fun with blog.

2012-02-09T22:07:00.000Z

writing used to be an urge for me and that urge has well and truly died. it makes me sad reading my old posts. but i don't want to let you go, blog, we've been through so much together! i'll tell you some more. i keep thinking about Big Sur, open roads, deserts, roads, sunshine, water. seeing the devotional paintings today reminded me of the church I found in San Francisco when I was in a bad mood that had dedications and prayers and terrible pleas plastered all over one of its walls. my hands and feet are cold. it is snowing outside, and settling like glitter. i lost a fur hat yesterday but had been given one the day before so it wasn't so bad. but thinking of my little furry one lying cold on a pavement killed me a little. as Chris said, 'I'm sure it will think fondly on you'. i hope so. Chris and I went to Amsterdam. it was cold and expensive. my cats are doing well - Simba has a new basket that she gets embarrassed about sitting in. i'm hibernating but my cerebellar extremities are thawing out a little. i saw this video at the exhibition and it was wonderful.

there you go. verbal diorrhaea all up in yo'grill.

2012-02-09T21:27:00.005Z

i had an hour to kill so went to see this exhibition at the Wellcome. it was an exhibition of ex-votos, inexpensive devotional paintings that Mexican Catholics commission to say thankyou if they have been granted a miracle. the ex-votos all feature little images of the people that are giving thanks, framed in their moment of salvation. the scenarios are all different.

some ex-votos are of people giving thanks to the floating saint after the event, but most feature the thanks-giver in the midst of their anguish, with the saint just a beacon hovering over them.

it's hard to describe. if you are interested in the human spirit/Mexico, then you might like it.

hi blog.

2012-02-08T17:30:00.000Z

do you remember me? i barely remember myself. all desire to write wilted like lettuce when you find it months later in the salad drawer and it has all that weird bin-juice liquid all over it. my bloggy side just died. but, maybe because spring is coming, i had a sudden urge to say bonjour. or maybe it's because it's so cold that i'm looking up 'how to skin a cat' on Google so i can make myself some kitty legwarmers. this all pervading chill has done something to me.

so. i've been up to some stuff, n'shit. still working. still spending hours at home folding clothes and putting them away as a means of avoiding writing.

i actually can't fill you in further than that. the last few months have just kind of happened and gone.

brain has stopped working now. will be here again soon.

this will be the title and cover image of my first novel.

2011-11-14T20:43:00.000Z

2011-11-09T21:23:00.000Z

just found this photo of me with a cheese moustache. It wasn't a good day.

poetry in motion

2011-11-08T21:04:00.002Z

i found this guy on Google Maps last week, immortalised forever in the act of buying half a pint of full cream and a packet of fags.

2011-11-07T23:26:00.002Z

ha ha 'flo's happy place' totally died in the water, didn't it?

hello, vorld.

2011-11-07T23:08:00.003Z

i haven't been around for a while and that's because, no word of a lie, i got stuck behind one of these bad boys for a month. i survived eating paperbacks and drinking... not important.

it was totally worth it just to imagine the looks on people's faces when they walked past what they thought was a real bookcase but was in fact a secret doorway with me crying behind it.

seriously though, HOW AWESOME ARE THESE?

i'm so jealous of the fat kid in pink

2011-08-30T21:39:00.004+01:00

this song............................

i've been taking magnesium sulphate supplements in the evenings. one side effect is i get really vivid dreams. you love to hear about people's dreams, right? everyone loves it? i had two last night - or the same dream, in two volumes. in the first i was climbing a mountain that was more like a meadow. it was endlessly green and soft, and the grass was tall and fine like angel hair and moved like a weed. when i reached the top i saw there were lots of people walking with me. we saw something in the distance and as we approached it, we realised that what it was was all tangled up in grass. we finally got close enough and realised it was a cardboard box with wild flowers growing from it. the next dream was on a mountain too, but it had been flooded. we came across some houses that had been desecrated by the water. they were empty and wet.

mile of string duchamp 1942

2011-08-22T09:18:00.001+01:00

rubbish soup

2011-08-21T13:14:00.002+01:00

arrr so it's exactly, erm, a month since i last wrote. time flies. it flies, time. yeah this is bad, but i'm trying to get better at it because i know there are so many of you out there who... rely on my blog. i'm welling up. so. i have been a busy little bee for the past few weeks, and this is all momentum of my own creating... for once. i'm taking back CONTROL, London!

anyway. there are some things i'd like to share with you.

mathematically correct breakfast (you won't regret clicking this)

guilty dogger (does anyone but me remember dogger? it was a children's book, nothing to do with george michael)

things you don't need but they're pretty and you want them

estellehanania

and on another note, this, which i find tragic but also fascinating (article here).

i imagine this rubbish cloud solidifying... then people start visiting out of curiosity and just floating around on plastic chairs, eating popsicles - and before you know it, a new civilisation rises from the debris of this one - like

the exquisite shit of glory

of which i have just read in One Hundred Years of Solitude (so called because that's what is necessary in order to get through the damn book? me thinks so.)

flo's happy place #1

2011-07-21T20:44:00.001+01:00

hi blog. guess who.

hi. so on an inaugural mission for 'flo's happy place' i took my sorry ass off to Richmond park with my lovely boyfriend. once we got to Richmond station we realised that the park was quite a long way away, and that it was raining. we went for lunch in pub by the river, where i ate half a cheese sandwich...

sorry i just had to pause. i had that horrible situation where you have a cup of tea with the teabag in but no saucer. i didn't know what to do with the teabag. absolute dilemma. i quickly whisked it out and threw it in the loo. ingenious? except now i keep thinking of my Chinese Green teabag floating around in the loo. unpleasant.

so i had half a sandwich and then we walked down the river toward the park. we had to walk through some woodland then down a main road until we found the gates.

i used to come to richmond park a lot as a child, with my dad. it really is big, and green. despite the rain there were many richmondians walking their pooches, and the exact arrangement of deer as above. we sat on a bench and an elderly-looking mutt approached us, then stood a few feet away and pretended to ignore us.

