... more personal than i remembered...

So. I wrote some poetry. Most of it I'm not finished with (and probably won't be for a good few years, so don't hold your breath), but the worst ones are done, so here they are.


Nidiculous
Young are altricial (nearly naked and helpless) and nidiculous (confined to nest))

Unprepared, he struggles
from the egg, uncertain
unstable
unfeathered scrawn

he stretches moist ligaments
in awe at the chill
and the shaking pain
of his own calls
all blood
and bones
exposed.

He realises, of course, that plummeting
from his nest is no escape,
and he appreciates
that he cannot feed himself –

in fact, the eggshell
(scribbles
spots
blotches
and marblings)
is enough of a distraction

and so he survives –
too conscious to do more
than examine his own,
broken, remains

and he wonders, Nidiculous
as he can only be
whether that makes
him ridiculous.


Pink Soda Dust

Your own gestures are filled with the breaths I give you,
the spiralling dependence of my uncertainties
filling my absence and the utter abandonment you
should feel. Time and space would accommodate me –
leave my mind alone! Or jump through,
splashing the dreams in which you
would threaten, to find the ones where the sky
would fall around us, broken, as our sleeves
fill with pink soda dust and we’d fly away.


Entwined

We clung together under the primroses, breathless
like a Kaufmann movie, his pupils
showing me the ‘you got the love I need to see me’
fall from grace, Butterfly & Co painted arms.
His voice squeaks like Pluto, every day
is a daydream, recycling lilacs in comparisons.
Who do I ‘need to see me through’, who has that?
Whoopee, No I won’t No I won’t ‘ain’t
what it seems.’ My hands twist in sugar
memories click click shut and we’re gone.


Answering anger

In maths class I scowled
through every lesson for fear of the pupils
not daring to look around at the dark eyes
too scared of answering anger. It was only
when I met them on my terms,

with the sure knowledge of music,
that the equations of their friendships
expanded to bracket me, and they remembered

when I rebelled against the teacher
stopping me from listening to music,
the beats reverberating across the classroom,
and solely my ears catching the tune.


Numb

Drunken solstice
and I’m being a princess in your arms
like the one the bull kidnapped
and ran away with through the oceans.

You’re my sea-shook swimmer
trying to keep up with the bronze arches
of my arms echoing waves.

Our water-mediated embracement
is sharp as scratches, like birds
flinging fragile flight to twist in windows.

Later, there’s salt on your skin
as I teach you to breath,
warming your chest with my unshuddered
sighs, our feet broken in green swords
bodies hijacked and numb.




annnnd
finally, I just started following this blog:
http://jwallphoto.blogspot.com/
because of this picture:

24 hours from the word go: 'BY APPOINTMENT'

Sonia walked into the shop with the air of one browsing in their free time. It was only by the quick movements of her feet, encased in ankle boots, that one could tell that she was in a rush and wanted something specific. She glanced slowly at one corner and then seemed to forget what she wanted, her thin lips slightly parted as though she were working out something difficult. She stayed, poised like a supporting column, by the doorway, as though hesitant to break the dusky peace of the room.
Adam appeared almost as casually, from the interior darkness of the shop. Something about the deferential hunch of his shoulders made the glass in his hand seem to proceed him, as though he were Macbeth.
They stood, poised like actors at the wings of a stage, until the woman’s heel, resting against the wall, squealed, and the man started, lime cordial spilling from the glass, which he apologetically offered to her. The distance between them made the action seem hypothetical, as though he expected the glass to leap the intervening space.
Sonia moved, her heals making sharp scuffing sounds. In her outstretched hand, the light made the glass seem to glow, and she tilted it slowly to her mouth, as though gently tasting a flower’s nectar. Her pale lips at the glass’s edge showed a darker colour within her mouth, and, having sipped it, they gathered together again:
‘Thank you,’ and it was as if a curtain had been raised from the rest of her face. Suddenly her long nose seemed to remember its length, and her eyes seemed to deepen, liquid and blue, embedded in slightly smudged kohl.
From nowhere, Adam’s long fingers had produced a string of amber beads. He held them next to her hair, the slight wrinkles which ringed his eyes deepening into something like kindness.
‘They’re your colour.’
Sonia stared at him, the paleness of her eyes protesting such a judgement. Her dark hair made the amber appear almost aggravated, gleaming ferociously. Adam stood, awkwardly upset by his own misjudgement. She raised her hand and pushed the beads firmly away, the gesture half familiar, half that of a customer impatient with the salesperson.
Adam cleared his throat, and smiled apologetically down at her. She felt the smile was addressed at her but was not meant for her. She realised when she’d pushed away the beads his fingers had slid around hers and that they were now holding hands, formal as though surprised by new love. She shrugged and slipped her hand from his, and he looked down regretfully.
‘Why did you come?’
She looked away, knowing that he wanted to ask what she wanted, but aware that that was her role.
‘I promised I’d come if you asked.’
He paused, waiting for accusation, his eyes on hers. Her foot twitched not so much with impatience as with the inability to stay still. He stared at the black shoe, and wondered what her feet looked like.
Absent-mindedly, she picked up a golden coloured thing. He said:
‘I asked because there’s a new Calibetti grandfather clock.’
It came out all in a rush, as though he’d been waiting to say it for a while. She stared at him, blinked, and allowed her face to round into a smile, the lips compressed and amused.
‘Where?’
He took a few steps in retreat, and she watched the way his shoes seemed to follow him, as if accompanying him contrary to the wisdom of experience. He turned and saw her, arms slightly raised from her sides as though her sleeves were weighing them down, and he wondered if without them her arms would rise like wings.
She saw that he wanted her to follow him and she moved quickly forward, until she was beside him, and she allowed him to show her eyes where to alight.
The clock was taller even than him. He did not move to point out the blue iridescence, as if borrowed from butterflies, which to him seemed an echo of her eyes. He knew she’d see the grained swirls of gold in the wood, that she’d understand the way the thickness of the clock-face’s numbers indicated its date. Elegantly lounging between a darkly red writing desk and the wall, the clock gently encompassed them with it soft ticking. They stayed quiet, neither smiling, but both captivated.
When his lips touched hers, she did not move as he drew away to gauge her reaction. Her eyes stayed on the clock, but then her compact body twisted away and, with a fretfully hopeless glance at the clock her little feet in their protective shells moved swiftly over the dark floor, and she left.
He stayed beside the clock, watching the flick of her heel as she turned around the door, leaving him in the dimmed lights.


