get it down (I’m not, but it does piss me off; there’s a difference, which a lot of people don’t seem to see…); how he can buy a new one if he really wants, and if he doesn’t buy a new one, then hey, he doesn’t really want a new one. I just don’t understand the motivation. Were I to steal (not that I would), but hypothetically, I would at least try ensure it was off someone who wouldn’t be too affected, who wouldn’t feel my tugging their bike away, who wouldn’t sit wondering where it’s now being sold off to.

Plus, I know I’d be angry if my bike was nicked: I like to ride my bike, like to ride my bicycle… (smile?)

2007-10-28T11:57:00.000Z

Okay, so I return, after a week away, submerged in darling Frenchness.

Room repainted = cool, looks clean, is cleaner, even if the colours aren't changed. (Hadn't made up my mind.)

PC = photos won't upload, apparently 'not enough space', which is utter CRAP. Some yummy program which I used for editing photos and art etc has been taken off and put on someone else's laptop instead, so I can't even edit or lighten any of the wonderful photos I have from France (I have a lot.) Plus, I've an inept version of word which is really old merely because it has the ability to use accents, whereas the more modern version makes it more difficult to type with accents (???)... Yehhh...

Desk = complete tip. Piles of work/ paper/ books/ notes were left around room and have now been stacked haphazardly on my desk, in no sort of order. Okay, my room is usually a mess, I admit - but it is an ORGANISED mess - I know where to find my stuff. Now it is a mess where I cannot find my books, college work, poems, or much else.

I haven't painted, collaged, made big art for months, played music, or gone for a run - I miss it. I think it is time.

The happy things: visiting a French castle, Paris (despite strikes, the metro is still better than the tube), French chocolate, that it is easy to listen to French radio now, far easier than it was, and that I can still understand German, even though I hadn't listened to it for a while. Plus new poems. Oh, and knitting; I'm making a scarf.

This should probably be written in my little black muji book, instead.

Books I would like to read.

2007-09-30T13:56:00.001+01:00

'If you're happy and you know it...' - Andre Jordan. See: http://www.abeautifulrevolution.com/blog/

Some learning to drive stuff/ theory. Not because I'm overly enthused about the actual reading of the book, more the actual driving and... FREEDOM. Finalement? peut-etre?

(I thought of lots of other books last night when I'd read some poems, but now my memory seems to not be working too fast.)

'Crush' - poems by Richard Siken. Everyone should have this book, as well as The Catcher in The Rye. I'm borrowing the book off a friend but found myself making slight pencil marks on it last night, and concluded that I need my own copy. Actual need.

Some kind of tourbook/ alternative tourbook on Berlin. (Albeit in advance, as this is not actualy planned, although it is planned in my mind.)

'To The Lighthouse' - Woolf. Again, own copy needed.

'Some German Poetry anthology' (this is not the title.) which I saw in the big W, which also has fabby English translations which seemed quite good. And it is in nice hardbook. Which is always a delighful surprise, even if a planned on surprise. (Does that make sense?)

'Ariel' - Plath. Siken is compared with her book Ariel; therefore it is to be read.
---

I am now going to give you some delightful Siken tidbits, b-b-because I am so lovely. and appreciate what it is to be entertained and delighted by poetry. Of course. And because it is almost edible.

Stop scratching whatever itch you have, and please enjoy.

... Your name like
a song I sing to myself, your name like a box
where I keep my love, your name like a nest
in the tree of love, your name like a boat in the
sea of love -- O now we're in the sea of love!
Your name like detergent in the washing machine...

It's a bed of straw, darling. It sure as shit is.

...and here is the centre
of me, which is a lake, which is a well that we
can drink from, but I can't go through with it.
I just don't want to die anymore.

this is all from 'Saying your names', which was possibly my favourite poem out of the ones I read last night.

Today's Gem of Wisdom!

2007-09-30T13:50:00.000+01:00

'Learn the value of being bored'.

Is it really that necessary to be bored once you've learnt to appreciate not being bored? I already appreciate not being bored, not being bored = more fun, happier, all round life is better... yet apparently I need to learn the value of being bored a bit more. Bullshit, me concurs.

I'd like to shove boredom in a box, parcel it very tightly, and give it to them to eat.

You're a bit of a what, exactly? Aisle 16/ Manchester Exchange.

2007-09-29T20:22:00.000+01:00

How often do you hear people saying/ whispering/ shyly, with averted eyes: 'I'm a bit of a...'

bit of a what?

work-addict? feminist? pendant? bitch? (-who isn't?) lazy person? tired person? sleep-deprived person? geek?

Please wait - I'm not intending to describe myself. I'm really, really not, although I did find myself saying the last one today (& at the same time laughing)... the person pointed at me, smiled at her daughter, smiled at me, then said: 'don't you know? that's what a geek looks like'. I pointed to the ueber cool specs. The woman smiled a bit of a bit more.

I'm not really trying to say anything; only that it occured to me how much we try to understate things - to ourself, and others. A bit of a geek? by most people's definitions, I'm the height of geek-ness and all it entails. What did you say you're a 'bit of' today? (Other than hot stuff, to yourself...?)

Aisle 16

They deserve capitals, indeed they do. They deserve clapping and laughing and inward turning of the head and feet shuffling awkwardly and then some more laughing, and wanting to look at them and tell them how much their performance made you want to live. Sweeping statement, you may think? How can an hour and a bit stuck with four men and some other strangers and a friend in a room at the back of the exchange make you want to live? Make you physically jump? Easily, I tell thee. Oh-so-easily.

Number 1: these boys/ men/ male-species be poets. Yes, they write. They read. They rhyme, they laugh, they live.

That is all. Number 1. Top. The best for that time.

They write poems which make me despair and do all that face turning to the side scheebang, and also make me jump up and down in St Ann's square, full of possibility.

I ask you to go and see them, for your own sake. For your own stomach aching afterwards. Go and play along with their games. (Really, we actually played games. Spot the Ford Escort...)

It's generally under a tenner, and you even get a free CD, with some of their stuff, which includes a track called 'Embrace the Wank'. And who wouldn't want that?

http://www.aisle16.co.uk/

PS: ever tried explaining why you like essay-writing? I tried; people didn't seem to get what the hell I was on about.

2007-09-29T20:16:00.002+01:00

Damn. The doorbell rings at the WRONG time. I'll post later.

News

2007-09-17T21:21:00.001+01:00

Email news

I have a new email (see profile) for writing-ness. Plain, simple; boring. Serves the function well.

Writing News

I have been writing new stuff (eek, eek) as well as redrafting/ completely rehashing old things.

Does it sound so awful to have a poem split into three sections (without the purpose of designating voice/ speaker), where the 1st and 3rd are three sets of 'couplets', and the middle an uninterrupted sort of flurry? Flurry to mean fast-paced, lost-in-it (without abstraction, and hopefully without losing the potential reader) sort of thing.

Reading News

I found Farley's 'Tramp In Flames' from down the side of my bed (?!) last night, and began reading. Wasn't sure what to make of some of it; take the last poem in the book, 'I Ran All the Way Home' - every single line (of a long poem) began with 'I remember'. Part of me got fed up, the other part of me thought how much it reminded me of a nursery rhyme, through variations on a repeated phrase. I liked it though, it made me question my ideas on what 'poetry' is, and whether that counted. One poem I really did enjoy was 'Night Swim', which reminded me of certain parts of Vikram Seth's 'An Equal Music', where he describes swimming in the lake early in the morning... The cover is also a little weird. Sort of grainy to touch. I suppose it's meant to be easier to hold. Anyway, it earnt some notes, some thinking, and some post-its.