to cut a long story short, the park was a solid bit of punctuation for the day. i do love a damp british common. something about it didn't quite hit the spot though... i think it was the traffic noise that we could still hear from the middle of the park, and that bitchy dog. we do have plans to return on a sunnier day though. watch this space.

not that i'm averse to a bit of rain. in fact, i love the bloody stuff. i would call myself a rain lover. i love it best when i'm not in it, though, but when i can hear it pattering on the windows, on the roof, and i'm all snuggled up inside like i'm on Noah's ark. we had this plaster buddha in the garden when i was little, and before it dissolved, i used to sometimes go out in the garden when it rained and look at it, keeping dry in its little spot under a bush, as the rain drove all around it, and make up stories about it, and kind of wish i was under the bush with it.

rain is predicted this weekend, when i go on 'flo's happy place' outing #2, to my beloved beach hut on the essex coast with a smattering of my nearest and dearest. i long for rain, scrabble, grey water with white horses, precarious boats and windswept cliffs. my cat is jealous because she wants to come too.

to end this watery post, i came across this little fella today (don't ask how). he was on a website called 'top 10 ugliest fish' or something, and i think whoever compiled this list needs their eyes (and heart) testing, because he is literally the cutest thing i've ever seen! he's like a baby sea bear, sad but knowing! i want one!

FYI, he's a roughback batfish. let's petition to get these little lads into britain's pet shops.

deep fried chakras

2011-07-19T18:27:00.001+01:00

hi blog. according to a kind friend, i am exactly this:
i'm a grumpy bitch, and i'm pretty sure i was a weird grumpy baby.

i did the three peaks challenge last weekend, and standing on top of Scafell Pike, sweaty, reeking of mosquito repellent and with feet that felt like they were no longer attached to my body i felt more happy and calm than i have in years. i was, i venture to say, cheerful. i thought how nice it would be to get that feeling more often. because it was nice. if i can be arsed, i'm going to record my attempts to find 'flo's happy place' here. follow me, friend.

i will start with something pretty

2011-07-05T12:22:00.001+01:00

currently at a yoga retreat in Ibiza with my Mum. so far have done 9 hours of yoga and i can just about still walk. this place attracts all manner of life forms... ageing ex models (smiling clouds of prozac), men called Honey, cockroaches, black stripy jellyfish (´Medusas´) as they´re called here, mosquitoes, bitey ants, blue fish, and more exposed breasts than Morrisons´meat counter. i do feel terribly relaxed though. i had reiki yesterday and the woman told me that i had a heavy spirit, because i´m not on the right path in life. will have to sort that out when i get home.

your briny eyes

2011-06-15T18:36:00.001+01:00

YEAH so cookery week didn't happen. fuck that.

so i've found it hard to write over the past few months because i've had emo problems, not sure they've really cleared up so you'll have to put up with them.

this week i'm mostly

LISTENING to laura veirs and 'mexico city' by jolie holland
FEELING a tight headache across my eyes for a month now, it feels like my brain has dried up. i really think it has.
EATING like hell because of my failed cookery week. then i realised i'd podged up so i'm eating only rabbit food now
WORKING for a PR agency 4 days a week
PINING for my travelling days
WISHING i looked like Giovanna Battaglia

and hangin' out with my cat.

a PINEY week all round. i have LEARNT that yoga is the best thing ever, and that massages don't work if your body is just an impenetrable ball of stress.

so time to lighten up.

oh and by the way, where is summer? i do not dig this humid rainy hot-flush menopause weather. sea breeze please.

publishing

2011-05-16T00:42:00.000+01:00

hi. i need to talk to you.

i made brownies today. there were two batches

1. stuck to the bottom of the tin and fell out in ruin.
2. ok, a little burnt.
i usually go to sleep at 11 but i can't. i feel confused and butterfly-stomached-jellyfishlike. i fell asleep in the day for two hours, i was really exhausted. i didn't even have time to properly get on the bed, my legs were on the floor and i fell asleep face down. there's a sprinkler going off outside that sounds like rain. and i painted my nails with a colour for the first time in ages. there. my life.

i've been having flashbacks. i think at least once a day a picture emerges in my mind of something past - like a bowl of pasta i ate as a kid, or a book i used to read, or a beach... and it's a feeling that infuses me. and it's always attached to a seemingly random event from my history. i wonder what these memories are doing still rattling around in my subconscious.

i'm boring myself already. i am planning a tattoo though. i've decided where i want it.

this week is my cookery week. it's an experiment designed to help me start looking after myself so i don't get ill again. i have no time to cook tomorrow though. maybe the brownies from today can count. though i'm not sure how 250g of margarine, 250g of chocolate (or that which made it into the bowl, and not into my mouth) and shitloads of caster sugar isn't a recipe for disease. I may have to start on Tuesday.

my stomach is knots.

hands

2011-04-14T15:51:00.001+01:00

1-my feet/2-receptionist/3-my feet/4-bird/5-anon/6-my foot/7-cover/8-chicago/9-anon

Jack Dracula

2011-03-16T19:04:00.004Z

just discovered J to the Dizzle. that's a lot of tattoos. nice work. interesting if you google him and you see him with these same tattoos, but old, fat and bald. happens to us all.

sitting in a flat in islington. catsitting, in fact. it's quite cushy, but the flat's noisy as in other-people's-sex noisy plus train-line-running-outside-window noisy. the latter I don't mind so much, in fact i quite like it, it reminds me of when i was youth hostelling in chicago and the tracks of the Loop train ran right outside of the window. i would sit on the window ledge for hours looking out.

i need a holiday really, really badly. i find travelling incredibly healing. all this anxiety and sadness and worry just slides off me the minute i'm on a high-speed in the open country. i'd like to try Canada. or Colorado, even if just to see how this song matches up to the real thing.

i'm working part time at the moment. 2 days a week. there's a guy there who, several times a day, has to literally wrestle, steely jawed, sweaty browed, through the fronds of a formidable potted fern to get round his desk. It's quietly hilarious, but also pretty profound in its staging of that eternal, elemental struggle between Man and Plant.

and on that second consecutive plant-themed blog ending, i love and leaf you.

oh P.S. i saw Howl the other day. see it if you have a shred of self-respect.

save and continue

2011-03-11T17:00:00.003Z

there are lots of dead bees on the pavements at the moment. Has anyone else noticed this? Maybe it's just Dulwich.

