I typed out a whole nicely-phrased emo post here, but I deleted it. Note to self: always a good idea. I’m too good for it and I can’t change anything and, also, over it. At least two of those three are true. Am I an adult yet?

Much of today has been spent doing happy mental cartwheels whenever I think about yesterday’s Spurs game. Jon spoiled me before motd started, but the plus side of this was that I got like, an extra half hour of happiness in my life, as well as getting to embarrass myself in front of friends with a slightly extreme reaction of MASSIVE JOY. Sam hadn’t heard the score, but he knew something had happened because Dad mentioned hearing about the game on the news. I told him to call me back as soon as he’d seen the game, as I wanted to hear his reaction, and he called and just laughed down the phone for a long time <3 This is especially wonderful if you know my brother. Sometimes I wonder if I should count football as one of my fandoms.

Also, I am sure you all want to see my favourite necklace. BEHOLD.

891 words before I’m done for the day. Off I go.

Today I woke up at 11:04. That’s fine, you might think, not too lazy for a Saturday. The only problem was that I was supposedly meeting Lou for coffee at 11, and the only reason I had just woken up was because she had called me to find out where I was. In my sleep-addled state I cancelled the call, mistaking my ringtone for my phone’s alarm clock, and once I had realised my mistake I also realised that I was late, mostly naked and had no credit to call Lou back and explain myself. I ended up getting dressed v. quickly and feeling v. grateful for living one minute away from Caffe Nero.

But today has been okay, been nice, and after my recent emo that’s a big relief. It makes sense, though: our big concert’s over, which is a weight off my mind, and I got some productive work done today*, which is another. And it would have been our two year anniversary around now, but Matt’s away for the weekend so I don’t have to pretend or think about it.

Also, in the library today I sat next to a cute guy with ridiculous/excellent fashion sense. About an hour in, he came over to ask me for help with his footnotes on Word. I would have expected a postgrad to have figured that one out by now. OH WELL.

*I figured out a lot of fascinating stuff today about the deceptive/protective nature of an imago (an artificial imitation/reflection/image) and how it makes viewing and consummation so closely related, through that penetration of an outer protective layer to access the inner, unchanging one. This is amazing (honest) because it gives me a connection between Ovid’s interest in metamorphosis, a process of outer change that reveals inner nature, and Statius’ interest in transvestism, a similar outer layer assumed which, in Statius at least, ends up revealing (and in fact provoking) the inner (masculine) nature. Today I was sortof drowning in analogy, which is great because suddenly a lot of stuff has become connected which wasn’t before. The joy of this is (evidently) impossible to articulate, but basically I have been working with these texts for six weeks now and yet I’m still finding new and amazing things about them <3

Things have, in all honesty, been pretty shitty this week. So instead I’m going to talk about cleavage.

I have this one dress that I hardly ever wear which makes me feel absolutely amazing. It’s black and floorlength, hence the reason I hardly ever wear it, but it’s great for upscale concerts when a black shirt and trousers won’t do. The top is probably the lowest-cut thing that I own; it works because it’s cut well and it’s in a v-neck, so the boobies aren’t partying too hard. It’s just low enough to be slightly distracting, but not low enough to be intentional. I have a lot of fun with this.

I’m not a girly girl. Sometimes I think I’d like to be her, but I know it’s not possible. Sometimes it’s nice, then, to be reminded that my femininity does not have to fit itself into the popular mould. I can feel womanly and awesome while still being me. Tonight I wore that dress to give me confidence and, alright, reassure me. it did.

Also, on our way to her birthday party yesterday, Emily took an unsubtle look at my chest and then complained that my top wasn’t low cut enough considering it was her birthday and everything. There’s a compliment there somewhere.

the camera’s talking
and even though I can’t be sure
memory tells me that these times are worth working for

Pete Droge – Under the Waves

I associate this song with late afternoon walks home through Kings, thinking about essays I worked really hard on only to have them picked apart in supervisions. This happened constantly in first year, and it continues to happen now, but at some point I either got used to it or got better. In first year, it was a shock every time, and sometimes I’d go back to this song for that comforting message of ‘everyone in Cambridge feels like this sometimes’. Sometimes it’s good not to be special.