Weather News

It is currently about 8 degrees C here. I went out for a walk this evening wearing four layers round my torso: a tank top, a jumper, a thick jacket supposedly for the final layer, and a mac-ish coat. Also a silk scarf which, whilst looking nice, didn't really help. Plus some trousers, underwear, etc.

2007-09-16T19:46:00.000+01:00

Manuka Honey... They (including a woman at a rollerskating rink) tell me it's good. I bloody well hope so, considering the amount I've been taking in my (recently perfected - tropicana mixed fruit juice helps) honey and lemon drinks.

2007-09-09T20:25:00.000+01:00

A room is yelling to be hoovered and tidied. Piles of work and paper are asking to be binned, recycled, filed, or the work to be completed/ revised. Books are yelling to be read. Poem drafts are sat on my desk, smiling quietly...

2007-09-08T19:58:00.000+01:00

Let's picture this scene: you're walking along on the pavement. Another person is walking along on the pavement opposite, heading in the opposite direction also. Said person checks you out. You notice said person checking you out and also happen to check said person out, realising that they really look quite lovely. And attractive. And have a nice bum. Etc etc. You continue checking each other out, whilst slowing the pace of your steps, until you pass each other and you'd have to turn around to continue. Nevertheless, after a few steps of not looking, you decide to glance around subtly. You both do this at the same time. You laugh.

Mmhmmm.

2007-09-07T22:29:00.000+01:00

I don't just read the blogs on the side, on the right. I also read other stuff, like http://www.iamlivid.com/ or http://feministing.com/ or http://thecurvature.com/ or http://timtim.typepad.com/exultationsdifficulties/ or http://everyoneneedstherapy.blogspot.com/ or http://www.littleredboat.co.uk/

Basically I am just lazy and do not update my links. Pardon me. (Those on the right I do tend to read quite regularly, when there is writing to be read; the thirty or so under 'blogs', I sometimes check, sometimes don't.)

when all seems to be falling apart/ colliding,

2007-09-05T18:46:00.000+01:00

try going for a walk on your onio/ taking a walk on your own. (I prefer the 'taking' here.)

without anywhere to go to in particular, with comfy shoes and clothes, maybe with a book or a camera or a doodlepad, with a dog (if you have one and like it), and maybe with no-one to meet (all depends who you'd be meeting, really...)

Trust me.

Free therapy... I'm surprised it isn't taken advantage of more... maybe doctors could prescribe it. Or people could just take it.

Something I've never understood...

2007-08-25T22:28:00.000+01:00

when filling out forms with personal details, for a bank account/ card/ boots card/ whatever it is account, why don't companies assume that a woman or girl is a Ms? Wouldn't it make life better, and easier, also encouraging more people to take up Ms?

It's a sensible, simple idea, isn't it? Who wants to be Miss, or Mrs, when males have the privilege of not having to disclose (or be asked to disclose!) their marital status?!

---

I am writing/ thinking about this this because I now realise that all my bank details, etc are under the title 'Miss'. Yeuch. Although considering there was a point when I thought 'Ms' meant that a woman was a lesbian (thankfully I'm more up-to-date on basic Feminist 'issues' now), perhaps it wasn't so peculiar that I must've always used Miss. Eurgh. Why did no-one educate me about this when I was younger?! Why was this missed off the school curriculum? (Yes, I DO believe it should be included.)

Reading poetry/ Judging poetry

2007-08-25T22:10:00.000+01:00

One thing a lot of people say a lot when talking about my blog, or poetry in general, is that they 'don't know how to read poetry' or 'don't know how to judge poetry', or 'don't know what's good poetry'.

People worry about metre, rhyme, scansion, references, form, so many technicalities. They worry about not knowing much about them, or not knowing what they actually are, what they 'mean', or how they're defined. There's some kind of instinct with poetry, I think. And it's okay to leave the technicalities, just as much as it is to know a lot about them, to appreciate them, to be learned about them. Only it's not always needed, not if you're reading poetry in bed, a couple of poems a night, before you switch off the light. Why not concentrate on the poem, the sounds, the pleasure you can derive from it?

I'm going to just write, write, write, some sorts of questions or wonderings which I find myself asking about poems when I read them. No doubt you'll have your own, if you do read it.

My is-it-a-good-poem-or-some-naff-stuff-meter:

Does it make me laugh/ cry/ almost cry (ie. particular ear ache)/ uncomfortable?
Does it linger in my mind, even when I try to push it to the back because it's making me uneasy, because it's taking up my concentration, making me lousy company? Does it take up even more space, demanding thought, demanding mental space when I try to ignore it? Does it refuse to be ignored?
Do the sounds echo in my mind; the patterns, the variations allowing it to cement easily?
Are the words, the punctuation, the language, exciting? Is the poem as a whole exciting?
Am I compelled to return to it?

Sorting out the messy room/ the cluttered cupboards.

2007-08-19T18:44:00.001+01:00

Just for the hell of having French as my thingy. I'll change it to German soon, maybe.So, sorting out the messy room. I've learnt that I've far, far more photographs than I remember having taken, been in, or been given; many of these are hilarious, many moody, many just plain fantastic. And others abominable. I've discovered that I really did spend a lot of time drawing, scribbling, painting when I was younger (enough to fill several French 'bags for life', certainly). I've unearthed cards I'd forgotten, postcards I'd not laughed at in a while, and many, many letters - most of which are fabulous, and, at most, a couple of years old. This time I've left the journal-reading till another day, instead choosing to shove them in an old shoebox (I also discovered some lovely shoes I'd forgotten I had; probably because there's generally not the occasion enough to wear such,) where they lie along with the photos and some letters. I've chucked many clothes, little games, silly scribblings (kept some, too,) as well as giving some things (GCSE rubbish - old books, etc) to neighbours, whilst a lot remains in a heap (I'd like to say 'neat pile', but the wine squishes my want to pretend that I am so very tidy - organised? yes. Tidy? sometimes) - a heap on my floor.

The art stuff has been relegated to another, smaller shelf (and also tidied up; it is purely 'art stuff' there, atm), whereas I'm making room for more books, to put my shoes somewhere, to try and make sense of what I want to use, what I am going to use, and not just what is comforting to open the wardrobes and look at (besides the poems, and other things - flyers, etc - which I've stuck on the insides of the doors...) I've also concluded, quite happily, that it is time, and I am certain it is time, for quelque chose to be stacked away at the back of the wardrobe, or put in a plastic bag (maybe entitled, maybe not), and then lifted away into the loft.

Arranging is relaxing.

2007-08-17T15:45:00.000+01:00

I am thinking, what would I do without books - or, more precisely, without literature?

Probably the following:

read less
go out more
be less pedantic/ annoyingly choosy/ awkward
have less extremes of mood...

there is a catch, with that last one. With the elation, glee almost of literature, comes the apprehension of tipping over the edge, of dipping one's head too far into thought or pondering so that it never comes out quite the same again (they do change us, books, poems, stories; of course they do; even if we dislike them, even if we don't think much about them, they do nevertheless change us, somehow...), and perhaps we end up soaked too much.

But I am glad. So very, very, very glad, for being able to dissolve into someone else's world, much like Will into Lyra's.