I have not written in a long time. Today there was an earthquake in Japan. A river of debris, carrying people's lives away over the fields.

i haven't been well. i wouldn't say i'm better now but suddenly i got back my urge to record my experience. that's got to be a good thing. i've gathered dust, a layer of dust that needs carefully cleaning away. i think it will take a while; maybe this is a start.

i have some good things in my life at the moment - people i love. the sun has started coming out - and flowers. there's nothing like a bloom for beauty. even though they're dead... you feel like they're keeping going that little bit longer just for you. it's like a little sacrifice.

God Bless the Blooms.

And a song...

until next time, friend.

hey! fever

2010-10-03T18:26:00.008+01:00

so, for the million and first time, i decided to try and sort my life out. this resulted in me creating a chart. under strengths i have 'puns'. under weaknesses... well, the box is full, but in includes 'plan too much and do too little' and 'afraid of successful people'. fucked up?

yesterday i watched Stephen Hawking's Universe with my boyfriend and learned that galaxies are constantly crashing into each other. they showed a dramatisation of what this would look like, removed from the limitations of human time. it looked like millions of grains of pollen from a terrible flower swirling around, bouncing and rebounding, then returning just to be scattered again. nightmare.

under likes i have 'skincare'.

2010-08-25T14:40:00.003+01:00

Jim Hodges' exhibition at the Camden Arts Centre is so poignant. tear-stained prints, fragile sad spiders webs like the strands that connect lovers' hearts, animal skin, rain, threaded flowers, trembling stitch marks. an ode to fleeting beauty.

Batter my heart

2010-08-13T16:56:00.002+01:00

John Donne

74. "Batter my heart, three person'd God; for, you"

BATTER my heart, three person'd God; for, you
As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow mee,'and bend
Your force, to breake, blowe, burn and make me new.
I, like an usurpt towne, to'another due, 5
Labour to'admit you, but Oh, to no end,
Reason your viceroy in mee, mee should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weake or untrue.
Yet dearely'I love you,'and would be loved faine,
But am betroth'd unto your enemie: 10
Divorce mee,'untie, or breake that knot againe;
Take mee to you, imprison mee, for I
Except you'enthrall mee, never shall be free,
Nor ever chast, except you ravish mee.

feelings

2010-08-11T17:03:00.005+01:00

i'm at my dad's house in Spain. sunbleached and soaked. the one night i've spent here was stifling, like being trapped under a big white duvet, unable to fling it off.

the seven family members that are currently staying have all gone for a bike ride along the dusty roads and i'm tired of floundering in the pool, so here i am, alone with my blog. i haven't been up to writing in a while, i've had a lot on my mind.

i've got this feeling like there's a magnet in my stomach pulling all these feelings in from everywhere, really strongly. and sometimes they migrate upward to my head. but mainly they're just there, stuck on this magnet, heavy and warm.

i had this dream the other day that i can't stop thinking about. i'd fallen out with someone special to me and it was full of emptiness, this dream. i remember returning to my room that is all snow white, and on the bed there was just this imprint of something, of someone having been there, like the cave of Philoctetes. there was a box of matches on the bed that had been played with, and some of the matches had been stuck straight up out of the little matchbox-drawer so it looked like some kind of architectural structure. the air was so sad and heavy with memories, but memories that i could not grasp.

later in this dream i tried to use the telephone but my fingers were pressing the wrong numbers no matter how hard i tried.

being alone with my own thoughts drives me mad, but it also urges me to write.

a review i wrote. load of wank it may be but i'm not wasting it.

2010-07-05T22:02:00.002+01:00

Perhaps it is the empty beer bottles congealing on every window ledge; or that the School’s maze of corridors is practically deserted when I arrive; or the mingled scent of paint and panic that hovers in the air, but the Slade Degree Show gives me, from the off, an eerie sense of aftermath.

Walking through the various whitewashed exhibition spaces I have the strange impression that something has exploded and fragments remain, a feeling strengthened by my early encounter with L. Wormell’s paintings - apocalyptic (or post-apocalyptic) landscapes, bristling with harsh, prickly, bony ribcage scrubland picked out in sanguine beetroots and aubergines, can’t help but bring to mind Paul Nash’s bomb-wrenched fields. Katherine Waller’s smashed sculptures, which leave hostile deposits of sand and glass over the floor like sinister, self-contained accidents, are a grisly complement.

In another room, more detritus: this time sawdust and spatterings of paint, from which residue arises Jason Waller’s brittle wood and fabric skeleton of a piece, walled in, on each side, by Arvindh Baburam’s haunting picturebook canvases of empty eyed monkeys and half-emerged vegetation.

One piece that strikes me is Josephine Rowntree’s A Designated Shore. A glossy semicircle of azure paint, a shining postcard rack, rectangles of transparent soda-orange Perspex tacked to the windows, is ‘an artificial beach’, a laminated pamphlet informs, ‘provided by the government’. Its accompanying commentary (‘you meet a young woman, she is enjoying an ice cream which is melting slowly’) forces a ghostly imagined identity from the piece’s plasticky, barren, disinfected wasteland, making it both dead and alive, viewer as mediator.

Rowntree’s piece in particular speaks to me in its brazen need for viewer, antagonist, participant. This is a desire that inevitably, unsurprisingly, characterises the entire degree show. Around the perimeters of the exhibition space, Tim Bouckley and Shing Tat Chung’s slimline wooden furniture-sculptures patiently incite an encounter – in particular Window Stools, that, haphazardly positioned by a makeshift pine-clad radio box that churns out crackling drum & bass, form a ready-made recreational zone that seems just vacated, just waiting to be entered again.

