wind blowing through

Remember I thought I’d lost my camera? GUESS WHAT, I got a piece of recorded mail today! I love it when I get post that’s addressed to Hetty. It does the double job of making me happy and confusing a porter.

Anyway, as originally intended:

This is the first half of my plotmap! Stick figures make me happy. The second half is considerably less detailed and involves more inane events, written out in Ev’s beautiful black calligraphy. But my start is more concerned with setting up the characters and dropping hints about all the mysteries and things, so, unlike my last Nano where I had plot but not the deductive reasoning kind, this time I’m having to tread quite carefully and make sure that I include all the stuff that’s going to be important later. I am totally breaking a cardinal rule somewhere by planning this at all.

Also, because I’m not currently nano-ing, I’m writing an essay about why the Jews were expelled from Rome in 19 AD (it’s really interesting! nobody knows for sure!), have a procrastinatory photo of the current state of my desk.

From this you may discern:

• I like postits
• washing up is currently fighting a losing battle

Speaking of losing battles, I am going to have no time for work in the next three days. In the words of Tim Gunn, “This worries me.” Tomorrow, choir goes to London.

In more really dreadful and awful news: I got myself a twitter. I’m a bad person.

i won’t ever be

This is how King’s looks at the moment. Another few seconds’ walk up that way and you’re on the bridge looking over at King’s College Chapel, so it’s funny how this avenue of trees is the most beautiful part of my walk home.

I’ve been asked to do a reading for Charles’ memorial service. It’s a few verses in Ecclesiastes, beginning There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven. They’re easy lines, but I am going to keep practising until I can read them without getting choked up.

Nanowrimo is absolutely fucking awesome and is making me very happy. It turns out I am good at writing rubbish really quickly, and feeling like I shouldn’t edit (or show anyone what I’ve written) means I can write in a loose, snide sort of way that only works when I stop thinking about it. So I’m going to spend a little more time writing about the treatment of Jews in Rome in the 1st century AD, then I’m going to go break a 3000 word barrier. IT’S NOT TOO LATE TO JOIN ME YOU GUYS.

every morning i’ve got a new chance

Oh man, Nano starts in four hours. Ev and I had an incredible planning session last night where we wrote out all our characters on postits and wrote ridiculous scenarios down on more postits and then threw them at each other. I really need to re-set out all my paper and photograph it. Hang on.

Damn, I appear to have lost my camera. ANYWAY, she gave me things like “Someone gets poisoned!” and “KIDNAPPING” and I gave her “Someone loses a pet (death or literal loss)” and “Accidental theft”. (We both wrote some nice events too, but they’re less interesting somehow.) Somewhere along the way I picked up 28 pieces of paper and things started to gel and now I (sortof) know where I’m going, which is a Good Thing. In a bid to include them all, I might even put buried treasure under the castle. It can keep the slash dragon company.

And speaking of, I’ve had Jess and Stu here for a few days and it was so so nice. Cambridge sucks you in sometimes, especially now, and it’s good to be reminded that there’s a bigger world out there with people who don’t think you’re a soulless demon girl. Well, they might, but they might like that kind of thing. Now they’re gone and my room is a bit quiet but I feel like a better person again.

graffiti on your body

I went a little crazy tonight. I am glad that college wants to remember my friend and toast his memory but it is over a month since his death and I was doing alright and then tonight I was cornered into talking to people about all our sad feelings and now I’m back there again. There will be one more goodbye at his college memorial service, and it will be horribly painful, and then we’ll finally step away from the sharp edge.

I think this is an improvement.

and I can’t let it go
and I can’t get through

beyond your peripheral vision

Tomorrow we’re saying goodbye to a friend. Forever. Again.

I’m living inside my novel at the moment. Mirrors are banned in the castle, something to do with them being misleading and magical, and I think it makes sense. I wear my watch on my left wrist, for one thing.

I’m putting my camera in my bag tomorrow. Cambridge is at one of its most beautiful times and I’m going to take a walk through King’s.

and then some

Dinner’s cooking. Times like these I really wish I had a hob; tonight I’m doing sweet and sour caramelised shallots in the slow cooker, and it’s meant to be with egg noodles but I think it’s going to be with bread and cheese instead. this is what the book next to me would call cross-cultural assimilation. only more tasty.

I’ve been busy. I can’t say how glad that makes me. This term is as different from the last two years as I’ve been able to make it, and it’s working. Charles’ death has made me realise that eventually you grow up and you become a person with souvenir scars and thoughts that will never leave you but which you can’t afford to give space to. I will never stop feeling the loss of his death and I’ll never again be young enough to feel invulnerable. The only thing I can do is carry him with me.