PS recent enjoyment: listening out for when people say things, in the hope of provoking an outburst of reaction, and then reacting so fantastically calmly that they end up pissed off. Try it, go on...

Rereading, I realise I ought to qualify 'literature', oughtnt I? I'm not going to; at least, not today.

(used to be a poem here.)

2007-08-16T18:06:00.000+01:00

(used to be a poem here.)

Just another story

2007-08-10T15:13:00.001+01:00

(there was a poem here.)

Again, draft.

2007-08-10T14:39:00.000+01:00

(and here, too.)

Okay, okay, it's a draft...

2007-08-10T14:31:00.000+01:00

(and, *dun-dun-dun*... here as well.)

I enjoy. (Simply to make me feel better. No, not in order of significance.)

2007-08-10T11:46:00.000+01:00

watching cold air coming in from the window to colliding with hot, showery steam
eating the cake mix, raw egg included, rather than the final baked thing
pulling grass up. (Hayfever can be ignored.)
a nosebleed after a headache (the pressure goes, so it is relaxing to an extent, bar the health side-effects of lots of blood suddenly running out of my nose.)
walking barefoot after a bikeride
cycling very fast, or cycling very slow
knowing exactly how low the trees hang and not getting scratched by them
when strangers say hello, hi, goodevening, etc or even a simple smile (but only, only if it's obvious they actually want to do this.)
sitting on the swings in playgrounds and kicking my feet up high
pulling leaves of bushes, and petals off flowers, then portioning them (despite thinking flowers cut off are a bad idea because, essentially, they are dead things. Hypocritical? maybe.)
doodling anything when I'm stressed
folding paper, cutting paper into small bits, tearing paper. Paper, in general.
finding random objects around (a book, a ring, a pair of lovely leather gloves...)
walking too fast, too far, or both: either way, so that the muscles ache.
the sound when you purse your lips and blow through them. (crap description...)
spinning on office chairs, particularly in places like Ikea where there's lots of space.
the thing where you hold someone else's hands and spin round crazily fast so that you end up fantastically dizzy (advisable to try this on grass, or some relatively soft surface, where there aren't any major rocks around. Unless, of course, you have intent of harming them. Generally I don't.)
diving underwater, feeling the oxygen run out, and pushing it as far as possible.

2007-08-06T22:12:00.000+01:00

Ideas happen at night, disturb attempts at calm and sleep, even though I've deliberately left my glasses, pen/pencil, and notebook on the other side of the room as a deterrant. It must be the space, the sudden space of doing nothing physically other than basic life requirements (breathing, digesting, etc etc), which brings them.

I've been carrying a story for what seems like forever; in poems, sections of prose, cut out things, photographs, ideas, many walks and a lot of time spent cycling, in the bits I've picked out as with mixed salad, and have skewered, forked, prepared to exhaust; the characters are solidifying themselves, the traits, the sayings, their expressions stamping and refusing to move... it - everything, seemingly - has almost brewed, I think.

2007-08-01T15:07:00.000+01:00

The French women have a sort of majesty, the sea tugs and pulls with its waves, the elderly assume Frenchness whilst those who speak it do their best to not disappoint, the cry of Bonjour resounds in the streets; it goes on, it will go on, after postcards, letters, texts with squished writing.

2007-06-17T19:53:00.000+01:00

It was an enveloping time; the camping, that is.

Camping.

2007-06-15T21:25:00.000+01:00

It is raining now. It doesn't take much to work out how a field will be tomorrow after lovely rain, rain, rain... I have never been camping before. No, not even for one night. Perhaps I am over-reacting, perhaps my fear of lack of 'facilities' (you know what I mean), moths, and uncomfy sleeping arrangements.

Were this blog anonymous, there would be far more spiel (is that the correct spelling? Is there even a correct spelling? I am too lazy to check at this very moment.)

Perhaps the wine will be some sort of thing to dull my 'argh'. I think it is mostly the idea of having nowhere to piss, having drank, which quite worries (read: terrifies) me. (Overly precious? I do wonder, too...) The moths, I can cope with; the crazed hayfever which is so inevitable I can drug myself up against.

I shall let you know...

(someone is trying to convince me. You're doing surprisingly well. Only because I trust you, though. Beware that depending upon the outcome, this could change... and don't say I never warned you, because I know you read this.)

I hope to be a convert. Then I can return and write lots of blogs and give you all much interesting poems and writing things to probe, in an attempt to flush this post from my mainpage.
--

Onto other matters... has anyone heard about Mark Halliday? You can read an interview with him here: http://www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/record.asp?id=15317 and one of his (I think; there seem to be two 'Mark Halliday's who are poets...) poems here: http://timtim.typepad.com/exultationsdifficulties/2007/06/a_song.html

(I sort of didn't want to give you that link because of my blah at the bottom. But it's worth it. For knowing a few more people who might read this will hopefully read that. And tell me what you think?)

It is quite addictive; pulls you in and makes you concentrate. I shall print it out and stick it somewhere prominent in my room. (Only a few poems get this special treatment...)

--

Thoughts are brewing over: 1) the utility of letting ideas 'brew' 2) Feminism. (and why so many people decline to call themselves this, despite seemingly supporting it, bar the term...) 3) the productivity of anonymity (sp?) 4) how thoughtful people who I've only met once or twice but talk/ email a lot can be.

--

Poems need scribbling over... (editing). I look forward to it.

2007-06-09T19:26:00.000+01:00

You can guess what I drank for dinner. There were no labels in that last post. And, guess what? I'm meant to be out of the house in exactly two minutes, and my bag still isn't packed, and the maths is still awfully splayed out, exuding in my fright of the wretched exam.

Rearranging, and decluttering. Mentally as well.

2007-06-09T19:16:00.000+01:00

Photos etc have been taken down, postcards put up and rearranged.

[.....................................]
[..................................................................................................]

all these little dots show my brain cells working so very hard in the cerebrum to decide where, where in the tiny scrap of room which is my bit of our darling Earth, ought I to rearrange things? Oh yes, indeed.

.

Wine, risotto, long phonecalls, maths spread out over my bedroom floor, and cycling way too fast to French songs. The joy of relaxing days. (This is not true. It is a big, big, fat, squelching self-lie which I perpetrate most fantastically, but still, it is, a LIE.) After all the silly exams (who are they for, really? an 'investment' into our future, when our future is then paying off bills, and saving for retirement? what if we don't even reach the bloody retirement?), I am looking forward to summer. To reading the rest of the books which surround anyone attempting to cross my room, to enjoying the simple days again. I'm not trying to devalue work, I do enjoy it, but when it is so mundane and ' ' [the word is blanked. Can you guess? It's not too difficult, I don't think...) as GCSEs are (let's face it, everyone knows that even the best teacher has a hard time making them have a facade of even slight challenge or personal development...), then it is understandably difficult to make the self enthused.

Why is it that on MSN people feel a need to declare their 'hearting' someone else? Or winking at everyone on MSN? (Do they have no family contacts on msn? Don't call me old-fashioned...). Perhaps I should just delete it.

'living in the subjunctive'

2007-06-04T18:26:00.000+01:00

According to a friend, it's from a film?