Though the Slade’s show inevitably displayed works of varying accomplishment, and some spaces were not as carefully curated as they could have been, my imagination was captured. To reflect back upon my first impression, I suppose the degree show is ostensibly an ‘aftermath’ - that of the creative process. But at the same time it is a new beginning, conceived in the act of communication – and here were some very promising beginnings.

hello July

2010-07-05T21:44:00.003+01:00

lying by the window with the breeze coming in. room yellow lit with little moths. yesterday, a bag of flour split at the tube station. white everywhere.

2010-06-28T11:56:00.007+01:00

from the age of four i had piano lessons with an old lady called Mrs Rhodda. to this day i imagine her sitting in a little boat on a pond trying to catch fish. all picturesque and kitsch, like a figurine. maybe i see her as a figurine because i remember that her musty sateen cranny of a flat was absolutely full of them - hard silvery white swans with their wings outstretched, hard little girls in twee pastel dresses with baskets of flowers. clowns. cherubs. amongst them the cruel little couple from her wedding cake (who, unlike her, did not age). they were everywhere, these friends of hers, serving perhaps for the family that had died or left her. she told me once that some of them were made of sugar. this blew my mind. i have distinct memories of sidling up to some of the little fellows, that clustered on windowledges and mantelpieces all around the place, and having a sly lick when she wasn't looking. i don't think i ever discovered a sugar one.

2010-06-11T10:40:00.007+01:00

"There is no place in Buddhism for using effort. Just be ordinary and nothing special. Relieve your bowels, pass water, put on your clothes and eat your food. When you are tired go and lie down. Ignorant people may laugh at me, but the wise will understand."

This morning I woke up thinking about a book. It was Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles. I sat in a cafe in Chicago eating a black and white cookie, reading the ending and then I left it on the table when I was done. I hoped that someone would pick it up.

the heart is a stone and this is a stone that we throw

2010-05-09T20:53:00.005+01:00

on wednesday i was walking in southwark and there was a lot of dust in the air. airborne fragments - dandelion seeds, tiny (pigeon) feathers, flies.

there are mustard clouds hanging over london this evening. maybe it will rain tomorrow.

the wash

2010-05-03T18:44:00.005+01:00

it's been raining heavily. i was lying cold in bed a couple of early hours of the morning ago listening to the water falling into the leaves and earth, misting and splashing and seething. i think of it finding its way into the ground where it is pulled in streams and rivulets and disperses.

for me it is a tonic, the steady, steamy, windy sound of it, that muffles and distorts and refracts those endlessly familiar and mundane sounds of dryness so that, wet, they become poignant.

things in london.

2010-04-04T12:19:00.008+01:00

1. happy easter. bye, egg.

so. what?

i went to Village East in bermondsey with ed a few weeks ago and we had an accidentally expensive meal. i watched this man who was dining alone on the table next to us. he had a glass of white, a glass of red and a chocolate brownie in that order. i thought to myself, that's the kind of thing people do before they go home and take an overdose.

Bertie's Beds and Carpets is a new discovery in Camberwell. why not? i mean, lots of people have carpets in their bedrooms (not me).

a man who sat next to me on the bus the other day asked if we could swap places. i said ok then when we swapped he accidentally sat on my headphones. 'Oh, sausages', he said when i pointed this out.

2. wet oxford street watery and reflecting the sky.

on the train to somewhere i watched a man eat a packet of coconut macaroons whilst the woman across the aisle who was wearing a hat and had a painted face drank two cans of k cider and fell asleep. no-one woke her up when the train got to the terminus.

and i the other day i was waiting for my friend and had a coffee on the fifth floor of a bookshop. i could see across london. i put a spoonful of sugar in and watched it sink through the froth.

coffee won't wake me up

2010-03-11T21:25:00.005Z

and why does coffee breath never taste anything like coffee?

things i have noticed since i last wrote.

curled up cigarettes in a window box in Holloway.

a woman inpatient in a pink towelling dressing gown getting some fresh air outside King's College Hospital with a cigarette.

Philosophia soaps by Nesti Dante. lovely.

architectural triumph that is the Peckham Burger King. like a safe little spaceship nest. not that i've ever been in, though.

Yesterday's Metro:

Mr Cheung was wearing black clothes

When he emerged from a

shadow on an unlit road

and there were poems scrawled on scraps of paper lying damply in puddles on the pavement in Camberwell

...i tried to express something like this once. i felt it very strongly when i watched someone i like very much eat a mince pie:

His head was bent, his two eyes engaged on a meticulous observation of the activities of his knife and fork as they dissected between them a fried haddock. Suddenly disengaging his right hand, he dipped in his waistcoat and put two half-crowns on the tablecloth.

[...]

The redness of his fingers as he handed out his coins, his occupation with feeding for the nourishment of his body, these were two things that revealed for an instant his equal humanity.

I left him there

At-Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien

(❤)

and

❤

'Fulcrum' by David Morley (Poems on the Underground)

While I talk and the flies buzz,
a seagull catches a fish at the mouth of the Amazon,
a tree falls in the Adirondack wilderness,
a man sneezes in Germany,
a horse dies in Tattany, and twins are born in France.
What does that mean? Does the contemporaneity
of these events with one another,
and with a million others as disjointed
form a rational bond between them,
and write them into anything
that resembles for us a world?

Ask Docpotter: I am frozen in indecision

2010-02-26T14:57:00.008Z

black hole. i feel so unhealthy. my spirit is dead. my body hates me.

2010-02-25T22:44:00.005Z

i bought a pair of trousers a few weeks ago and found a dime in the pocket.

cold kisses

2010-02-22T21:09:00.005Z

i've spent the last ten minutes or scratching paint off the desk in my bedroom with my fingernail. stress outlet. someone in my family had a serious disappointment today, it rankles. empathy or sympathy or something similarly sore. i'm listening to 'trouble in mind' by erland and the carnival, slightly addicted to it. also if you like mumford and sons does that make you a cunt.

got back from spain on saturday. my dad's house is absolutely beautiful. tiley and dusty and with that lovely damp chill you get in places with really thick walls. the four days i spent there were a haze of cold mornings and red wine and evening sunsets and blissful contentment. very little worrying done by me. just anticipation. just lovely. i finished reading doctor bloodmoney out there too. really weird but kinda hopeful. i adore philip k dick, such a brilliant, queer mind.

the moon was so big in spain! i miss it already. it's weird having a family in another country.

so i'm currently on edge. in a period of waiting. for something, or someone. i'm not sure about that yet. or what yet. but until then, i'm sitting tight!

