OH BOTHER

The last few days I’ve thought so much that my head hurts now and I don’t think I can bear the thought of thinking any more. This time of year I write so many lists: things I would have loved to have done but didn’t; things I am glad I didn’t do; things I am disappointed that I did; things I will do; things I hope to do; things I would love to do; places I would love to go and so on, ad infinitum. It’s the breach between 2009 and 2010+ when I flick through magazines and read books and click through websites to find the aroma of the futureme.

Vague and idealistic, yes, but it doesn’t take much for me to feel trapped and stuck. Usually it’s me doing the trapping and the sticking. I’d write my resolutions down here but I think they’d be boring and I’m sort of scared of them, like they are qualities of a person I am not quite brave enough to be just yet.

My head is thudding with one word. I wonder if you can guess which?

Until I write here next, blogreaders, I hope you have kept yourself well and away from the brain-thudding over these holidays.

I’LL BE HOME FOR CHRISTMAS

Of late I’ve been on such a Frank Sinatra kick, with a sprinkling of Michael Bublé and, as Christmas approaches, shots of Wham!, Nat King Cole, Boney M and so on. Whenever I listen to all of these wonderful artists, I just feel like I’m being swept off my feet in a ballroom. Yes, I’m very very cheesy.

It’s only a week and a half until I am home, or thereabouts. Although I’m training it up to Edinburgh a couple of days after I get home, I’m really excited to just sit at home, make biscuits, see friends from secondary school and all of those really simple things. University has been great, but I’m still tired and London is still home.

For the last few days I will keep listening to cheesy Christmas music and make the best of it. Honestly though, I want 2010.

QUICKIE UNI POST

Just a short post to say that I am here at university and settling in. I have the top bunk, I have Harry Potter slippers on, I’m on a great floor and I like the people in my accommodation a lot. Hurrah university!

Today was a bit of a blur overall, but I hope to document my journey through these first few weeks as much as possible; more than anything, it would just be a nice record for me to have!

Tonight, after wandering around campus a little bit, the group from my accommodation block ended up at a Wetherspoons and it was great fun, especially as we were all pretty knackered. Now I’m about to fall asleep in my top bunk and hope to write more soon. Goodnight!

FOREVER

I will.

I SMILE AS I RESPIRE

I am back.

This blog has been neglected a little – I had intended to write in it regularly while I was in the USA, but that wonderful country has sunshine and some of my best friends, so somehow I never really got around to it.

Home is a bit of a shock. I’ve been trying to distract myself from the reality of it by surrounding myself with friends, Jed Bartlet, loud noises, smells of secondhand books and London buses; I think I am slowly learning to live here again. I love London, truly I do, it’s just difficult when you care about some people so much and have had such a wondrous holiday spending time with them every waking second of the day to go back to the occasional stagnant moment, to juggling money and fitting in shifts at work.

The photo above is from my last few hours in Los Angeles. An impromptu dance party was had on the pavement as we couldn’t come up with any ideas of how else to pass the fleeting moments.

My left arm hurts a lot as I got my last HPV vaccination today, so typing is a little testing. Besides, I have some friends in the West Wing to return to. I leave you with this photograph of Iorek Byrnison enjoying a carrot (a native delicacy, of course) and wish you well until next time.

I CAN LEARN TO FORGET

I posted this on another blog, a long long time ago. Here it is now.

BORGESMANIA

Death (or its allusion) makes men precious and pathetic. They are moving because of their phantom condition; every act they execute may be their last; there is not a face that is not on the verge of dissolving like a face in a dream.

– Jose Luis Borges

CALIFORNIA BABEL

I’m sitting in Rita’s living room, at 1.33am, in the height of Summer, watching The Holiday. I love this film – love it love it love it, and there’s something magical about it being so perfectly warm that you can go out so late to somewhere casual like a shopping plaza and just hang out. Everyone is – in the words of Californians – so chill.

Found a lovely edition of the collected works of Borges. It was $20, and normally I would reason myself out of it, but I couldn’t. It was beautiful and I wanted it and I bought it.

I cannot think it unlikely that there is such a total book on some shelf in the universe. I pray to the unknown gods that some man — even a single man, tens of centuries ago — has perused and read this book. If the honor and wisdom and joy of such a reading are not to be my own, then let them be for others. Let heaven exist, though my own place may be in hell. Let me be tortured and battered and annihilated, but let there be one instant, one creature, wherein thy enormous Library may find its justification.

– Jose Luis Borges “The Library of Babel”

LAZY DAYS AND HOPEFUL HAZE

I’ve been in California since Wednesday and to be honest, I haven’t done masses. I saw Away We Go at the cinema, wandered around the gorgeous Laguna Beach, went for “fries” and went to a very random indian film. Today I think we’re going to see some friends in Hollywood and then maybe go to Beauty and the Beast… on the beach.

Hopefully, this blog will be updated along the way. But for now, I leave you with this wonderful sunset Rita and I saw yesterday.

STOWING AWAY

I keep packing. Then unpacking. Then re-packing. Then folding. Then rolling. Then stuffing heels with bikinis and H&M skirts. I’m excited, very excited.