... well that was kind of strange, but the house we were staying in had all sorts of rooms with wierd things like grandfather clocks and egg collections so there's my inspiration.

just realised i learnt the action potential sequence backwards

...was I talking about completing things? aha i think John Isner and Nicolas Mahut would be interested... this is hilarious, especially from 3:45 onwards:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2010/jun/23/wimbledon-2010-tennis-live

brain dying. away from saturday at 1:45 til tuesday whenever. turn's out I'm not just writing - they want us to bring sketching stuff too. Why do I never read the label of things I organise? Perhaps because I thought I was writing it? Never mind. I'll see if I can scan in the horrors I produce. It'll be great. 4 days with no screens except for my phone - maybe I'll remember how to produce real thoughts with pen and paper...

I'll come back with blisters and blood loss. Can't wait.

Just saw a pigeon with a hunchback and a limp.

When is something finished?
Saw a sign which said ‘a man is not complete until he’s married... then he’s finished’. I then forgot about it. Then I dreamt about it in one of those day dreams which last approximately two seconds and indicate that you haven’t consumed sufficient liquids/ nutrients or that you are too filled with drugs to function properly. The end result of that was the thought that things can’t be finished until they’re complete. And when is something complete? When you’re ‘happy’ with it?

What if it’s something you can never be happy with? Or what if it’s finished when you’re ‘unhappy’ with it?

I’m no philosopher, which could be a problem. I’d rather think of myself as a failed poet, or as someone who is entangled in the idea of adoration of words. Neither of these things being particularly concrete.

I’m so amused, that that would be the mistake you’ve made. It’s hilarious. If only I could let you read my little black book, and if only you could take the lines like ‘just to stop feeling vague’ or ‘I’m vaguely frustrated with myself, but also kind of happy, a little concerned, and in the after-math of the general gist of exhilaration, meaning, the idea of it in teeny bite-sized moments’ seriously.

Is it bad that I don’t care what anyone thinks of me so long as it fits my validations? These are: 1. It has to be strong, 2. If it’s negative it has to have a reason. If it fits into those, then my poor shivering soul can look at it and not draw a blank.

It was lovely to see Tatiana today, and thank you to Mailee for recommending to Tatiana the gardens behind the museum. Sitting in a garden... In a garden... garden of Eden IMAGERY... pastoral study has clearly affected my mind.

Although, announcing facts about oneself, is something I feel I ought to apologise for, it is not how or what I think. Sometimes these lovely words... well sometimes they forget that it’s my mouth they’re using.

Why no grand abstractions?
–Who am I to answer them? What do I know?
Why not the personal details?
–They are too petty, pathetic. Who cares.

I get scared I’m too good at that old principle of abstraction.
Day dream believer, eh?

Just sat here and watched this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szGOlkMC-lI&feature=sub I subscribed to his videos when I used to love Bright Eyes, and he did come pretty good covers, and people said he was trying to be Connor Oberst, and his justifications made me smile. But mainly I like his voice. This is out of sync, sound/ picture wise, so there’s some added amusement.
Then I laughed at this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05MRbZvzFsw which is a song I used to love (and the reason I have this weird thing about smoking Camels. Of which I like to speak to no one). But the movie... made me cry, eventually, because how muscley the legs are and the colours of the shoes and how sad it is that someone made that and all the effort they put into it and how no one ever really does anything and how the nails were painted in a colour that clashed with the shoes, and the poor person buying those horrific shoes maybe especially to make that movie, and it looks like the person wearing them is quite tall and probably doesn’t suit them at all but thought they did. I don’t know. It seemed very sad.

This is why I am not a philosopher.

Then Ben told me about a girl we know who just got married and in one of the wedding photos the way they’re kissing, just missing each other’s mouths... that made me cry. I think I only cry when I’m alone. And they were holding these big bunches of orangy yellow flowers and there was so much celebration but I couldn’t see the girl I remembered anywhere in there. Not that I knew her that well. And then Ben sent me this:



Because he’s apparently a lion pirate, as he says: ‘grrarr’. I just like the pipe.