[with this song dancing on my tongue (get it?)]

Finnish pop/chewing gum

2010-02-09T22:19:00.003Z

Hi blog. i feel sick. i have been feeling sick all day, like really tired and woozy and nauseous. yuck. currently sitting on my swivel chair listening to a band called PMMP. they're like the Finnish version of Tatu, okay? first sign of madness is listening to more than one song by the Finnish version of Tatu.

so i am unemployed right now. it really sucks. i've got an interview for a temping agency on friday (which will be my Third temping agency), hope i can get something through them. one good thing, i got an internship with dulwich picture gallery which starts in a couple of months, looking forward to that very much.

so yeah. being at home with no money is seriously depressing. feel like a goldfish rattling around in a big old bowl. but without the fun swimming.

London

2010-01-26T23:36:00.006Z

1. WORDS WORKS WONDERS

Walworth Road, on poster showing blond chap leaping ecstatically from wheelchair.

2. NEW AQUARIAN OPENING NEW YEAR

Pet shop, Elephant and Castle.

My favourite:

3. MALU HAD BEEN HERE

Steamy window on 176 bus to Tottenham Court Road. long may you prosper; long may you ride the 176, dear fellow. where were you going?

2010-01-24T14:07:00.000Z

http://www.murmurart.com/dialogue/john-beards-new-portraits-at-fine-art-society

2010-01-24T13:59:00.003Z

Then we saw the sun. We saw the sun rising over the water, and the light got louder and louder until we were shouting to make ourselves heard, and I saw the sun on Jordan's face, and the last glimmer of lanterns, and against the final trace of the moon a flight of seagulls that came from nowhere and seemed to be born of the sun itself.

We stayed where we were in the rocking water until the night fishermen came in silent convoy. They hailed us and threw Jordan two fishes and then, looking at me, they threw him a third.

I had brought a loaf of bread, and we cooked our breakfast and left the remains to the circling gulls. Then we sailed home with the sun on our backs, and as we entered the Thames I looked behind me once. What I remember is the shining water and the size of the world.

Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry

2010-01-14T20:54:00.002Z

i started crying in public today because noone loves me.

2010-01-13T23:14:00.004Z

I SAY NOTHING.

REM

2010-01-12T22:09:00.009Z

ok i've had enough time now. funny, you just get to a point when you have to get out again.

today i discovered that listening to Infinity by The XX + Blue Hotel by Chris Isaak on repeat + eating frozen strawberry cheesecake = recipe for bad mental health. lesson learned.

so tonight i am going to plan what i'm doing for the next few months of my life, on a sizeable sheet of paper. shit. i'm really irrationally concerned.

damn you, MISERY INDUCING EMO BAND/FROZEN SAINSBURYS PRODUCT COMBINATION ! ruining my evening.

oh and i went to this yesterday with my friend Imran, it was kinda hilarious but kinda good, we had to admit.

i need space (3 dimensions)

2010-01-11T18:40:00.002Z

and time.

like this.

Please.

ih

2010-01-10T22:14:00.007Z

so i haven't written in LONG time. LONG, LONG time. sorry.

happy new year!

this week i watched various things on the tv whilst eating. most notably i watched Psycho whilst eating shortbread and ate cereal whilst watching How to Look Good Naked. I also cried a bit when the woman came out on the catwalk because she looked so pretty.

it has been very cold for a long time but now it's thawing. (metaphor) me and my mutter and my younger sister played snowballs in dulwich park on the wednesday when it was particularly snowy. at the time i was feeling anxious but had a sort of dual perception of what was happening because i knew at the same time that i would look back on the picture of us hurling chunks of dirty snow at each other as a very happy memory.

today i had a surge of fond feeling toward the 176 bus, which has taken me home from central london innumerable times. sitting in my seat i gave the grubby windowledge a little pat as a sort of 'i appreciate you' type gesture. it's always good to give something back.

that's all, for now.

Until Soon!

i made some food

2010-01-05T21:03:00.002Z

WANTED: a duvet with arms

2009-12-01T20:53:00.004Z

and a face.

i'm tired. i feel like i've been dead for two weeks.
why is winter so cold.
i saw london from trafalgar square yesterday. everything all seemed to be drawn together magnetically like a baz luhrmann frame: nelson's column, the houses of parliament, the moon, all in a matrix. beautiful.
waiting for my friend hannah i got a slice of pizza and sat in leicester square and watched the funfair throw people around with all the neon lights.
then i had a whisky at the ica and, because i didn't have a book, i read my diary, looking back over a year in scribbled appointments and deadlines and little notes to myself. a year in biro. empty pages where i was away over the atlantic.

i hate these moods.

QUOTE o'th day - WikiHow to change one's life for the better:

2009-12-01T20:13:00.010Z

"Have a good book to read, to fill the hours you might have spent eating ice cream in front of the TV"

...pass the cornish cream.

cake and rain cryfest

2009-11-24T23:42:00.004Z

do you ever find that when you have conflicting emotions they all converge, like melted crayons, into this one brown emotion that makes you feel a bit sick?
i do, i have that.

i had a shit day today, woke up from a bittersweet dream to realise with a jolt that it was just a dream and that in fact i was alone, and scared, and it was raining outside, and dark, and 7.30 in the morning. the rain proceeded to torment me for the remainder of the day, the kind of rain that will not be stopped by any umbrella, seeming to be able to defy the laws of gravity and rain upwards and horizontally, wetting your hair, your face, your clothes, your SOUL.

i got off work early but then had to go to the supermarket, because i realised this morning that i had No Things. i normally love shopping for Things but when you actually need them and have no money, i realised, it is not so fun.

fuck i complain a lot. i'm not sorry though, because whining is one of my guilty pleasures. as is alcohol. weirdly, however, i have totally gone off my other guilty pleasure, which is [was] cake. i used to eat, sleep and breathe cake (literally, one of my favourite things to do was stick my head in a victoria sponge and just inhale) but now i can shrug off a muffin like that. that's not a euphemism, but it should be.

so apparently they found a jellyfish that's as long as a blue whale

2009-11-23T23:41:00.002Z

in other news, i went to clerkenwell's diamond quarter today. it was like stepping back in time. not that i would know what it's like to step back in time because i've never done it. also i am sure it's not called the 'diamond quarter' but it should be.

ugh

and also a dead train snaked through farringdon station today, with its lights off it was really creepy.
also
i'm really bored. i need someone to amuse me or i might go (more) mad. roll up. or not.