I like the phrase; the thought of parts of it, however, is extremely unappealing. How we crawl from living in the 'I would', 'I should' into the 'I could', 'I am doing what I could do', remains to shrink from my grasp. I suppose that personally, living in the thinking is often a lot easier than actually doing what you want to do. (Reminds me of a CA Duffy poem I read the other day. Can't remember the name, nor any specific lines, just the layout and the feeling it left me with. When I'm next at that person's house, I'll make a note...) People talk about it being because of others' reactions, and I don't doubt that image has a lot to do with it, but it also seems like in some way one part of ourself holds back a lot, the one with the expectations. That's why it's fun to go away (to the Beach? to Berlin? to watch The Waves?), to where no-one knows you, or be with people who have the most fluid expectations you can manage as a human in society.

2007-05-20T18:13:00.000+01:00

Writing recently has been somewhat limited, due to drowning under work. The amount of paper cuts I have on my hands is absurd, as I found out when trying to eat a lemon… (The lemon was good, very, very good. Sour to the extent I found myself wanting to call it sweet.) What I have written seems to be surprising me; it’s the sort of stuff I would be reluctant to admit to myself, or anyone else, so how on earth I am going to show anyone else much of it, I don’t quite know. Maybe I won’t – I might just stow it all up for ME. I do want to, but anonymously; it sounds pathetic, I know, but I would love to show people close to me it without them knowing I wrote it. How this could be possible, I’ve really not a great idea for at the moment, as I’ve pretty damn sure they’d immediately have a little green man prancing around their mind, yelling ‘Katy’s’. Is that a bad thing? Good thing? It happens with my drawings/ arty stuff as well… (I’m wearing vanilla. I really do quite like the smell, although I’ve lately discovered that most things I like the smell of are because they somehow – even if they’re blatantly not, which is most usual – somehow make me want to gobble them up.)

I have so many books I must read, it’s an extremely exciting prospect… knowing that there will always be books. The quote on the waterstones bag, which I saw today, clattered neatly (can that happen?) with my thoughts. By Hemingway: ‘There is no friend as loyal as a book’. I’d like to say I like most people, or that I honestly don’t agree with the quote; but I do. Humans are so stacked up with self-qualms, that loyalty can never be certain. Nothing can, but that’s a central force for another time, another post.

Two recent smacking-me-in-the-thought-area revelations:

1) I like late nights, and

2) I like early mornings when everything is twitching… ‘twitching, twitching, twitching [hopefully not]/ to the set beat’.

These two things don’t fuse overly well, I know. Unless I return to my insomniac days, but I sincerely hope not. Maybe, I will make the effort to have some earlier mornings, perhaps I could balance the late nights and early mornings with a little sleep sometime mid-afternoon. Quite appealing, actually…

Another thought: I am hoping that I will be able to use my tactical/ persuasive skills after the exams (and through, when blagging absurdities fits the game); to have lots of trips to places I’ve not been. Because, with a job, I will have the money to, and I will also have the time! (Lovely long holidays…)

I owe many people emails, letters, & phonecalls. If you are one of these people, reading this, wondering how I have the time to blog, to try and pacify my meandering thoughts, please note that I am actually doing you a favour. My concentration levels (as probably proven by this post) are pathetically low. Seriously. I’m tired. Not angry, irritable tired, but strangely more docile than ‘usual’.

2007-05-12T17:47:00.000+01:00

fantastic, raging rain. I love it. If you live where I do, you have to - or at least pretend to. But I honestly do; it's far better than a pathetic attempt at rain, which manifests itself into 'mild drizzle'. Yeuch!

Chapbook, rejection letter, writing competition...

2007-05-11T17:43:00.000+01:00

Chapbook: got the draft copy. A few things need tweaking, but at least I can envisage the final thing, I think...

Letter: got some poems rejected for a magazine, but also got sent surprisingly helpful constructive criticism from the editor. Not sure whether this is normal, or not, or whether it is only normal when poems get to the so-called 'short leet'. Whatever -- sending them off was just a chance, like everything else, and the comments have helped me gain a bit more objectivity -- which is, of course, good!

There is a writing competition for which I should work... I also need to revise (photosynthesis, cosine and sine rule, and write an essay...), shower, go for a cycle, and do some music, eat (I am looking forward to this!), and then go to a friend's house, which I anticipate gladly.

--

Knowing that I am leaving school feels strange; but well overdue! If I had a school beret, I would most certainly chuck it up, fantastically, to whirl in the air, amongst the shrill voices.

2007-05-08T21:43:00.000+01:00

sitting up till late, being forced to scribble and think, then do a bit more, with poetry-reading interludes. I do miss it, but I know it's a bad idea. For now, with exams...

There are some things I've been writing recently, which seem more true than other stuff, less shackled, less controlled in the sense of trying to achieve a certain structure, or shape; more allowing the poems themselves to evolve. But is is scary reading them, and although I want to put them on here, there are people who know me who read this; and people, they have that habit, often, of presuming. I assume their presumptions will be something, which, with time, I shall learn to slowly keep a distance from.

I also had an idea: many stories, stowed stories, converged last night.

------

Children should be allowed to write stories how they want. Maybe, maybe then we wouldn't all be 'fucking idiots' to the same extent, where our thoughts are a constant mangled mess, wombing pregnantly as they poke us.

Dialogue or diversion?

2007-05-05T17:38:00.000+01:00

Sometimes books herald reluctance; particularly when I am already consciously thinking over muddled thoughts. Thing is, a ‘good’ book; poetry, novel, essays or something else, will inevitably bring more thought. This is, I suppose, possible to use to one’s advantage should you be swaying towards the dangerously-pondering-too-much, if you were to use books to completely divert your attention – or, at least, divert as far as it seems possible. To select with the prethought purpose of falling into something else, a recluse of exposure to ‘other’ thoughts, other lands, other people, other than here and now and what it really stilletoing across the track of your conscious thought. Conscious and unconscious, actually.

It was not this, though, which made me thrilled to find Jo Shapcott and Selima Hill (both of whom their work I’d previously read on the net, but wanted to hunt out more of) on the shelves of our little local library. In a way, reading whilst being aware of the glitch (that thoughts will bug you, like it or otherwise…) and sort of welcoming this, makes me feel happy. Contented. It is a dialogue, if not a dialogue in the sense of immediate conversation. Sometimes it feels even more private, because it is only between you and your selves, and even when you might try to explain to someone about this ‘dialogue’, they cannot, cannot break into it. Possessive somehow, yes. Maybe in a similar way to why I sometimes do not want someone – say a friend or relative whom I am familiar with – to read what I have just read. Or why I thrust the book upon them, or print the poem out, ensuring they definitely read it.

2007-04-26T22:25:00.000+01:00

'when/ one child's hand turned the/ kaleidoscope upside/ down.'

I swear there is some addiction to the word kaleidoscope. It's just 'hmmm'. I like it a lot. Muji is shutting down in The Triangle. I wonder whether I am too late to go and buy pens & notebooks & soap. Considering I cannot go this weekend (unless I hijack previously-made-plans, and drag someone along with me, who I doubt would appreciate that...) It'll be sadly missed.

This http://www.radiofrance.fr/chaines/lemouv/home/index_flash.php presides over all other choice of listening now. It is quite addictive. Listen to the French laughing and babbling... & that fabulous 'bah'... maybe because I don't understand a lot because it's too fast/ slang is why it works. I really ought to learn how to make 'nice', clean links. I should.

Reading: 'Human Traces', Sebastian Faulks. Try it. One page in and you know it's going to be one of those you fall into - whether you want to fall into it or not. You will, I promise. Maybe I'll read some more tonight. Or find a recipe for something. Cooking appeals, en ce moment.