If you’ve waded through all this drivel to here, I feel I ought to give you a prize. Have some Nabokov:

‘how I waited, how certain I was that without my having to tell her she would steal to my room, how she did not come, and the din thousands of crickets made in the delirious depth of the rocky garden dripping with moonlight, the mad bubbling brooks, and my struggle between blissful southern fatigue after a long day of hunting on the screes and the wild thirst for her stealthy coming, low laugh, pink ankles above the swan's down trimming of high-heeled slippers; but the night raved on, and she did not come, and when next, in the course of a general ramble in the mountains, I told her of my waiting, she clasped her hands in dismay -- and at once with a rapid glance estimated whether the back of gesticulating Ferd and his friend had sufficiently receded.’

OR,

‘for I did not yet know that had I said a word it would have changed at once into a wonderful sunburst of kindness, a cheerful, compassionate attitude with all possible cooperation, as if woman’s love were spring water containing salubrious salts which at the least notice she ever so willingly gave anyone to drink’.

I can’t look at the word ‘compassionate’ anymore without analysing it. With passion.

turns out

that i do want to know about his decisions
and i do want to know everything
and i don't care about the impossible
and sometimes doing stuff which in itself ought to be made pointless by the very freedom it indicates, because it's conscious of that freedom and so is by its awareness making it obselete - YEAH doing that, sometimes, makes sense anyway. even through the cliched kisses. i'm still lost in your eyes, not looking away. teeth have stopeed chattering.

WHAT

I want to know the crazy lines
echoes of horizon
glowing through the differentiates
colours freaking out in hedgehog dances
don't tell me
make me know
you didn't have second thoughts about cigaretttes
ettes
etes
etty
et
et al

lost lost lost lost
forgotten remembered dreams
geography padding through my unconscious
geology underlying all movements

swimming in the sea was amazing. remind me to simply strip and jump in - it works. I'm glad I thought to take off my dress first though
even if my bra decided that it had sponge like qualities and could hold vast amounts of water
even if I left you in there
even if I left the tenner in the bottle in there
even if when swimming I became conscious that my arm's curved echo of the sun, brown against the sky and the pinks and the blues and the sea and the seaweed, all of it, even ifI was aware of that
it doesn't matter
because I cared more about being in there, and ducking under the waves, and floating like driftwood, or like cupped leaves of thoughts on the surface
I cared about that more
so it was fine
and even if the only fire I have comes out of a green lighter
thank god it's yellow fire, eh?
yellow. we all know that symbolism. entwine that with life, dammit.
leather or denim?
i wonder why it is i don't want to become something new, i just do it
tomorrow, i'll make sock puppets

let me borrow your wooden smile

LONGEST DAY OF THE YEAR AND I HAD THE LONGEST FUCKING EXAM OF THE YEAR AND NOW I HAVE NOTHING TO DO EXCEPT WANDER AROUND READING POETRY. THAT OR REVISE.

Restoring fevers to the blueberry-bright pupils -
It's wonderful, you see, how multitudes meet.
Under squished-fly eyelids, my reflection floats
like tadpoles, within the double visionary
longing, falling away in echoes down scree slopes
of looks, sleeplessness, illness, love, eyes' own pain
with tongues as touchstones in my plot-driven hunt

horizons are set like gumshields around us
gloriously entangled in the painful rounded
cup-creamy calves, heavy with walking,
but under my fingertips, bumpy and absurd,
treetops heave between terracotta rooftops
chipping away in flung flakes, heath
ringing stunned spirals... don't tell me
that lips sticking dry to teeth is emotion.


RIGHT NOW
i know
...
that wasn't about what it sounds like it was about.

see the exact colour of my blood

treasure hunt party. Cake: treasure chest. Made of: chocolate cake and icing and sweets and digestives all crumbled up to look like sand. Treasure hunt: taking 15 small and sugar-filled kids on a trek around school. The clues are hilariously complicated.

I'm being haunted by the name Dalrymple. Possibly because it's one of the few names I can remember for any amount of time.

Last night: terror and amusement. Walking down a road in the dark getting accosted by professionals. My umpa bumpa jumpa is all full of holes.

Battling with ideas again.

I’m assuming that no one is referring to me unless my names mentioned. Because why would anyone want to talk about me?

I wish my phones would work properly. But now they really don't.

1. Lots of questions about you.
2. Why do I care what anyone thinks?
3. If I don’t care, why am I here?
4. I’m going to cut this out.
5. Maybe somebody’s right
6. I’min the wrong
7. I’m not going to lie.
8. I don’t know that it would matter if I did
9. I won’t be dependent.
10. I need to stop dramatising things
11. I need to prioritise (bit late now. I’m screwed for exams. But we’ve heard enough of that.)
12. I need to organise myself (I always do.)
13. I do care.
14. Do I wish I didn’t?
15. I don’t know very much
16. I need to get better at recognising when I’ve been proven wrong in an argument.
17. I wonder why I don’t have so many personality crisis-es any more
18. I need to concentrate
19. It makes me laugh how frustrated other people get when they explore themselves. They say, ‘hey, you’ve made me sound like a sap now’. All I did was channel your thoughts. What they’ve landed on is your business. And anyway I’m not sure if I did anything anyway. I’m always vaguely surprised when I’m accused of helping people in their journey towards self knowledge.
20. If you don’t like who you are, or what you’ve found yourself thinking about who you are, change it. You can be who your actions make you. Don’t ignore it.
21. Speaking of ignoring, I’ve got all of that history out in the open and now it’s sitting there like a black lump and I’m going to have to work out if I need to do anything about it. Which I don’t.
22. I don’t like how much I like you. *

*Yes I’m using the typical switching ‘you’ thing. It’s a pretty amusing technique. Today, I’m miserable and slightly angry at myself. So don’t even start.