2009-11-22T21:56:00.002Z

so i was lying on this balcony, miles up. this balcony provided an unobstructed view directly to the sun, helios. i was with other people and we were all lethargic; i was lying down, as i said, trying to find some comfort. all of the time helios was radiating, red rays that kept us all captive. this raying sun had a cloud in front of it, not a normal cloud, though, but a strange fixed cloud that would not be budged by the wind, if there was any, which there wasn't. this cloud was in the shape of a cage with something in the middle, i couldn't get a clear view of what it was.
this sight was at once exhilarating and frightening. my legs would hardly support me when i tried to look at it. everyone else seemed fairly content but i was on edge, and particularly scared to go near the lip of the balcony in case i fell the miles down to the nowhere that it led to. i found that the best way to avoid falling was to lie against the wall with my legs tucked up under me.
we watched the sun set red in mid air, and it was just us, this group alone.
later on there was a little girl who moved between two worlds like a flame.

i don't normally write down my dreams but this one was so vivid that i didn't want it to slip into the greyscale of memory. i have been having a lot of pretty psychedelic dreams recently.

1952 the heart was not your master

2009-11-18T22:13:00.003Z

Just finished Muck, Craig Sherborne's memoir. Really brilliant, I've not read something so refreshing in a while. Sherborne is hilarious, his observations of human nature so subtle but perfectly communicated - his 'characters' are just so well-formed. I wonder if it is more difficult to recreate a real person (i.e. Sherborne's parents, and himself as a teenager) than to create a fictional one. Though I suppose that writing a person necessarily makes them fictional - they become figures in a book, letters on a page. I hadn't heard of the writer before but I'm tempted to delve a little deeper into his other works - in fact, I was sent this today if you care to have a look:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/mar/28/dementia-care-craig-sherborne

He picks up on the details that you probably wouldn't even notice, down to the tiniest cheek-whisker. just wonderful. Also I daresay I found something Portrait of the Artist esque to the book. Read it, really.

I've just realised that I've gone into using capitals again - weird. I didn't even notice I was doing it until it was too late. Ha!

Today I had lunch in a cafe called - wait for it - 'Curved Angel' in Farringdon. It was actually very lovely, and I would like to recommend it - very cute, very reasonably priced, and the soups are delicious (I had lentil and spinach, and felt wonderful for it). The staff are a bit noisy but that's OK.

As usual, i am worrying about my health - going to the doctors on friday to put my mind at ease. it's a bit crazy, but i always fear for the worst when it comes to my health. it can be so draining sometimes, i wish i was a little more carefree. listening to bob marley does help alleviate the symptoms of hypochondria, i have found - though he did die of skin cancer. OH/

ok. other things. the shipping forecast, i have discovered, is the best and most pleasant way to fall asleep. the lulling voice of the announcer creates a dark swirling sleep-world sea that it is easy to float away on. in my mind when i close my eyes i can see the entire british isles from above (at night-time), and all of these gently advancing wind-current vectors ruffling the surface of the dark waters. very relaxing. i like having a visual imagination - i also occasionally have success in determining what happens in my dreams (that is the most fun thing). but at the same time it has its downsides - i suppose hypochondria, for instance. it all comes with being obsessively observant.

my current book (i have become a chain-reader, thanks to my trainbound commute every day that demands some form of reading material) is The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut, the copy that I bought in New York's Westsider Bookshop (heart), with its garish cover and green page-edges and musty smell. I already like it - gosh, sorry about this schizo lowercase-uppercase mess - i'm a real sci-fi geek, i find it really escapist. i prefer things that take you out of this world and into another - i feel like i need that sometimes.

i miss the new york rats. and the tall buildings... oh. i wish london was tall. i love that feeling of insignificance but also of potential that you get in new york city. it's so exciting. i can't imagine that feeling ever exhausting.

having said that, i am rediscovering what's great about london and am not so desperate to leave any more. working in farringdon has opened my eyes to a whole new bit of the capital that i was not familiar with before - i love its industrial shapes but also the way in which a sort of human spirit has invaded its greyness and brought it to life somewhat in little corners of colour. a sprouting spirit that rebuilt it after the war and that has now translated to a new energy, an energy that pushes into these little nooks and grows things there. i don't know what i'm saying here, but that's sort of what i think about the place. its energy prevents it from being bleak, but it is gorgeously bleak all the same. (i have a thing for bleakness.)

on that note, - - - -

seasonal affective disorder

2009-11-16T19:31:00.005Z

bruised blueblack sky with white clouds, pavane op. 50 on the way back from work. i felt momentarily like i was escaping.

there's no such thing as severing the heart strings that connect you to people that you love(d) but the connections can dull and be felt less painfully over time. i could cry but it's a drought.

the other day on the bus i watched a woman systematically drink her way through a handful of those little paper milk cartons that you get in fast food places.

and i had twelve avocado maki rolls for lunch and had to stop myself making it eighteen. i could have done eighteen. i wish i had.

f

2009-11-11T19:53:00.004Z

i am currently working my way through a bottle of beaujolais and listening to youssou n'dour.