I’ve had one of those days, today. Nothing went particularly wrong but nothing went particularly right, either, and now I’ve got nothing to show for it and my time’s ticking away. It’s a bit too quiet, tonight, and I’m a bit lonely, and I need to write nano or even dissertation, considering I’m showing it to my brutally honest supervisor for the very first time tomorrow, and hormones are just making me a bit fragile.

But two good things did happen today. Firstly, I hung around after our meeting and Matt and I argued about football and checked physioroom.com and apparently MODRIC IS BACK NEXT WEEK <333 this makes everybody happy. especially me. Secondly, Ev and I met up for a working coffee, but instead we talked for a long time about what happened when I met Rowan Williams on Friday and that wonderful line in Relient K, the beauty of grace is that it makes life not fair. Sometimes it feels really good to talk about things more important than me and my slightly glum feelings.

The boy I broke up with five weeks ago is a kind and noble soul, and he came round tonight to offer me his friendship again. There were so many things he could have said to me but didn’t, and so many things he didn’t have to but did.

The last month has been hard, when I think back, but in a way it’s been helpful to keep my distance, only meeting when brought together in situations that tend to bring out the worst in us. Tonight I am happy and kindof pathetically grateful to discover that I get to keep a friendship that I thought I’d lost for good. On the other hand, I can no longer ignore his good qualities and how much I admire them, especially not after our very honest conversation this evening. It was probably easier to move on when I believed it was the only option.

I am going to have to tread carefully. But, providing I do that, it seems that I have got back someone that I love very much, and however much navel-gazing I do about it, that’s a really wonderful thing.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8352711.stm

“Research published in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology also questions the very notion of aesthetically pleasing genitals.”

I have been questioning that notion ever since I knew what genitals were.

On a different subject, Lou and I went to John’s evensong and formal last night. and it was good. John’s was founded by the same person who founded Christ’s (Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII), but I think she was playing favourites. They could probably fit at least four of our chapels into theirs, so the acoustic is epic, and their choir is a bit more hardcore, doing services every day. and their formals are a lot nicer, om nom nom. But then I came back to Christ’s for compline in our humble, tiny chapel, and that was lovely for different reasons.

Tonight I have two hours of choir then two and a half of orchestra. \o/

Ahahah, I keep sending Ev bizarre emails about how my nano is progressing, and every time one is sent I have a sudden panic that I have sent it to the wrong person. (Cambridge email addresses are very vague, just a few letters and numbers, so this is easy to do.) And if the wrong person got this one just now, that would have been interesting. Part of it runs:

“I was just thinking that today would be the day to have Lucas accidentally poison Alek. then I realised I could have Lucas ACCIDENTALLY POISON ALEK’S SISTER INSTEAD.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

In other news, I think the cold is here to stay now, and I need to start wearing a coat or something. I became convinced of this during a very chilly fifteen minute walk back from the faculty this evening. On the other hand, Cambridge is beautiful at night, and these walks home, back to an empty room, chilled to the bone, is one of those ‘never been so alone, never been so alive’ moments.

Anyway, I’m going to go type into a different window where the wordcount matters more but the content less. Things are good here, there’s not much wrong, I guess I’m just going to be reflective for a while.

Today was very hard. I’d like to say I learned something, but I’m not sure it’s that simple. I realised for the first time, I think, that I need to accept that my friend died. He’s not just somewhere else, and maybe one day he’ll turn up again, maybe one day I’ll look up at his old window in second court and he’ll be waving. He died. It’s been easier to forget that.

Facing the reality of something like this is a really bleak prospect. Speaking to his mother today, she said in a very pragmatic way, with a smile, “I don’t think I will ever recover from this.” She said something similar to me at the funeral and I tried to forget about it, but this time that she said it, almost two months after his death, I have to realise that she’s not being depressing, she’s being realistic. The reality of this is that it’s the most painful and tragic loss that has ever happened to most of us, and if you sit and think about it for long enough you will weep and weep and everything else will fade away.

So no, there’s no lesson to extract. It doesn’t get to be that easy. You carry on, and not just for your own sake.

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.

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.