PS:

'Would you like this wrapped? It's not a problem...' [smile inc.]

'No thanks, it's for myself.'

---- Katy has a plant. It is yellow, plain bright yellow.

2007-04-21T13:26:00.000+01:00

Last post's colour was overly garish. Let's pardon that.

Before I went out last night, I felt knackered. Muscles aching, wanting to just collapse and go to sleep right then sort of tiredness. Suffice to say, I was not overly enthused about going out. I was looking forward to it, certainly, but after a week of being out every day for at least a couple of hours, on top of being back at school after weeks off, it was tiring. Getting home just after 12 I suddenly felt awake. Not even overtired and hyped, but just very awake. Anyhow, this morning I woke up at around quarter to 8 (normal getting-up-for-school time). Strange, considering a lie-in was expected and needed. One good thing that came out of it was going to the park before 11 (normally not even being up by this time at the weekend,) -- it was less busy, the air still thickly dewy, and everything seemed to be rustling, rousing.

Have so much work to catch up with, loads of emails to reply to, people to write letters to, writing to begin, and scales to attempt to learn.

Last night was enjoyable. Poetry, new people to meet and listen to, wandering round in semi-dark, cheap train rides (ahem...), discussing travelling, other languages, politics, three pieces of chocolate I found in my bag (wrapped up, don't worry), reminiscing over Germany, and being absorbed. Bar some alcohol, a little pixie to do all the work which bores me, and being able to distinguish my nighttime scrawlings (who has a hope with my handwriting if I myself cannot work it out?), what more could I ask for?

(& I have a new poem!)

'Where can we live but days?' - 'Days', by Larkin

2007-04-11T17:13:00.000+01:00

Days

What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?

Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.

Philip Larkin

---

The first stanza seems stronger: I don't like the 'Ah,' which niggles at the rest of that stanza for me. But, arguably the images of the second stanza are needed to ground the poem, give the reader some tether?

I cannot read this poem without thinking of 'The Hours': try reading it if you've not yet, you'll see what I mean.

---

Whenever I lend a friend a book (even if it's something I've only recently reread, and hence am likely not to want to reread straight away), I find there's a certain possessiveness associated with my books. I will think I want to check them, just to ensure, that they are there. Ridiculous, especially when I'm palming them off on a certain person so I can hear their 'gah's & wonders about the book... but it exists, still, it punches my lending books out freely.

---

'truth. Gobble it, think
of that dribbling silk
tight over eyes;
listen, diligently,
for the crack – of the
upturn of my gob.'

Too close? I like the relationship between the two people by the use of 'Gobble' and 'gob', though, it's integral to this poem. Whether the association would be there enough should I use 'upturn of my mouth', I'm undecided. 'Gob' jarrs, resists a bit more.

2007-03-31T21:12:00.000+01:00

'truth. Gobble it, think
of that dribbling silk...'

Prefer the word 'devour', but 'Gobble' sounds more childish, more urgent? And devour... is overused.

Or 'hunger'? Can you 'hunger' something? Or 'Evaporate' it?

2007-03-24T17:48:00.000Z

'or a happy family of voices in their head' -- see here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,,2039963,00.html

How many people have some sort of happy family in their head? How many kids draw the 'perfect', happy family standing outside a cute, little house? How many people used to draw the moon or the sun with a smile? I wonder.

2007-03-22T17:26:00.000Z

Ich moechte wandern… in an art gallery. First I would watch other people: some would be watching the art, others would be looking, trying to grasp something tangible from it. Others would be students, set assignments on specific pieces, clipboard and pencils in tow, perhaps a shoulder bag or one of those little folding chairs which are like the sort people have for camping. (I would be able to articulate them a little better, had I been entitled to camping in my childhood, but, you know, deprived childhood, of course – where was the camping? It was not! But I digress, as per usual, as you can predict and rely upon me doing…) And I would watch the people prancing, bambi-style, or like tennis and badminton players do, then swinging on their heels or the sides of their shoes as they examine the works. (Do they do this deliberately? Some do, I think.)

I would get bored of watching, and go to sit down on one of the benches. The sort of benches that are really very comfy, but without a back, and so there would be the temptation to lie down, and sit on my side, scrutinising something. No doubt I would be asked to sit ‘properly’ should I try this, so it is more likely that to resist the temptation I would have to get up and do something else. I am of a fidgety disposition, after all. To the window, to look out over the city and the people hurrying. But not hurrying like Londoners, no. The window would be an old one, hung quite low to the floor, the sort of windows I always wanted when I was younger, imagined putting into our house (despite the obvious ludicrous nature of such an idea), and I would think about maybe putting a window seat in (they really would add to art galleries)… Then it would be back to people watching, to the families, where one kid was interested, or one partner, or perhaps not really anyone, but the parents thought it would be a good, educational idea. In theory. Not when their kids begin trying to open stuff that’s encased in glass, or terrorising other visitors, or running into other people’s legs, mistaking them for their parents. (Oh dear.)

I might then actually look at the art, and maybe if someone who seemed interesting or pretty was also looking at it, I would smile at them. And then if they were to smile back or comment, a conversation would evolve. I love conversations with strangers who are mildly bizaree, or knowledgeable without pushing it onto yourself, only revealing it so much when you get really into a discussion, and when that discussion confirms your initial thoughts/ excitement. Especially when they initiate them… then we would drift apart again, easily, and perhaps, as I wander around, I would here someone speaking another language. I would try to get the gist were it French or German, or maybe just enjoy listening to it, the fall and rise of the sentences, the words they miss out but that we are taught to say, their accent, the way their mannerisms vary, the strange sounds which only their language has, which I miss when I’m not in some way involved with French or German. I would watch, amused, as people mull in and out and through and inbetween, and as the security people patrol.

'There is Rain in Me' - DH Lawrence

2007-03-20T19:41:00.000Z

There is rain in me
running down, running down, trickling
away from memory.

There is ocean in me
swaying, swaying O, so deep
so fathomlessly black
and spurting suddenly up, snow-white, like snow-leapords rearing
high and clawing with rage at the cliffs of the soul
then disappearing back with a hiss
of eternal salt rage; angry is old ocean within man.

---

It's interesting how there is no 'an' before 'old ocean', and how he develops his ideas through repetition and addition with each repetition, like 'swaying, swaying O,' and 'snow-white, like snow-leapords'.

His work may seem uncomplicated compared to some other poets, at least if looking at choice of words, but the way he develops his images, building upon them (from 'rain', we grow to meet the 'ocean') as if you are in his thoughts - thoughts which are natural, which flow with a natural rhythm. Personally, I adore this, and I put aside my qualms over our 'soul', over the use of the word 'rage' (it seems so recurrent in older poetry!), to simply enjoy it.

Calm down, Katy...

2007-03-16T17:05:00.000Z

works quite lyrically, don't you think?

I need a hot chocolate. In dia need. I have just sent about 26 poems off, as a very-very-verrry near final submission for my chapbook. Somewhat relieving, if not intensely scary. I am happy with them, for once, as happy as I can be with them. No doubt when it is all finalised there will be a myriad of things which I am exhaling blasphemous words and phrases and awful concoctions over, but, for now, all is good. Smile.

----

Not being able to find poets' work!

is a problem I have been enduring recently. How awful to manage to find some fabulous stuff which makes you feel rather exhilarated and then not be able to get more of it!!! Outrageous! I am on the hunt for work by the following:

Swithun Cooper
Colette Sensier
Dean Young.