Foregone conclusions of a monochrome maniac

‘The greatest enemy of clear language is insincerity’ so if I can’t understand you, that’s because you don’t mean it.

When you use clichés your brain goes into automatic. You’re not even trying to express yourself; you’re letting language slop indolently rather than pinpointing your real thoughts. So stop it, don’t you dare avoid putting yourself into what you say. If you’re not bothering to use your own ways of expressing yourself, then you might as well stay quiet. It’s like you’re taking a bunch of old frames and hanging them empty on the wall – there’s not really any input from you, except in where they’re hung. Go fill in your frames.

Having said that, I’m now going to steal a whole load of other people’s words, because they’re lovely.

I really am so incredibly annoying. Me and my nervous laugh.

POEM: THE ENVOY OF MR COGITO

Go where those others went to the dark boundary
for the golden fleece of nothingness your last prize

go upright among those who are on their knees
among those with their backs turned and those toppled in the dust

you were saved not in order to live
you have little time you must give testimony

be courageous when the mind deceives you be courageous
in the final account only this is important

and let your helpless Anger be like the sea
whenever you hear the voice of the insulted and beaten

let your sister Scorn not leave you
for the informers executioners cowards—they will win
they will go to your funeral and with relief will throw a lump of earth
the woodborer will write your smoothed-over biography

and do not forgive truly it is not in your power
to forgive in the name of those betrayed at dawn

beware however of unnecessary pride
keep looking at your clown’s face in the mirror
repeat: I was called—weren’t there better ones than I

beware of dryness of heart love the morning spring
the bird with an unknown name the winter oak

light on a wall the splendour of the sky
they don’t need your warm breath
they are there to say: no one will console you

be vigilant—when the light on the mountains gives the sign—arise and go
as long as blood turns in the breast your dark star

repeat old incantations of humanity fables and legends
because this is how you will attain the good you will not attain
repeat great words repeat them stubbornly
like those crossing the desert who perished in the sand

and they will reward you with what they have at hand
with the whip of laughter with murder on a garbage heap

go because only in this way will you be admitted to the company of cold skulls
to the company of your ancestors: Gilgamesh Hector Roland
the defenders of the kingdom without limit and the city of ashes

Be faithful Go


Zbigniew Herbert

Obviously that’s been translated. As he’s Polish and stuff. But still, he gets right to the essence of it all, ‘go upright’. There’s some great lines, lines which make something inside me tense and pounce on emotion... ‘keep looking at your clowns face in the mirror’. Obviously he was writing in a time when literature was being repressed, under both the Nazi and then the Soviet regimes, in face most things were – hence lines like ‘repeat them stubbornly’. This brings into question something I’ve long wondered about – in fact I’ve written papers on it – that in order for art to truly flourish, to have something it really needs to say, it needs some attempt at suppression or censorship. The way Mr Herbert writes, it’s like he’s whispering the truth, and a vibrant truth at that, through the monochromic yelling of the world.

"In Poland," Herbert once stated, "we think of the poet as prophet; he is not merely a maker of verbal forms or an imitator of reality. The poet expresses the deepest feelings and the widest awareness of people. . . . The language of poetry differs from the language of politics. And, after all, poetry lives longer than any conceivable political crisis. The poet looks over a broad terrain and over vast stretches of time. He makes observations on the problems of his own time, to be sure, but he is a partisan only in the sense that he is a partisan of the truth. He arouses doubts and uncertainties and brings everything into question."

But then he also brings into question the extent of poetry’s influence; "It is vanity to think that one can influence the course of history by writing poetry. It is not the barometer that changes the weather."


Here’s some songs which have been in my head:

To be alone with you – Bob Dylan
(that plays in my head far too much. It’s half sweet and half a little annoying.)

Grey – Ani difrano
reminds me of... lots of people. Firstly she’s pretty good at word pictures, for a lyricist. Then, the tiny dreams are awesome I utterly can relate to that, in fact what’s nice about most of it is how easily applicable it all is. In some ways. Obviously not really to me now, but to other people and maybe a little to who I have been.
‘the sky is grey, the sand is grey, and the ocean is grey.
i feel right at home in this stunning monochrome, alone in my way.
i smoke and i drink and every time i blink i have a tiny dream.
but as bad as i am i'm proud of the fact that i'm worse than i seem.
you walk through my walls like a ghost on tv.
you penetrate me and my little pink heart is on its little brown raft floating out to sea.
and what can i say but i'm wired this way and you're wired to me,
and what can i do but wallow in you unintentionally?
what kind of paradise am i looking for?
i've got everything i want and still i want more.
maybe some tiny shiny key will wash up on the shore.
regretfully, i guess i've got three simple things to say.
why me? why this now? why this way?’