Another recent loss received its silver lining last night. I’ve been busy, as I said, and a lot of it’s been to distract me, but it’s also happened because I couldn’t before and now I can. Last night I went to a birthday formal for someone I like but don’t socialise much with outside of choir. Matt doesn’t know her very well, I don’t know many of her other friends, and if I’d still been in a relationship I wouldn’t have gone last night because oh noes, who would I sit with or talk to? It would’ve been easier to have a quiet night in with the boyfriend. I still thought this, but since I don’t have that option anymore I went anyway and I ended up having a really fun time with people I hadn’t known so well before. Loss hurts, but I’m slowly learning to live the things I guess I already knew: being alone and being independent are just a matter of perspective, and no-one but me can make me strong. and you can also invite strange boys back to your room to fix your internet, which was an entirely unforeseen plus point.

Two other really cool things coming soon:

• Nano! A few late nights ago, I sat myself down with an A4 pad and I drew a castle, then a stick figure, then many more stick figures, bullet points, arrows, and suddenly I had people and secrets and a sparky, love-hate dynamic between my two mains that I can’t wait to write. The paper’s gone up on my wall so I can gaze at it. still needs moar plot, but this is a really nice start.
• Jess and Stu are visiting on Tuesday <3333333333
  

put me in the magic position

I can’t think of a good reason for this but I’m in a great mood this evening. Though I did spend today wearing my sole item of designer clothing (a mud-coloured high-waited skirt that I love) with my very old, painted-these-myself-four-years-ago rainbow converse, which is probably part of it. yes. I am that wild.

I also had another very pleasant ‘meeting’ with my dissertation supervisor where we didn’t talk about anything very useful but I came out of it feeling very reassured. odd. Perhaps better than yesterday, though, where we met for an hour and spent half of it talking about penetration. It was relevant, honest. so um tonight I’m going to try to live up to his confidence and go read another book about men in drag. Dissertation is still disconcerting but at least my topic is awesome.

Spent a lot of time last night watching this video. have no excuse for my actions. um. the time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time?

looking for yourself

dissertation tldr:

I set myself a 5pm deadline for sending this dissertation work in. DID NOT HAPPEN. I had a Go meeting tonight and instead I’ve ended up staying in trying to perfect this monster essay. I don’t mind, really; it’s coming together, and I’d rather get this right for a good first impression with dissertating supervisor.

At the moment it’s still lacking any strong sense of logical progression, but it’s got some great ideas in. Also some hot sentences. In Nero’s this afternoon I could not contain my excitement any longer and after one particularly awesome sentence about metamorphic process had to text my dissertation compatiot and tell him about it. I don’t have anyone who gets my extreme Hermaphroditus-related joy, (probably a good thing,) but I think writing any kind of dissertation puts you through a similar obsessive process.

I have also got the phrase “weirdly amoral gods” in my head and really want to use it because it’s pithy and perfect. If only I could remember which of the thirteen books on my bibliog it was from…

AHHH LOOK WHAT I JUST FOUND.

This may be my saddest moment yet. And yet, so happy right now.

one minute there was road beneath us

Cooking is my therapy. How did I only realise this now?

Our recital went really well this evening. It was such a scratch concert but it felt great to play again, and to hear the rest of the committee play, and to be reminded why we go through all this hassle of endless discussing and planning and organising. In the best moments I missed Charles a lot, because this was what he was about, and he would have laughed as hard as I did at the truly amazing Wallisisms (“This is a piece about flirting and death”), and our very rude madrigal about “bonking” and he would have loved Alex’s Debussy and Gershwin.

So the recital was heartwarming and beautiful, and afterwards we moved en masse to the bar and Matt and I spent two hours sitting at the same table talking to everyone except each other. I have never missed him more than when he was sitting right across from me, telling other people those things I never paid much attention to. When I got back this evening I was expecting to have a therapeutic weep, only, once I was finally alone I realised I was kindof hungry and made dinner instead. (lol priorities.) I chopped a pepper, an onion and some mushrooms, I opened a can of tomatoes and green pesto, and I put them all in the slow cooker on high for an hour. As soon as I was finished, I found I was okay again.

I wanted to share this. It should be done by now so I’ll go fetch it and finish watching Grey’s Anatomy and think about the things I love. Especially mushrooms.

Ridiculously good-looking friend got into Cambridge.