2009-11-10T21:19:00.005Z

i've nearly finished dance dance dance. naturally, i am loving it. there is something so perfect about murakami's world, as if he's captured the essence of something in an orb of glass and invited you to examine it from all angles. it's absolutely so beautiful, but so subtle. what that 'something' is, i don't know. but i'm happy to keep reading.

i have a cabbage plant in my room. the cabbage plant is rather a difficult customer, i have realised. you have to water him very often or his leaves shrivel up and can then be pulled off, crispy. i spent a few minutes doing this the other day and now he's just a sort of bald crispy top sticking out of a sad bed of soil. not so attractive, but i like him all the same.

speaking of attractive, a very beautiful man came into the office today, which was a bit of a novelty. i don't know if anyone else is like this, though, but when someone's too attractive it freaks me out - when they are there i feel a bit ill and when they're gone i experience a strange empty feeling. someone else expressed this in something i read recently - i forget what it was, sadly - but a devastating feeling that the beautiful things are not meant for you, and that you'd rather never have seen them.

also i have decided that aubergines are the meatiest vegetable.

the other day the screen at the train station said something like 'leaf fall timetable' and then some writing and numbers after it. i thought, how poetic.

catching a falling leaf is supposed to be good luck. i've been trying half-heartedly for a few years to catch some. i remember when we were at school me and my friend kitty used to jump around under this particular tree when it was windy and try to snatch the flying leaves out of the air. i was always worried that whether or not you had good luck depended on whether or not you caught an odd or even number of leaves - i never kept count so i was always on edge.

red wine cheeks

2009-11-07T22:27:00.004Z

and juice carton gunk

is your heart still filled with rage do you

2009-11-05T22:47:00.004Z

so this is going to sound pretty fucking ridiculous but i am on the verge of tears because i just deleted my favourite ever email in a gmail blitz frenzy.

sitting in cold kitchen with two fucking annoying cats who had to come in because it's bonfire night. tempted to put them outside among the lightning hailstorm unless they stop annoying me.

working in farringdon as an intern at a publishing house at the moment. the staff are fun. i don't know what i think of publishing though, i'll see. i got a papercut on my first day.

i'm a big fan of Yo! Sushi at the moment, there's one near work so I go there for lunch with my book. watching the little plastic bowls of food whizz round on the conveyor belt is much better than TV. and most things. i'm a massive japanophile, can't help it. they make everything so simple.

the XX are top of my hitlist at the moment.

I CAN'T BELIEVE I DELETED THAT EMAIL IT WAS MY FAVOURITE ONE
and, ironically, the multitudes of emails that mean bugger-all to me are still having the time of their lives in my inbox. bastards.

my friend ed's just moved in with me, i think i've already succeeded in terrifying him with my irrational temper tantrums. but if you can't have an irrational temper tantrum in your own home, where can you, hey?

i have to go now, my heart is filled with rage.

got a prayer in memphis

2009-10-29T17:55:00.005Z

i'm feeling low, so much so that i looked up 'ways to comfort yourself' on google. came back with 'food'. so far i have tried drinking two glasses of water - this didn't help. then i had an Emergency Vitamin C!!!!!!!!- negligible effect save minor surge of energy (more energy with which to feel bad) then i tried doing a hair masque. my head's wrapped in clingfilm as i type. actually is having a minor comforting effect because it smells nice and my head is warm.

i feel like everything is a bit out of control at the moment. i'm scared.

having finished primo levi's wonderful the drowned and the saved i wanted to read something by someone i've not read before (saul bellow was top of my list) but when i got to looking at my bookshelf i couldn't face any voice but haruki's. i started reading dance dance dance on the bus today.

i would prefer a hug though. and a fire in a fireplace.

2009-10-27T12:17:00.001Z

shish kebabs i've forgotten how to write!

fuck it still hurts when i see a picture of you

2009-10-25T21:15:00.003Z

so you know when you think you've come to terms with something and then you realise you've not. yeah> i have that

leni by goodbooks is brilliant. if you don't listen to the lyrics.

2009-10-19T22:25:00.016+01:00

ok i'm back. this week (today constituting this week) i have been doing some research as part of my internship and i found some websites that i like. here (PARENTAL ADVISORY: may contain websites of a pretentious nature.):

http://www.anygivenname.org/

http://www.flamelikeme.tumblr.com/

http://www.sonmisonmi.com/

http://www.myloveforyou.typepad.com/

http://www.ponystep.com/

http://glob.anewyorkthing.com/

http://chocolateachuva.blogspot.com/

http://www.petrosc.com/

http://uglyoutfitsnyc.com/

http://www.ohno.se/

and my personal favourite:

http://catladder.blogspot.com/

there is also a website where you can make a map of places you've been. i did mine but it looked crap, even though i've been to a good few places. it was like a few shitty little blobs of red in a really really offensively big sea of blue.

whilst on the topic of the really really big sea of blue, it was only a couple of years ago - i am actually a little ashamed to admit this - that i first turned an illuminated globe around and looked properly at the other side of the world. and as i looked, i thought, bleedin' nora, what a lot o' water! my two globes (above) are there to remind us all that this planet really does belong to the dolphins, Flipper being their King, or the dolphin equivalent.

right. i must scoot. my new year's resolution is to make this blog more attractive. until then, ugly one,

adieu.

what now what now what now what now what?

2009-10-19T19:33:00.005+01:00

the previous post really is abhorrently cheesy, isn't it? sorry. i am still sad about the cat, though. i miss it.

some things i am saying:
i like beards - i think they're good, and more people should have them. males, that is. i'm sure cheryl cole could probably pull one off, though. that woman is a goddess.
next,
i saw frank lampard today in caffe nero on the king's road, thankfully pulling neither of the faces exhibited in the photos. my 15-year-old self, for whom lampard was a hero and, embarrasingly, a bit of a crush, would probably have wet herself. my more civilised, older self merely peed just the littlest bit.
3. BUSES: please DO NOT SMELL bad if you're going to use public transport. or grab your crotch at regular intervals. or read my texts over my shoulder.
4. i saw a Pet Ambulance today. it was just a car with Pet Ambulance written on it. it was going quite slowly, so it can't have been an emergency - maybe it was a snake with psoriasis. a shrimp with cystitis. a badger with a bunion.
i realise that the latter two are not common pets, but they should be.
5. when looking out of the window of the 185 bus (which i am growing to thoroughly loathe, but please don't stop running 185 i'm sorry) i saw a yellow neon sign floating in mid air in the black sky; but then i realised that it wasn't The Future, it was a reflection. no future reflection. i long for the day when signs will float in mid air, though. then we'll know.

