I feel like I've somehow changed planets to one with less gravity.

there goes 2010

I LOVED IT.

I hated chunks of it.



New Year's Eve last year, where was I? Wimborne... I hadn't thought I was going to do anything, and then someone demanded my presence in a random house belonging to strangers in Wimborne, so that's where I ended up. It was a good night, running along the road kissing Andy and holding hands with him and Jack. Very strange that that was the beginning of the year.

I didn't know Maya yet - hadn't been to her wonderful house in Cornwall with the scary puppy and the brandy and watching Xavier Rudd and Ben Howard, and then driving the boat around the harbour. And then cooking everyone dinner, drinking too much and smoking weed. I hadn't even heard of Hop Farm Festival, wouldn't have dreamed I'd have seen Bob Dylan by the end of the year. Hadn't fallen completely for Ani Difranco, yet, I think. Had hardly heard of Johnny Flynn, let alone imagined I'd have spoken to him within a year.

I didn't know Jack really. Didn't think of myself as someone who could 'do' relationships. Could never take myself seriously in that way (and still can't). Didn't think I'd be leaping into the ocean on summer solstice in my underwear, being followed by him. Didn't know how much alcohol I'd be consuming this year. Hadn't had sex yet. Hadn't been simulateneously desperate to be near someone and determined to not be. Hadn't had tonsillitus yet.

I already knew how to play the Nigun Concerto, but I hadn't played it with the orchestra yet. Violin was a much bigger part of my life than it is now, as were piano and singing.

I still lived in Dorset, had lived there for almost eight years, was antsy to get out of there but loving how well I knew it all. I hadn't been to: Yellowstone (snow), Yosemite (bears), Nevada, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, The Great Salt Lake (dawn), Salt Lake City (Mormon messing) and LA (got threatened by guy straight out of jail). I had been to Solana beach (sun), San Francisco (multiple walking tours), Berkeley (frozen yogurt) - but I was going to visit them all again, differently. I didn't know the full meaning of The Green Tortoise.

I had never dyed my hair, but had long had an ambition to dye it blue, which I would finally realise in the summer. Got to do that again. I started smoking. I quit a couple of times, and then properly when I got ill.

I was still in school, didn't know I'd be at Exeter the next year, didn't know I'd have a wonderful flat and know so many people, didn't know I'd be the kind of student in my first term who pulls all nighters, always offers guests whisky and whose room is always a tip to be picked through for treasures like tea cups.

And there's still a few days left.

New Years Eve, I ought to be in Cardiff, drunk in pubs, bars, and finally clubs... with the crazy girls I know from Exeter. It'll be messy, hilarious, someone will probably cry, jess and nancy will probably get on each other, I'll look pale and yellow in the reflections in the mirror, my eyes and lips crudely drawn as if I'm one of those paper men, stretched out, unfolded...

So.

What about next year?

So many hopes. To see Ani Difranco, which ought to happen as there are tickets, and things. I hope to get a job in California over the summer, but if it doesn't happen, I hope to travel around England, to get a job in England, to go to music festivals in England. And then I'm going to be in the states for university, next year. How odd.

I want to get better at country/folk fiddle, like the guy in the mountain firework company's recordings. I'd like to write more, too. To do more drugs, but smoke less. Comfort eat less. Spend less. Steal more. Maybe limit the alcohol intake, a bit, maybe less than 1000 units a term...

I want to be healthier. As in, not ill.

I want to visit Plymouth and Oxford.