(Sometimes when I read things I think I would quite like to marry the person... just then. I'm a hypocrit, given what I think about marriage, but hey, poetry does strange things to me, and I can't control what!)

Blah beneath (not right beneath - the last part!)

2007-03-10T17:45:00.000Z

today days acquired the skill
of tightrope
walking, of allowing
time to tumble
between nets, of
acrobating to roost, listening
to squealing squalor
of order, urgency
and that –
frustration
of our middle ear
to clocks’ manipulating
(this ear itself
in limbo, an epiparasite,
a necessary evil, a
playground whistling –)

--

comment? (the italics is me tilting my head, you know, 'thinking deeply', or 'trying to be persuasive' style...)

--

Personal incentives

Should I get some of the work done that I have to do today (ie. a LARGE amount), I shall reward myself: new books (the novel I was reading has gone missing!! Horrendous enough to warrant two exclamation marks…) , and a French DVD; ‘L’homme du train’, which has a glorious Guardian recommendation (difficult to resist… but, where has the ‘Living With Teenagers’ gone? I used to use that to try and coerce my parents into agreeing that they need to be more liberal, that liberal is good, and that having a load of rules is only going to make teenagers (apparently ‘searching for their self’) be… R-E-B-E-L-ious. (You knew it was going to end in ‘ious’, no point me exerting more effort over capitals etc.) Finally the PC is working properly, so stuff will actually play on it. (Spent ages last week trying to get ‘Trainspotting’ to play. Worth it, I’ll add: a film which restores some attempt at will to continue in a world where existentialism seems to roam quite crazily…)

Blah over.

Clocks, tickers, metronomes, sundials, holidays without time, that little island without clocks...

2007-03-08T20:04:00.000Z

it's all spinning round... I can't stop thinking about it: and I don't mean aesthetically, but conceptually. One man on holiday said he refused to have clocks or watches during his holiday - it ruined his days, pulled them apart, constrained them, bundled them up into attempting-neat packages as if in 'About a Boy'.

Would we be better off without it? Just for a little while? (I know it's not going to happen - people have places to be at certain times, deadlines, work, trains to catch etc, etc...) We would eat when we were hungry not just because there was a designated time, we would sleep when we needed to sleep, we would surely be less stressed? People would learn to wait when they met people without instinctively reaching for the little bugger of a mobile when five minutes too far had passed, intruded, started greedily ploughing away into their time.

(Can you tell I am someone who is often renowned for being late? NB: I am not actually late if I am that bothered, unless I have slept through my alarm, but that is quite rare; so if I do really want to be somewhere, I will likely be early... the rest of the time? No comment...)

It's something that's even begun (horrendously, or merely inevitably?) slipping into my writing. Something may appear soon. May.

Rain. Il pleut.

2007-03-04T14:56:00.000Z

Il pleut, albeit not quite in the way of 'Il pleure dans mon coeur / Comme il pleut sur la ville ; / Quelle est cette langueur / Qui pénètre mon coeur ?' Verlaine, google informs me. (Which reminds me to order some Baudelaire- all I currently have is a library copy of 'Les Fleurs du Mal', when really, I need my own so I can make notes.)

More in the way which reminds me of 'Rage, rage against the dying of the light'! You can hear a fantastic reading by Mr Dylan Thomas himself of 'Do not go gentle into that good night'. http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15377 (Do have a listen, you don't even need realplayer, so most people should be able to hear it. And don't you think when he says 'forked' it sounds rather different?)

Some lessons for poor students attempting GCSE speaking and listening could be learnt from the way he savours his words himself - how, if the poet/ speaker themself cannot put weight upon their own words, can anyone else be expected to?

2007-02-22T13:25:00.000Z

Often, I reckon, when you've not spent time with a certain people/peoples, your opinions on them can be more easily swayed, & when you do finally see them again, you can often expect too much. Not that this is at all surprising if you are anyone like me: it is routine to expect too much, & thus be let down by myself, people close to me often, and everything else that makes up day to day life. But it can be a problem, the question of opinions of others, how they can flick so quickly sometimes, yet other times remain quite secure, solid for a long time, before once again flicking and scaring me to some extent. There are, despite this, some people for whom my opinion remains always positive: there is something about them which just makes me enjoy spending time with them, &, being selfish as are most humans, I hence want to spend more and more time with them. Sometimes it is even better when there are huge gaps. Like a mini sort of 'lent', except from with people. Naturally, if they are quite so wonderful, this would have to be enforced either 1) by them - knowing how pissed off I would get, yet still adore their company, or 2) by something out of all our control. Usually the latter - most people don't have enough staying power for the first, nor recognise how rewarding it could be.

--

Have you noticed I sometimes use '&', yet also use 'and'. This is a vain attempt to make myself delight more in writing - I do not naturally use '&' often (! it has, surprisingly, crept into a few timed-essays recently!) - yet the shape of it delights me. As does the word 'yet'. And 'wonder'. So yes, purely a silly tic on my behalf; because it delights me. Yes.

--

I am going to go and get my red notebook. It is quite gorgeous. From paperchase - I expect ridiculously expensive, despite being unable to recall the precise amount. Anyhow, to the red book. I will write some things I meant to write here a long time ago - I wrote them in the red book - as I so often do with early-hours-of-the-morning writings.

--

'Often [cue head tilt...], I reckon one of the most fantastic [read, 'purely selfish'] things would be to have someone to lie with and talk to just as you are falling into the lull of inbetween asleep and awake, neither quite here nor there. Not when you are recognising your dreams - for that is another lull - but certainly, a lull.

Yesterday (which was 'V' day - more about that later.) [there might not be more, depending on my laziness/ care for your boredom.] I went swimming. With my new goggles. Very exciting: it meant I could sit cross-legged on the bottom of the pool (as I enjoy doing), look up, &, see clearly. Plus they have an interesting [read: 'pointless, but amuses me'] sort of clip at the back.

Then we went to a French cafe where I ate hot chocolate, half a croissant (well and truly soaked in the river-like - wait, that sounds awfully unappealing now I reread it... - froth) and half a strawberry tart...'

And so it goes on. & Then I rant about Valentine's day, for the majority, being an excuse to attempt to put a pretty front on their relationship(s?), superficial, and where teenage girls are delighted if they get roses and/or chocolates. (How unoriginal and dull can you get? Plus they've probably not even found out *which* chocolates and/or roses they really enjoy. Urgh... pass the next sick bucket type moment.) I suppose though, most people don't recognise the idea of idiosyncrasy most days - with the consumerist machine of V day, we can hardly hope that they will...

There was also an Armitage poem I was going to put up here, because he 1) is more likely to produce amusement, and can write far better, and 2) even my desperate attempts at writing recently are... well, that, quite simply: desperate. Nevertheless, shall I submerge myself in reading, I will be learning something, so, once I am done with what I am making at the moment (top secret... *drum rolls*...), I shall do so.

Now let me find this bugger of an Armitage poem, for it really is worth reading. Gaaaah... I cannot find it. It was on a Guardian unlimited thread, & talked about some kid in science. (poems with stupid kids & science & Armitage are hardly likely to be dull, are they?)

OK, you get this one instead, enjoy! (& discuss/ comment?)

http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=90

I'll leave you with a Baudelaire quote (from one of his intros to ‘Fleurs du Mal’)...