Well it’s true that we love one another – The White Stripes

this could be because the lyrics go:
'Jack will you call me if you're able?
I got your phone number written
In the back of my bible
Jack I think you’re pulling my leg
And I think maybe I better ask Meg
Meg do you think Jack really loves me?
You know, I don't care because
Jack really bugs me'

Amusement...

Who me? Clichéd? WHAT?

1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house
4. Be in love with yr life
5. Something that you feel will find its own form
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time
15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
19. Accept loss forever
20. Believe in the holy contour of life
21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
22. Don't think of words when you stop but to see picture better
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
29. You're a Genius all the time
30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

O KEROUAC WHY ARE YOU SO AMAZING
i had the twenty ninth of these told to me every morning for a week once.


go look at this: http://beatradio.blogspot.com/
pretty good song on monday 7th june, under the picture, called evangeline. EPIC lyrics.

you shook me out of revision mode

The sky flopped open, exposing the gold heart in a fluffy grin, licking the walls in an amber buzz of something which was thicker than light. We watched how the sky was purple or white, even when it was pretending to be grey. I was waiting for thunder, and no matter how many times I read about the fearsome absence of thought I couldn’t place the concept anywhere but where it was most comforting. So I let that go and saw how we all linked hands and ran together through meadows of cyberspace.

But out in reality they’ve been cutting the grass, thick green death filling my head dozy and bright. I learnt that time doesn’t have to move fast or slow it just has to move, and I remembered your plans for midsummer, and I wondered when midsummer was, and the scene in The Great Gatsby where they claim to miss it every year, and the insolence of humanity in the face of the seasons and the rhythms. Convenience, ignoring nature, forcing things one way or the other – ‘they are already come’. Revision is in my head like the music, which is perfect.

Song for the day is Frightened Rabbit’s Keep Yourself Warm. Its lyrics don't pertain to me at all. But it's a beautiful song anyway.
‘You won't find love in a, won't find love in a hole.
It takes more than fucking someone to keep yourself warm-
SEE in the dark!
Can you see the look in your face?
The flashing white light's been turned off
You don't know, know who's in your bed.’

I met one of the kind of people I simply cannot to relate to (at least, at first) today. I live in hope that once he’s been in my company a couple of times I’ll be able to say things and not have this nervous laugh, and not sound like a complete idiot, not be so embarrassing that I feel sorry that my friend’s introduced me as her friend because he’s not going to be impressed with her friend choice if I’m a representative sample. And then he might feel insulted that he’s her friend. And then I’d have insulted someone simply by being the strange person I am. But whenever I meet those kinds of people, it requires such will power to see them ever again. Why am I scared? It’s clearly them being shy or something. MAN UP, me. Then again, why do I need to incorporate him into my life? There is a reason – he’s Maya’s boyfriend. Thus, not only must he be worthy but he must also be interesting. I think my logic may be flawed. I don’t regret it, though.

Does one need to believe in things to be able to relate to them? I guess even if you don’t believe in the real world it’ll still be there and be annoying you, in reality that idea of mine just fell through. You don’t have to believe in an oncoming car to get hit by it. But, in order to step out of the way, do you? I don’t know.

swallowing glass just to stay pure

you know when you have a cd player and it gets stuck and goes funny and then you hit it and it starts again?

birth is an invasion of privacy.

am i asking too much?

Infuriation seems to be something I can't feel properly any more. If I get angry with someone, the anger just becomes me being angry with me.

ANI DIFRANCO:
'generally my generation wouldn't be caught dead working for The Man, and generally I agree with them... the trouble is you've got to have yourself an alternate plan.'

I'm in such a strange place right now. I haven't written properly for a while. It's like I've been denying a part of myself. Last night, having had epic discussion times with Alice and Maya, all I wanted to do was go write pages and pages of creations which could have nothing to do with me at all. I can feel this build up of need to create. I hope it’s not something I’ll lose, I need to be able to write after exams are over with. I wonder whether how I interact with people changes with how much I write. Who will you like better, the me who is writing writing writing down the screaming existence’s ideas of the world which is all I have to examine or the me who is inundated with the thoughts which fit through hoops?

Are my thoughts mine as an individuals or mine as an age of humanity?

All I am is an empirically provable existence in which all humanity meets. Same as you.



We let the tadpoles out today. That’s earlier than usual, if you’re wondering. We usually wait until they turn into mini frogs. But then they sometimes get a bit scary in that you’re not sure if they’re going to jump out onto you. The water in the pond was writhing with their little black bodies and I reassured my sister that we’d probably given them a selective advantage over the others due to their superior food (we gave them fish flakes and boiled lettuce. No tadpoles have ever been this loved. Due to the fact that we can’t afford real pets). But I’m not sure about this. Maybe our tadpoles won’t have such good foraging abilities because they haven’t had to develop them! Maybe our tadpoles will not bother to madly search for food because they’ll assume it’ll be delivered to them like take out pizza!

rushing rushing rushing

Well.

