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'