'But I have one of those happy natures that enjoy hatred and feel glorified by contempt.'

http://fleursdumal.org/

2007-02-19T22:06:00.000Z

Picking the white, not-yet-solidified icing off an iced finger was one of the things I enjoyed today. As was walking aimlessly; standing in HMV watching people scan the CDs and DVDs; trying out testers in the body shop, getting hungry from the smell of the body shop; laughing at the person who tried to hand me a brochure about getting married (moron.); walking into a jeweller's with no intention of buying, asking for brochures with images (I'd say 'pictures' usually if it wasn't my school art I am talking about, but it seems this word sticks to the front of my linguistic choices when it comes to the subject) of watches for my art project, & being given lots of brochures by an extremely dilligent person; then sharpening pencils, arranging them in their tins.

(I like these meandering blogs. Just being able to solidify our thoughts, or feel that we have. I wonder if it's why the whole blog schaboom has been able to happen to such a mass extent. I should probably qualify that 'mass extent', but I don't know how to... The selling of egocentricity?)

Pointless post.

2007-02-11T16:10:00.000Z

Being able to talk with people who enjoy the same things, be those things of any variety:

sitting on swings; walking and walking and walking until you get past aching; kneeding dough with little thought for the finished product, but simply the enjoyment of the kneeding dough; speaking in foreign languages with the joy of not being able to rant or debate in that language, yet removed to being more simplistic due to an ignorance of that other language; whatever it may be, being able to have someone else simply 'get' what you're on about, and being able to 'get' what they're on about: it makes you want to live, takes away the distance. I'm sure I've attempted - and failed - to articulate my own ponderings on the idea that we are unable, psychologically to fully understand ourselves, therefore no-one else can have much hope, but if there is an acceptance, in a way, that is enough.

This weekend I read some poems I'd not read for ages, from a children's poetry book. Some of them don't even seem like 'poems' to me really now - in the way that I wouldn't recognise them as a poem unless I was sort of instructed that they were. Anyway, the route of attempting to define poetry is one I am not going to try walking down today.

There was one poem which my aunty showed me because she knew my reaction: it was basically a praise-song of words, touching upon some of the delightful things they permit us to do. It was a raise-the-shoulders-and-half-smile-in-contentment moment.

This was a pointless post. Sometimes points occur, more often they simply don't. Humans like 'points', I think; without them there wouldn't be much.

Latest Reading.

2007-01-31T19:53:00.000Z

Finished recently:

The Time Traveler's Wife: (I am very grateful for a certain friend's persuasion about me reading this; also, finding the book in the library lead to an intriguing encounter with another of the one-who-writes variety. Began whilst I was babysitting, finished the next day. My mum is also reading it - it's a strange feeling when my parents are reading the same book at the same time as me - perhaps I am just overly possessive of 'my' reading habits. I admit I was concerned that there might be a large 'cheese factor', initially; but my doubts were swished through with gorgeous writing from the first sentence.) http://www.amazon.co.uk/Time-Travelers-Wife-Audrey-Niffenegger/dp/0099464462

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: (This had been dipped into and out of too many times. I put it in my bag this morning, with the intention of finishing it. Read with my feet up on my desk for a little while when I got home, fully delighting in Sacks' writing & his patients drawings -- see the latter chapters...) http://www.oliversacks.com/hat.htm

To read:

The Essentials of Psycho-Analysis, by Freud.]

In the proccess of reading/ dipping into and out of (as is best with poems):

New Poems on the Underground (a great present! I love the way 1) it was such a well-chosen present, 2) it reminds me of London. My post-it is currently on pages 78-79, where 'The Two Apes of Brueghel' - Wislawa Szymborska (but translated!) and 'Once' - Carol Rumens, lay. Go google if you want to read them - I'd recommend so.)

New Blood - an anthology edited by Neil Astley (one of the *two* books I got in my Foyle's bag. This is quite worthy of space in my room too, I reckon: there's a lot from 'modern' poets, it gives you some background info about the poets; generally helpful, and, as with any anthology - like 'Poem for a Day', incites further reading & research.)

Slyvia Plath - poems selected by Ted Hughes, to whom she was married (I read this through in a night's babysitting, too. My favourite? 'You're' & you'll see why if/ when - whoever says I'm not optimistic, stop & take note here! - you read it. I'd previously come across it, but it still makes me grin like a toddler - a grin which would probably scare the south, but hey... )

---

There are others, but those are the main ones. &, do check out http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/home.do - it's a decent site, with - allegedly - some fabulous recordings, including those of ones who're far gone. Do note, however, if you enjoy the site & it's supposedly glorious recording, remember not to rub it in that my computer is a bastard to not allow the poems to play.

Happy reading/ exploring...

PS: the poem in my last post, 'How to Remember' is indeed mine.

How To Remember

2007-01-29T21:42:00.000Z

How To Remember

(for S.V)

Hurl reminiscing away. Smash it up,
the photographs, spit out that saliva
you suck inbetween your teeth – spit it,
on rose-tinted snaps, which had you –
stomach shaking, eyes stinging.
The cochlea echoes, a voice
which tossed over past waves.

Show willing – for once,
just this once, put out the reeking bins
again. Watch from your windows, peer around
the apple tree, spying with permission.
They take the bin bags out,
empty your stuff into
a gross churning machine.
And let’s listen to the metal, chomping away.
Don’t succumb.

---

With some luck, it won't seem like molten hatred pouring fresh out of the pot.

the effects which stem from snow & crazed weather.

2007-01-22T17:21:00.000Z

The plants are dying/ have died, the hammock is broken & left awkwardly twisted, & the rose bush behind the swing has overgrown it so you can't really sit on the swing properly.

There was also a snow angel on the path. & given where it lay, presumably by one of the kids I babysit for.

He Wishes For Cloths of Heaven - WB Yeats

2007-01-21T17:11:00.000Z

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

--

I don't, & won't profess to know much about Yeats, despite having a little book about him which a relative once 'forgot' to return to their library, and somehow got away with it. But I remember the first time I read this poem a couple of months ago: & reread, & reread.

The way he hasn't wished to spread his dreams under her feet, but already done so, the way he compares her to some sort of heavenly being, the repetitions of 'and' which lead themselves to the list of extended & fast-flowing descriptions about the cloths, & his actual choice of words. They're commonplace, ordinary words, which makes this poem have even greater effect.

& his rhymes: he's capable of rhyming 'cloths' with itself, 'light' with itself, &! 'feet' and 'dreams' with themselves. Not many poets could do this without it sounding horribly forced.

There's also the not so small matter of the last line...

'Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. '

tp-tp-tp

2007-01-20T23:02:00.000Z

& then some more tp-tp-tp...

outside, whilst two glasses (one on the glass desktop, one on the window ledge) sit empty.

Relaxing, somehow.

It has hills, it's cold, guess what?

2007-01-20T22:25:00.000Z

it's also... northern!

A decent break, even though all northern-places now seem to be familiar. I either think 'Newcastle!', 'Manchester!', or 'Sheffield!'.

Never quite worked out what the accent is though - is there a Lancastarrrrr...ian accent?

-

Isn't life disappointing? Not as if unborn things can have expectations; more that our expectations of being a certain age, the 'awe' of that, when you reach that age, vanish; and they have the cheek to do so without so much as a sniff of purple smoke!

Today's offering. In need of a title, perhaps.