The wind was blowing the trees’ leaves in great strands across their bodies like hair across faces. I got the same feeling that you get when you see that on someone you’re close to, when you want to soothe their hair back out of their face. The backs of the leaves are so different from their tops. Branches can seem so sturdy until the wind tugs at them. The long grass with the white star flowers in it looked almost purple, half in ripeness, half because all the seed head bits were blown sideways and showing their colour, I suppose, although the effect was that the usual abundance of green was replaced with purpley silverness in swathes across the fields. I took my shoes off and walked with my toes feeling the blades of grass slippery and damp under them.

I love noticing the brilliance of the world. The details which I can’t see unless I put on my ridiculous glasses. I need the foolishness of the artifice to recognise the beauty of nature. It’s like poetry – however hard you try to describe the absolute purity of it all, you’re describing it and thus imposing a false structure onto it. And so it is with me. I cannot function on that ‘great and mysterious’ scale without ‘worrying about who I am’, and the other way around. In fact, the greatness of the world only inspires me to more fully explore humanity. I’ve been trying to put this into words for years – but perhaps my actions show it better. The subjects I do: Biology and Geography (the ways of the world), English and Religious studies (the human interpretation, the human condition and so on).

Am I hiding? I don’t think so. I am terrified, of course, at every second, every moment. But I’d rather think I leap into all this fearsome business anyway. Don’t know what I think I’m doing even getting out of bed in the morning otherwise. My mother just came in. I checked. I've always been this wierd. Unless a very small child can make a pretence at eccentricity, this is me.

This is fun. Okay. I don’t want to say, ‘when you’ve seen as much of the world as I have’ but I have travelled, I have tried different cultures, I have done all that. And the one thing I’ve gleaned, which I really appreciate and realise fully that it needs those experiences to properly comprehend, is that it is my interpretation, and the way other humans act and are treated in these places which is truly fascinating. In the Andes, I was amazed at how the mountains had been formed, charmed by the wild life, struck silent by the sunrise over the great curving rim of the world BUT the reason I’d like to return one day is the beauty of the humanity there, and the culture of humanity there, and the cultures which have existed there. And all of these are interesting precisely because of where I fit, how I relate to them.

I don’t feel guilty at all. Nemesis is a bit extreme, I feel, but that's only on my side. I probably have entirely skipped out the main issues, or got it all wrong. For me, that's okay.

My newest Joanna Newsom CD came today. Squeaked around for ages I was that excited. Played it on my little sister's cd player and danced around to it and she at first told me I danced like a tree and then when I was really leaping around madly she gave me that look and said, 'o-kaaaay'. She's only seven. This made me feel sad and then my ankle started hurting so I just sat and used my entire self to listen with. As my itunes on my computer’s fucked I can’t put it on my ipod but it was fun to listen to anyway. However, song for the day is her Cosmia.

'Can you hear me, will you listen milkymoon
Don't go near me, don't go missing
In the lissome light of evenin'
Help me, cosmia - i'm grievin'
Dry rose petals, red round circles
Frame your eyes, and stain your knuckles'

yellow birds and eternal looks

Hesse has made my life slightly more complete and understandable. Finished it faster than I've finished a book in a while - considering I could only read it after 10pm, I'm reasonably reassured that I can read fast enough to deal with university.

I wrote a load of Demian inspired stuff but I’ll edit that and decide what to do with it later because this post is for Alice to see the bit about her. I’d been discussing life’s meaning la la la and then...

Do you think that one can get to know someone so well you can think of any question and know what they would say in response without needing to see them? Alice is probably the person with whom I have had the most sustained contact, in my entire life, excluding my family. I have seen her practically daily, throughout the day, for months on end, most of the last eight years of my life. We now often respond in the same way or can predict the other’s opinion or response. But there is still so much more to learn – we wasted time fighting or simply not talking about the right stuff. Got distracted by growing up, or whatever it is we were doing between the ages of ten and eighteen. If in the future I feel this fond of a partner I’ve been with for eight years, I will be content. Much to celebrate, a little to regret, much love (here Alice shies away, yelling, platonic!), and much to learn.

If she leaves me, ever, I will follow her and bring her back. She's got a leash of about 3 months.

i could step off into the water

but i've got shit to do, and an exam on friday.

I walk past the man at the desk and he looks at the swish of my legs and I wonder who it is that these eyes see. Eyes, eyes which are hidden between falsity and powder, not my eyes, not theirs, but eyes which are created. Belonging to no one.

Who is it that you love? I don’t know I don’t I don’t I don’t or perhaps I do. If you claim it’s so close to hatred, then I do too. Sometimes I swear I can feel someone next to me on the bed. It’s all a matter of keeping my eyes closed and ignoring the pain resting snug beneath my diaphragm.

There’s a room in my school, and I’ve locked myself in it to think. It’s quiet here (so loud in here). Let’s not be shy about this.

Okay. Some answers for you:

What is want? It’s something which chokes you and throws you into flutter breath tears, unrequited, the realisation that tears can strangle you up.
Why even try? Because there is never an end, nothing can be finished.
Why wish for anything? Because once upon a time we were moonshine.
Isn’t that a language game? Only if you’re lucky. You’re looking at the body of the language and not it’s soul – stop concentrating on the shapes and realise that sounds are effects, and maybe someday work out some meanings...

