as per.

“with 3.57 weeks to go until xmas”:

My face is a very big :DDDDDDDDDDDDDDD right now

love, alive

I want so badly to believe that “there is truth, that love is real”
And I want life in every word to the extent that it’s absurd

Three days left. Something I didn’t manage with my last novel was an ending, and it’s something I’d like to manage this time, if I can. This year, part of the reason I wanted to do nano was to give me something solid and positive to show for a month that’s been mostly about loss. I needed that. I remember someone even told me that it could be cathartic, and I didn’t think so at first, but it turns out he was right.

Now I’m nearly finished, month, novel, term, and I’m writing something that I’ve been working up to for 27 days but that I’ve never written before: a kiss. Everything else has been hasty and haphazard, but these two characters have got me almost to the end, inflating my wordcounts wonderfully, mainly with snarking, and I want to make this bit right. Most nights I try to shut up my critical side and just write, but tonight I’m choosing my words carefully. I’ve spent a lot of time with these two characters this month, perhaps than I have with anyone else, so yeah, this matters now.

Sara Bareilles & Ingrid Michaelson – Winter Song

you can breathe now

A few fun things have happened recently, none of them work-related:

• Seven of us performed some close harmony after a posh dinner in college last night. Blue Moon, Autumn Leaves, Night and Day, Bare Necessities. I have never done this kind of music properly before and I loved it; it’s a bit of a struggle after choral singing, though. At the end of our first rehearsal, Liv said, “That was great, but… you all sounded so classical that I wanted to die.” (Learning not to enunciate is really hard, okay.) It turned out well, though, and I got to make an ass out of myself pretending to be a bear in front of a supervisor I used to crush on heavily. v freeing, I highly recommend it. and apparently one of the fellows was filming us on his phone.

• In choir practice today, before practising Howell’s Sing Lullaby for the Advent carol service on Sunday, Dave says, “One for the grannies, this.” This is a favourite comment of his, especially at Christmas when we’re doing a load of cheesy stuff. (Dave is a pretty hardcore Classical/Baroque guy – and you’d have to be, really, to think of Howells as cheesy music.) Then he adds, “I’d invite my mother, but she’s going mad.”

• Then Ev and I went back to hers and cooked the most cheesiest pasta I have ever encountered. It was amazing. then we nano’d to give our stomachs time to recover, only that was obviously a bad idea because it meant I ended up actually listening to her nefarious suggestions. my intended plot has exploded into many tiny but thrilling pieces. eee, four days left!

if I kiss you where it’s sore

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.

light it up for you

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

a difficult sister

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

just a surface wound

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.

a representation of good intentions

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.

walking with a ghost

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/

the sun goes down in my eyes

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.