2007-01-15T18:45:00.000Z

For months, he'd been pulling a bag along
with him, his new-found friend

at first it grew slowly, and then,
after a while, accelerated, growing
until it was cutting off
the lifeline.
Left him to dangle

shuffling in his bed –
slim cuttings of soft paper
bundled into a ball, a
cocoon, a coffin already made.
I remember

the days we didn't need
to worry about bulldog
clips on the cage, because
he wasn't going to
crawl up the chimney, not today,
and cleaning would only disturb.

I remember holding him, a baby
again awkward in my hands,
massaging the fur, slowly, so
slowly, circling, urging him
to warm up.

We passed him between us, his
last minutes, seconds, split
into a myriad of diamonds the size
of the last of his eye. My turn;

I took him to the radiator,
kneeled down, nudged him,
waiting for him to wake up, warm up,
stop pretending to give up.

--

I found the pink pen!!!!!!!!!!!!

2007-01-07T19:06:00.000Z

It isn't often I use so many exclamation marks. I would agree that most of the time, the writing should elaborate to satisfaction without using punctuation to possible excess. There we are, bla about that, jolly good...

I found it amongst the bags, under the shelf of art, within the depths of the huge wardrobes which near-enough line one entire long side of my room. Then there was the piss take of trying to get it to work; it was apparently unresponsive to my gentle attempts at nudging it to get the ink to warm up (much like the hamster, really...) and also my drowning it in the glorious tapwater which is from the north. Finally, after lots of scribbling, it began to work. Hurrah, or what?

Let's just hope the little bright pink fountain pen doesn't go walkabouts from the realms of my memory as to where I placed it again.

The Hours

2006-12-31T14:26:00.000Z

Last night we watched The Hours. One of those things where when you first begin watching, you cannot remember the story, recall the names of the characters, or even remember why you were initially so enthralled with it ('it' being 'The Hours', and 'Mrs Dalloway' - at least, to some lesser extent). Then, of course, you do remember, once a friend reminds you and comments about your crap memory (I am only 16 – surely it can't be that bad? Selective, naturally, but bad? I'd not've thought so.) And you get excited, you stop prodding the chocolate fondue with those sticks (because, by this point, the fruit has all been devoured, and all that is left is the remnants of the two huuuaaage bars of Tesco milk chocolate), you don't have to worry about prodding yourself in the mouth with the stick, you ignore the dog, forget trying to coerce it to jump up onto the sofa, forget the stash of Celebrations in your pocket, and allow yourself to be absorbed into the film. A rare moment for me. Normally, as everyone here knows, I have the habit of talking through films, recounting lines I already know, or texting through it (only my credit is severely depleted, so I couldn't possibly indulge in this last night).

Okay, let’s cut the crap. (And be glad about it, too.)

A few sentiments that stuck out from the film/ which I thought: 1) without death, we wouldn’t value living one little bit. So it is actually a good thing. And without death, would we actually have any motivation? I don’t think so; most likely, it’d be procrastination at its best. And perhaps existentialism would stand up even better… which is rather depressing. So now I shall move onto something else.

In the film, Mrs Woolf was said to have two lives – one which she lived normally, as most people do, and another which she lived through her current story. (If she had several current stories, perhaps she would even have more lives?) It made me think about two quotes (which, given my gloriously crap memory, I cannot recall exactly – but maybe someone can help me out if you are reading this and know them? Or maybe you’ll just understand enough anyway, even though I can’t credit the quotes… anyway…) Two quotes: one about how writers write themselves and their desires into every story, how it is impossible to not; the other about how every novelist only writes the ‘same’ novel repeatedly – that is, I think, that there is so much about themselves deeply ingrained which they cannot, no matter how much they try (to no avail!), pull out of their novels. It is simply there, their ‘self’ (/one of their ‘selves).

I wonder whether this is what also attracts people to reading, indeed, film-watching, too – escapism, of choosing another life to live in, even if it is not really your own – if you can trick your mind into thinking it is, because you want to so much, is that so awful? Maybe this is our thing with holidays, too – how many people have more pictures of holidays, of rare moments, than of their daily life? You may argue that this is because they are more likely to forget them if they are rarer; not so, I believe; if they are rarer, they automatically will stand out in the memory more, as some sort of irregularity in the patterns which bind together to make that we call our life. Why don’t we have more pictures of the things we do again and again, and delight in them? Why don’t we enjoy making breakfast, or tidying/ rearranging our rooms? Is it so difficult? Yes, they’re repetitive, but only so much because we choose to make them so.

Another thought (and I realise my ramblings are unrelated, but blogging can be whatever you want it to be, can’t it? God, I realise that’s a stupid question; questions are generally asked more for confirmation of the already-known than for any new knowledge, are they not?) was about when people say ‘I can tell you anything’, or, even richer, ‘you know you can tell me anything’. Really? How, given that a part of our self is always even hidden/ repressed from our very own self, can we be expected to reveal all to another self? We cannot be expected to. Perhaps using some sort of psychological technique a person can prise another open; but normally, in daily conversation? Crap!

This is not, however, necessarily a bad thing: who doesn’t find intrigue alluring, in how many adverts is mystery portrayed as something fascinatingly sexy? Again and again, you’ll undoubtedly find. And would we really want to know another person so well? You may disagree with me, yet, I cannot help but think that when stripped away/ known well, every person’s civilised walls will break quite easily, that we will be shown to be purely animalistic. Hardly surprising, given that we are animals. Cultured, perhaps, but animals nonetheless.

Take away our ability to speak, our ability to converse with language, and what would we have? Civilisation as we think of it, remaining? I doubt it. Much as I hate it sometimes though, when there is an obligation to talk (and this, surely, springs the joy of being lost in a city, a sea of people, mulling around, together and also fantastically independent), an expectation to make sense, it must be obvious to anyone how much I adore language. Not only am I dependant on it, as we all now are, but, I’ve an inkling that I’m a little more so than most (so long as I can write, it’s all good; let’s ignore the thought of being unable to)… the page is where thoughts can slip through being curtained, and it provides a medium for them to be tidied, played around with, seen on, naked but for the riddle of rhetoric.

My Family

2006-12-22T14:13:00.000Z

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Family_(television) I'd forgotten how much it makes me laugh. The sort of laughing where you forget about everyone else until you've stopped laughing, and then you realise that you really were laughing quite uncontrollably. I'd like to meet the actors. Don't know their names (as per usual -- do I ever really? no.), or anything about them, and I'd rather spend time watching the programme than googling them.

So, the boys were in bed (who I babysit for), I switched it on, looked gleeful with the realisation that I could sit and watch My Family, that my mocks were over so I didn't feel the need to do any work, that there was no-one else in, so I didn't have to share the lounge. I could just lie there, elbows propped on cushion, head propped in hands, fixated on the TV. (And they have a bigger TV than us. Fabulous.) And the laughing just rolled out -- most of the situations were completely absurd, but they somehow seemed to relate. Whether it be the teenage boy charging the people to take their piss in their lovely bathroom (extra for the ensuite, of course...) -- not that anyone does this, but the way he found to make money -- or the film star coming into the house, all blasé, everyone competing for his attention. It just works. It makes me laugh, and I was glad to remember that.

When the credits rolled on, I wiggled a bit, looking at my elbows (which had gone red and ached from being in the same position for yonks), & I wondered whether perhaps the boys would've wondered why I was laughing, but my thought was quickly pushed out, as I pictured them, running round crazily, fantastically energetic. No, they wouldn't.

(Yes, I am aware of my overuse of the word 'wonder'.)