To that same person, I keep meaning to step out of the idea you carry of me and into a reality for you, but it’s going to take some doing to work out how to do that. But I've got an idea of an email I owe you.

Sorry I am.

Song for today: Devendra Banhart's Inaniel. Or maybe his Cripple Crow. Something to sink into.

My heart was never pure

Let me stain your hands.

How much can one think in one day? Turns out that ‘doing revision’ actually means drawing stars on your ankles, reading the living brain and listening to unprecedented amounts of music. And then stealing lines from the music because they are incredibly awesome, and trying to make them mine. Obviously that doesn’t quite really work. But it was fun.

Jesus, why is the girl next door so gorgeous? It makes me realise that clothes aren’t just for laughing at. And I don’t need to be reminded of that so often.

Go ahead. Ask me if I care, I’ve got the answer here somewhere... somewhere in my bag, let me look for it... maybe I dropped it back there? But hey look I’ve got whiskey here, will that do?

Woopsies.

Wednesday night:

Sat at the kitchen table thinking about the matrix, the sound of my teeth closing for each bite echoing in my head, slightly masked by a dull buzzing, oh my god, sometimes the sound of my life is so hard in my ears. Dull thud of others movements it’s not just ringing in my ears it’s the fridge buzzing.

-I’m scared you’re going to set the house on fire.
-I’m not doing anything involving fire.

She moves off, chanting, no fire, no fire, okay, no fire.

The cupcake in the microwave has been in there for so much longer than it needed to be but it shouldn’t be allowed to be called a mini cupcake, more a fragment of chocolate based fluff. It burns my tongue, right at the end. Molten chocolate sizzles away at the pink tip. Num tongue. Who thought of pineapple and guava as a drink?

Why am I the one doing these things? Do these actions have anything to do with me I don’t really want either thing, drink or chocolaty hydrogenate fake fragment of cake. Fucking cake, who thought of that, huh? Yeah it’s making mad. I want something on another order of things. And also, I don’t really want any of the available options. I don’t know. Someday I’ll crave all of them. Someday I’ll learn to keep my big mouth shut. Oh wait, maybe sometimes I have. I don’t always want to be who my actions make me be.

Sometimes in some ways but there’s no replacement not even in that chill I had when you looked at me. Dismissive? Recognition? Of me? Of my actions? Of my sins? For all that the preacher can knock me down sure as hell. Last night all those plus signs bobbing through my dreams. Didn’t know a glance could make me hate myself.

Don’t fuck around with me mr.

O god my sister’s playing Imagine again. Music... song for the day: Winter Winds by Mumford & Sons.

Anyway, what I was saying, about me and the dear old necrophilia-bestiality reverend sir is that he isn’t what I want to talk about, what I want to talk about is that glance and so on. That’s where I was, before the music hotwired my brain (my brian, good lord), and do I tell you? You, I think, would tell me. Bust is this reciprocal? What is anything, if not. And do I hate, abhor, detest it when I’m held in that balance?

Whatever I claimed before, I wanted that drink.

I never wanted the cupcake.

Why is life not like food choices?

Let me scribe from your head again sometime, it’s fun.

Every day I wake up with pearls imbedded in my skin. What a pretty corpse!

Okay, it’s true, I was caught trying to love someone again.

GURANTEED
‘On bended knee is no way to be free
lifting up an empty cup I ask silently
that all my destinations will accept the one that's me
so I can breath

Circles they grow and they swallow people whole
half their lives they say goodnight to wive's they'll never know
got a mind full of questions and a teacher in my soul
so it goes...

Don't come closer or I'll have to go
Holding me like gravity are places that pull
If ever there was someone to keep me at home
It would be you...

Everyone I come across in cages they bought
they think of me and my wandering
but I'm never what they thought
got my indignation but I'm pure in all my thoughts
I'm alive...

Wind in my hair, I feel part of everywhere
underneath my being is a road that disappeared
late at night I hear the trees
they're singing with the dead
overhead...

Leave it to me as I find a way to be
consider me a satelite for ever orbiting
I knew all the rules but the rules did not know me
guaranteed...’

you made me feel mad.

I’m determined not to do the failtard thing anymore. not that makes a difference. I shouldn't be judging other people's failtardness because I’ve managed to muck stuff up before and I probably will again, but some things can only be bad. And that's one of them. Not that I really know if that's happened. What were you thinking? What are you thinking? How can either of you think that that is right? Have I affected the situation? Is there any way, any way at all that I can help? Probably not it's nothing to do with me. I can only think in terms of what I know though and what I know happens to be stored in my mind, mostly, so it does come out with a large helping of me and my thoughts and attempts dolloped on.

Sitting amongst some reeds I thought about silence and speech. so many thoughts and sometimes, pretty rarely, I manage not to say all of them straight out. Lying on library floors. Sliding across busses. Thinking that when I leave I will immerse myself in words.

I wrote back.

Scherzo

Every time I make a decision I can’t tell what the consequences are, and I have come a full circle back to sitting inside my head watching the outside world go round and round. Like sitting in a washing machine looking out through the round little window. I would be an awesome washing machine troll, sitting invisible in the coin laundry stealing buttons, making decorations of them to hang around me like seaweed.

