maybe maybe

Off to the Isle of Wight. yeah.

and then on to ZZ’s for a lotr marathon. I hate lotr. but I love ZZ.

Back next Wednesday.

and as a ‘note to future self’: it’s getting better always. coming back to the heart.

twisted it wrong

“The lover got in by climbing up Rapunzel’s hair, and Rapunzel got in by nailing a wig to the floor and shinning up the tresses flung out of the window. Both of them could have used a ladder, but they were in love.”

Sexing the Cherry, Jeanette Winterson. I borrowed this book off ZZ in America and it made me very happy. Lovely wry humour and a grotesque, misshapen, fantastical narrative that occasionally came out with some really very true observations. This bit appealed to me a lot, and just now while cleaning out my handbag I found it written on the back of a receipt to the Hirshorn Museum. <3

heart investigator

‘hanging’ with my two moast sensible and dramafree people. Each of us is on a different computer in Sam’s room, lolol – the internet signal is so much better in here. but mine is the only yellow one \o/ and football later!

lazy Sundays <3

I spent a lot of time last night reading and rereading this poem. out loud. new favourite.

below the hill

Weddings always make me happy. They rarely make me think so hard. It’s impossible not to imagine your own and compare aspects, and I normally do this especially when eyeing up dress choices – pretty, but the train was excessive – and music selection – saccharine wedding hymns, but Taverner’s lamb and Stanford’s Bluebird, which is the most beautiful vocal music I know. Nowadays I also think of what the words mean, and to whom I could ever say them.

Nowadays I shake in figurative boots at the thought of going through it. I find other people’s weddings immense and overwhelming. the only way I would make it all the way through my own would be by marrying somebody I felt nothing for. I told Susannah I didn’t want to have a wedding and she said she wouldn’t mind that part of marriage but she’d hate having a husband. Considering recent events in her life, this is especially amusing.

Anyway. Brian does weddings well, and he doesn’t fill his sermon with platitudes and gumph. Today he spoke about space and togetherness in marriage, centring on Khalil Gibran’s poem On Marriage and the final line, “and the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow”. But then, they do grow side by side. “for two to become the same person is to make one redundant.” I heard some things today that did me good. and last night I spoke some things out loud that did me good too, so thank you.

Another thought that occurred to me during the service (less relevant, which says something for my attention span): God doesn’t need long words in prayer. When we pray about a situation, he doesn’t need us to list the detailed particulars of how he could help and what he could change; he kindof knows that all already. In terms of what God requires, much of the traditional Anglican service is redundant: we don’t need to do anything but ask. On the other hand, being wordy isn’t a self-indulgence or a distraction from the request; it doesn’t help or comfort anyone but ourselves, but that’s kindof the point. I know I always feel better and clearer about things after talking them over with a friend.

Settlers nearly got down to cracking skulls tonight. game is infuriating.

duly and daily

Red tights on, feeling groovy.

I’m singing at a friend’s wedding on Saturday, so off to the choir prac this evening. If I survive the monkfish I’m trying to cook for dinner, that is. so excited to sing again.

what can’t be decided

I’m having a nice, abnormal day. I got up early (Paul was staying over and he slept in, which is an amusing role reversal), I’ve walked into town and back in the sunshine. I’ve eaten a lot of fruit* \o/

I like walking, as it’s when I listen properly to music. I do my best thinking then, too, and that’s my agreed occupation at the moment, after all. My mp3 player is a bit of a memory capsule as it’s got some things on it that I’ve long since purged from my computer. I’m one of those terrible people who never listens to full albums, too, so it’s entertaining to randomise the few thousand songs on there and see what comes up. It tends to survive break-up purges, too, so it’s also the final resting place of songs given to me by people I don’t see anymore. Unless they had bad taste.

I heard Stars today and remembered how much I like them. Their fourth album is less glamorous and more moody than their third, which I loved (obsessively, after hearing Your Ex-Lover Is Dead), but everything they do is eloquent and inventive. dudes have tempo changes. Midnight Coward is a great one that I listened to properly today, possibly for the first time, and the two-vocalists-as-dialogue works really well in it.