And find a more comfortable bed.

i can't stand to see you bleed

The Wrote & The Writ
Johnny Flynn

They're taking pictures of the man from God
I hope his cassock's clean
The burden of being our holy fellas
Your halo'd better gleam, better gleam

What of all those wayward priests?
The ones who like to drink
Do you suppose they'd swap their blood for wine
Like you swapped yours for ink, for ink

You wrote me oh so many letters
And all of them seemed true
Promises look good on paper
Especially from you, from you

The weight of all those willing words
I carried all alone
You wouldn't put your pen to bed
When we hadn't found our own, our own

Your sentences rose high at night
And circled round my head
The circle's since been broken
Like the priest before me is breaking bread

I'm being asked to drink the blood of Christ
And soon I'll eat his flesh
I'm alone again before the altar
Shedding all my old regrets

The last of which I'll tell you now
As it flies down the sink
I never knew a part of you
You didn't set in ink, in ink

The letters that you left behind
No longer shall I read
Your blood's between the pages
And I can't stand to see you bleed

And I'll soon forget what was never there
Your words are ash and dust
All that's left is the song I've sung
The breath I've taken and the one I must

If you're born with a love for the wrote and the writ
People of letters your warning stands clear
Pay heed to your heart and not to your wit
Don't say in a letter what you can't in my ear

My sisters and parents invaded my room to wake me up today. I hate that, and it reminded me why I'm so pleased I'm at Exeter for my birthday. The stocking had the predicible joys of socks and tights and chocolate and strange facewashes and things which it always brings, minus the odd japanese fan which it had taken to carrying until this year. Church was mostly empty, a plain, pale, simply decorated and quite beautiful room in which a few large families of curious people huddled, and a few lonely elderly people dotted the pews. The preacher was obsessed with opening presents. We sang the hyms which I quite like from Christmas, except at the moment I can't sing. Christmas lunch was as expected. The walk became a sledging experience. The presents included a colourful watch which I shall treasure, an Ejyptian bag I rather like and some speakers which I needed.

I bought my seven year old sister a camera with my other sister and she loves it. She's been making movies which make me realise how much we ignore her, and taking photos which are unique as from her viewpoint. I'm overjoyed with having bought her it. Holly's glad I gave her Vogue, when really I only bought it to have something to hide behind whilst travelling (although I could, in the end, not bear to do that as it's too awful for words. Call it a magazine? It's just repetative photos. The ones without people in are okay, but the blank eyes, medical mouths and slim noses are horrible).

I need to book what I'm doing in Cardiff. Fuck. I need to get my reference from a seminar leader. I need to write a personal statement about why I want to go to America. I need to read a load of books. I need to see so many people, if they let me. I need to do things. I have such an easy excuse not to do anything today that it makes me realise how much I need to do.

Ask, tell.

I have to climb hills to find a sky where the horizons can hold me I am too used to other skies which stretch forever a lungful of stars sprayed across them and me warm and confused under them.

I go stir-crazy under these little ones, where you only see a noughts and crosses board’s worth of cloud, full like an eye before crying. The judgement passed by these skies is so different. Just looking at these closed covers I feel repressed. Pressed. Depressed. Is it just in my mind or is what we need a sunny sunny day?

Song for yesterday http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qz-FoGp3p0s, Laura Marling’s voice is amazing. I miss having my real speaking voice. I wonder how much a voice defines a person. Phone calls, voice recognition, programs in which the voice is used, technology stuff. A definable voice to define what you want, what you think, who you are.

Christmas Eve of all days. How amusing. I’m not getting confused. I got upset, which was unfair of me. Let me teach the world that when she writes 'I feel so alone' she means that she needs to be comforted before she goes crazy. Reading a blog from a woman claiming to be 60% straight and there it is again. Loneliness. Reading a blog from a girl who sits in parties staring at candles and again - solitude, negativity. The idea that the world is 'out there', judging. Are we incredibly childish to write these things down? Do they mean what they write, am I the only one who takes a teeny vial of emotion from a billion raging torrents and examines it until it could fool someone into believing that was all I was thinking?

I am thinking about the different bedrooms I have slept in in my life. I am remembering sharing a room with my brother. I remember him insisting the door was closed 'don't leave the door open lassy' and the fear that brought with it. I remember the feeling of the carpet burning my stomach as we lay on the floor to put our beanie babies and assorted other toys into battle formations. My brother used to make up intricate games, use dice to decide who won. He was a chess player, nothing if not logical.