I made some great decisions yesterday and promptly ignored what I’d need to do for those to work and continued existing the same as ever. Ah, morals, wherefore hath thou forsaken me? I wish I could wash all this grit away.

I have no song for the day. I'm still on Xavier Rudd. He is a glorious man. I can't find the song where he almost weeps 'I'm so, so, sorry' but it's in my head. When I went to see him he had three didgeridoos and a chest which clearly hid a huge diaphragm because to be able to sing with that much emotion and also play didgeridoo with circular breathing (!!!!!) AND then switch right onto harmonica, and do all of these thing almost at the same time... yeah he makes me happy. And not only these things but also dancing around like an imp of joy and bowing and speaking words of wisdom and gently mocking the universe...

Goodness I feel like people have been actually directing ideas at me through blogs. Pretty sure I was mentioned in three, at least. Which made me wonder if the reason we right blogs is to communicate without blame. You can’t blame someone for what they say if you choose to interpret their blog as being about you because hey, you could be wrong, it could just be you being self centred and presuming the world revolves around your insignificant life. Or at least that’s what I tell myself about the whole caboodle.

Wow, spell check automatically corrected caboodle (no k. Huh.). I didn’t even know it was a word. Apparently it comes from the phrase, ‘the whole kit and caboodle’; this indicates that that phrase didn’t just appear out of my mother’s head. Caboodle is an archaic word for... stuff. A group. A collection. Sometimes of people. Me and my caboodle are going to go hang. I like it.

I’m in a flippant mood. It’s awful. I just cannot take myself seriously. If people choose to take this joke of a person as if she means anything then they are very very silly. I’m made for standing on my head not for Romeo.

On to finer topics.

You, okay yeah I’m an awful person.

You, okay yeah I shouldn’t let you think I don’t know what I think. I am terribly, terribly sorry. You’re right.

I always thought I couldn’t understand why people did what they did to me. Surely they knew they were doing wrong. I didn’t know that sometimes that’s inescapable. That sometimes the law of double effect is something I enact. I’m on a learning curve. Katie tells me she’s never seen anyone destruct stuff with the lack of knowledge I do. Like I’m so naive that I can’t be held to blame. Nice of her, but blame is not something one can escape when one deserves it.

What I really wanted to say about myself with that bluebell simile, which was cruel to bluebells because they are lovely serious things and should not be likened to a scherzo like me is that although I mainly rise like a flame my mind is always drawing me back down to earth. See Kundera for serious thoughts on this.

I really enjoyed sitting cross legged on a stepping stone full of wine talking on the phone under the stars at midnight last night. I’m glad my school turns off their street lights at 11, even if it has been a cause for alarm in the past.

Things weren't meant to turn out this way.

That was supposed to go differently.

I feel like I'm wearing a blindfold.

Bluebells hang their heads in shame

but they still reach for the heights.

I’ve been in shock over the killings in Cumbria all day. There’s no reason, except that my brain said, I think I understand that, when I heard it. I’ve probably got it all wrong – but in my head, I can see why he did it. Things can feel so out of control. Like there’s nothing I can do about any of it. It would take something new, something strong, to make a person break out like that, but... I guess it was the suicide at the end which made me kind of feel I understand. Something which feels kind of ill inside me nodded and agreed and wished there was something I could do.

And then I realised what a cliché I really am. Even an emotion in me which shocks me has already been felt. Take Bob Dylan. He said:

‘I'll stand up and to get uncompromisable about it, which I have to be to be honest, I just got to be, as I got to admit that the man who shot President Kennedy, Lee Oswald, I don't know exactly where —what he thought he was doing, but I got to admit honestly that I too - I saw some of myself in him. I don't think it would have gone - I don't think it could go that far. But I got to stand up and say I saw things that he felt, in me - not to go that far and shoot.’

It’s got to be kidding. I really am just an echo. That’s from a great speech though. Dylan sometimes knew some things, but I’m not sure if he really felt any of it.

Song of the day: Xavier Rudd’s ‘Messages’. Amazing rhythms. Brings some peace into my mind. ‘you know some people they just don’t understand these things’ ... I just need to work out which ones are the people who are doing the not understanding. I think maybe that indicates it’s me.

Which needs it, given the nightmares which have been throwing themselves around. I’ve never had nightmares like these, far back as I can remember. They’re filled with creatures, with claws and huge eyes and they fill up everything and everywhere.

Last night was the worst.

Someone gave me a look which I can only describe as chilling. It made me feel like the back of my neck had frozen with fear and I didn’t even know that could happen. I was terrified. A look like everything inside me was ill and rotted and wrong. That look, from someone I know, or trust, or something. I’m sure they didn’t notice it. I didn’t know they could make me feel like that. If the look was true, I didn’t know I made them feel like that.

I finished The Go-Between by L P Hartley the other day. Who did I identify with? The water carrier? The messenger? Virgo, Aquilifer, Sagittarius. None of them, really, although Leo or Marian are perhaps the easiest to understand, for me, perhaps because they’re the two who are most convincingly portrayed. I don’t understand what Marian thinks she’s doing. I wish I understood myself.

Finally, I want you to know that when I see you, it’s like a light in all this.