Speaking of eloquent, this one isn’t. Loosey by THE STRiPES is the opening song of Burst Angel, an anime Sam’s been watching recently. I tend to have my back to the tv as he does this so I know nothing about it, but the music’s incredible. If you’re not familiar with J-rock, this song is everything you need to know. “lucky chance dance get dance groovin’ in a house, SHOUZE!”. my heart.

*Sometimes I think I should blog a normal day, just for personal posterity, but it might be even more mundane.

“I don’t play games.”

A list of typically undervalued assets I’ve learnt I need in a boyfriend:

• common sense
• common sense
• common sense

insignificantly enough

WordPress is a twisty, twisty thing. For those of you that haven’t ever blogged here, you should know that behind the scenes I get certain interesting stats: I see the number of (I think non-unique) hits each day; a list of the search-words the blog’s been found by recently; the number of visits to individual posts, &c. (For someone who only gives her blog address to a handful of real-life friends and otherwise considers herself anonymous, it’s a tad nervewracking to see how easily found I am.)

This last stat’s been especially interesting today, because I got many hits each over ten individual, seemingly random blog posts scattered over the last two years. I’m not going to try and figure this one out because hi, internet, but it made me read them through. One of them was from about this time last year, and it was funny and encouraging to see I was going through some similar things then. It was about meaningful distance, and it made a lot of sense, and whether or not it still does doesn’t really matter, but it shows me I’m not as alone as I think sometimes.

One of the great things about keeping a blog is that sometimes your own history is surprisingly comforting. Time has healed old wounds to the extant that the only thing I remember clearly is the words I used to articulate them, and everything else feels like someone else’s life. It’s for the best that way, but if you only remember the bare details then you might miss out on the experience points. gaming analogies aside, I think it’s good to remember.

still cool \o/

doesn’t make you jesus

As I was baking a cheesecake this afternoon*, a song I hadn’t heard in absolutely ages came over my speakers. It reminded me of Tori Amos’ continued existence, anyway, and this has been doing really good things for me. I never saw myself as the kind of person to seek or find inspiration in people I’ve never met, finding it hard enough to relate to the ones I have, but I realised today that I do sometimes rely on her, Regina Spektor or Ani DiFranco when I’m in a low place. I don’t know whether it’s the fact that they’re ballsy females or whether it’s just that they’re, for me, the most meaningful solo songwriters I’ve ever come across.

Tori Amos in particular has such a way with words. The first song of hers I ever heard (and in fact I hunted it down on reading some of its lyrics) was Winter, and somehow Silent All These Years followed soon either. She writes with a lovely ambiguity that means when I listen to them now, perhaps five years since I first got drawn in, I’m drawn in again by something completely different. The whole of that album, actually, Little Earthquakes, is an absolute masterpiece and doesn’t have a dull song on it. China‘s lyrics are amazing too.

And oh, she’s touring. Birmingham Symphony Hall, 7th September. I have a nasty feeling that nobody I know except Stu has any interest, so in the next few days I’ll probably accept the inevitable and book a ticket to go on my sad ol’ lonesome. If I’m happily mistaken and anyone’s interested, let me know. <3

*I don’t do this regularly. I kindof wish I did. They’re tasty.

do what you’re thinking of

Hi.

I had a beautiful week in France. Weather was hot and sunny, house was cool and breezy. I had a ready supply of books, nice company and really good cooking. If I’d thought that my last few weeks at home had been escapist, this was even more so, holed up in the middle of an aesthetically pleasing nowhere with an attractively tanned boyfriend and his lovely family. The French pace of life is no pace at all, and it’s my favourite elusive rhythm.

I’m sorry to be home, actually, and sorry that I asked him for this, but I think I’ve made the right decision. 20 months in, the next 2 are all my own, and I can relearn what it’s like to be just me. I’m a bit sad right now, but that’s with the memories of a mostly lovely week still quite vivid. Round here, I’ve enough work, reading and lovely people to cheer me up again, and in a few days I’ll be free to do some soul-searching, but this time without anything on my conscience.

As I say, a few days (and not too many late nights) and I’ll be seeing all the good points in this situation. It is a good situation, and sensible, it’s just a bit sad and scary too. And here I was thinking I was independent.