Someone on tv said he played chess to help him win in his sport. Lots of decision making. I tried playing chess against the computer, too ashamed to try against a human as I don't know the rules. I lost very quickly.

When I have Fears that I may Cease to Be


When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love;--then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.
- Keats

Man On Train Comments On Tweed

Let's be honest, I spotted him getting on the train with a tandem and ran down the train to be in his carriage. Hauling the super heavy suitcase and various random bags, including the slightly horrific leather backpack. Find myself walking past him, looking at the available seats, trying to find one big enough for me and my bag. This started out as a pretence to be near him, and turned slightly urgent as the train started moving and the seats were too close together to fit the suitcase in with me next to it.

Then, OH GOD HE SPEAKS, 'Is that tweed?'

I turn to look at him. He has big soft dark eyes, dark hair with a hat, looks to be mid-twenties, a big scarf and then dark clothes. I'm going gooey chatting about how I found my coat in the attic. Who knows where the thing actually came from, it really just appeared in my life (heh at a key moment but shush that's only if you've been following carefully), but that's almost stranger than the idea of it appearing in an attic. I sit far from him but he keeps talking so I move to sit opposite him. It's a little awkwarder than I'd expected, because the seats are all so close together. Old fashioned trains on little used lines, the petite style of transport.

He's a teacher. I give up on allure at this point. He did philosophy at Kings college london, now teaches RE and history at a pretty ordinary high school in kent where the kids tease him for his brick of a phone (we compare phones, mine's worse, of course). I tell him my usual things. He likes Hume. He used to ride his tandem bike with his ex girlfriend (he gives me a look here, like he's putting the ex bit in so that I can hear it, totally my own interpretation there but HEY I LIKE IT).

We talk the whole journey til I'm surprised by the end of it. I make the mistake of voicing that surprise, so he's like, oh it was the good company, and leaps up to grab his tandem. Off the train, he says it was nice to talk. HE LIVES IN NEWBURY. HE ENDS UP AT THE SNOOTY FOX AFTER NIGHTS OUT IN NEWBURY. he told me the name of the road he lives on but I've forgotten it. He likes dubstep and post-rock, but he knew about Hop Farm.

Can I marry him now please.

When I was waiting for my mom to pick me up and he'd left an alright guy tried to talk to me but my mom pulled up at that moment. That made me laugh. Have I got more attractive or am I obviously all for free love or are there more desperate guys around Newbury than one would normally expect? And also, no one could top the teacher on the tandem. Going to walk around Newbury with binoculars looking for tandems.

And my mom just came in and told me I have to get onto their sleeping patterns. Fucking miss university freedom already.

i think i'm going to brush all my teeth!

Woody Allen.

Almost went to Bournemouth today on a whim but ended up home instead.

The holidays feel like they're going too fast and they've barely started.

Maybe I should do like my brother and just run down to Bournemouth now. I should have gone today. Then I could have seen Jade. I need to stop taking so many pills. I could go down tomorrow, 22nd, stay for two nights (where would I stay? With Jade, who's trying to leave? No. With Matty? Sort of sketchy staying there after drunkenness last time. With Izzie? She's too far from everyone else. Fuck.) and come back on Christmas eve, first thing. Or even one night, I don't spend enough time with the family. Not that it's any good me being here, Holly just wants me gone because I'm the only other person who makes any effort to be a real living human being. Vivi can be disposed of, in Holly's battle for attention, and Nippy is quiet. The parents are parents. Anyway, getting to Bournemouth takes so long. And I can't afford it.

Definitely listened to neurotic talk for too long. Taking up their habits of speech.

Desperately trying to remember how it felt that night I smoked with a sore throat and I could feel each inhalation cloaking the soft vulnerable insides of my throat in sticky itchy dusty black tar. Instead am remembering the slight rush, the way my eyes felt, the feeling of being in control.