right i have to go brb

a sad lesson

2009-10-13T19:31:00.005+01:00

A male tabby cat had been stealing food from our cats' dishes for at least a year, and we used to always shoo it off when we saw it. it was a nuisance, and it miaowed too loudly. when we came home we would often see it flee from the bushes in our front garden; occasionally it slept in the kennel. it had been getting thin recently so sometimes we took pity and fed it. about three days ago it ran into our house looking for food, and, outraged, i chased it out and shut the door. the next day my mum found it curled up on our front doormat. a few hours later the council came and removed it.

i am devastated at the death of this lonely cat. when it was alive we had never really considered it as anything other than a pest; when it had died we suddenly realised that it was a creature in need that we didn't help even though we were its only hope. the cat dying has made me think of the multitudes of suffering people and creatures to whom we turn a blind eye every day. i personally am determined to learn from this.

sorry, sorry, cat. i hope you can rest in peace, and forgive us.

though love's become a dying ember

2009-10-10T23:07:00.005+01:00

i'm sitting at my kitchen table. scampi, my cat (a.k.a. dame judi dench), is lying at the other end, asleep and snoring. it's dark outside, i can see my reflection in the window..

i went to cambridge this weekend. it was good to go, in a way, it helped me close that chapter.

i drank too much though and woke up leached of spirit

also i miss my friends

and i keep getting ill. i need to look after myself.

but i do feel like i have got to a turning point in my life. all of a sudden a change is going to come. i sense it. maybe it will coincide with going to jamaica, my ancestral home on dad's side, to see my grandma who is poorly. i think i'm going in november.

time is a funny thing but i have discovered that the best thing to do about it is to understand that it passes and brings new things. it cannot be fought. i am getting sick of friends complaining that they wish they were still nineteen because thinking like that only prevents you from appreciating what is good about this year. we are young, and this is the beginning of something different.

i had a nice evening with my sister, lazing about in the living room. we had spaghetti bolognese. she managed to cook a bit of string, too, something i will remember.

when i'm hungover i get so depressed

2009-10-10T19:35:00.001+01:00

things i want now:

- a hug

actually that's it.

holy cappellino!

2009-10-08T17:04:00.003+01:00

ally cappellino bags. WANT. all of them please.

and i saw a glorious creation from See by Chloe in Liberty too. it was perhaps like this

but blue.

but sadly, reader, though i've got taste i ain't got money. if only you could be paid for wandering the streets of london. wait, are there any jobs that pay you to do that? - roadsweeping, perhaps. ticket inspecting. and those people who paint lines on pavements. - time to get the ol' CV out again.

today i got called for an interview with The White Company in Brighton. still considering moving there to work for a few months, just to be by the sea and to have a bit of space to think. or not think. better.

saw the turner prize exhibition with my sister yesterday. i will post my thoughts on it later. i had thoughts.

2009-10-07T09:18:00.003+01:00

back from spain. i have decided to write up some of my america notebook before my memory fades. i'll put it on my travel blog.

DAY 1 of the beginning.

2009-10-04T18:51:00.000+01:00

i am making lists on my blackberry of things i am going to do. also

2009-10-02T14:53:00.004+01:00

i had a dream that i was watching myself in a story! it had a good ending but then i realised there were still pages left, so i never got to find out what happened.

spain is still dusty. there's not much to do here, hence my frequent scribbling. today dad and i drove to the nearest big town, villafranca del penedes (i hope i spelt it right). it was nice. i got bitten yesterday though, on my right thigh. it has swollen quite a lot but luckily i caught it in time with my piriton... bloody allergy. there are flies EVERYWhere here, it's driving me mad. they are landing on me as i type. i feel like one of those cows that you see on programmes about hot places whose snouts (do cows have snouts?) are covered in flies.

tonight we head to spain's gay capital, sitges. slightly concerned as to why my dad chose to live so close by. JOKES. HILARIOUS JOKES.

i'm going to go and eat some bread now. must say i've got to the stage now where i'm sick of holiday. internship has been moved forward a week, which is good, so i only have 6 days at home when i return.

well. i scoot.

p.s. i am saving up to go to japan next year. this is one plan.
another, to get an internship in the USA.
right.

to god/adios.

p.p.s. i love the murakami website, not least for its background music.

2009-10-01T15:34:00.005+01:00

soy in espana. this place is beautiful, but i'm covered in dust.

so yesterday i got thinking about airports. i just thought, wow, they're really strange places. once you're through the security barrier with your little plastic pouch with your toothpaste in you enter a sort of no-man's land, a sealed-off plastic pouch of space that holds you until it is time to go into the air. no-one can get in unless they've been sanitised, and most people leave this space via the sky. it's all bizarre if you think about it.

yesterday i saw a man on the tube who totally fascinated me. he looked like a made-up person. he was tall and Chinese and was wearing all grey apart from his shoes, which were black and clean and made of some sort of hi-tec breathable trainer-type material (i found these shoes very interesting). his grey trousers were a little too short and rode up slightly to reveal his socks. he was wearing a carefully ironed grey le coq sportif polo neck. when he got into the tube he didn't look at anyone and moved to sit in the seat opposite me. he then unzipped his rucksack very carefully and removed from it a book on mathematics which he proceeded to read contently for the duration of his journey. he was engrossed. i found myself siezed by an inexplicable desire to know more about this man's spartan world of numbers and neatness.

yesterday i read Banana Yoshimoto's Lizard in one sitting. what an evocative, provocative writer! at some points i found myself utterly moved by her sentences.

i have to go, anyway.

2009-09-30T13:59:00.002+01:00

oh shit i'm addicted to twitter. meant to be going to the airport in an hour and i haven't packed, instead i am sitting in the kitchen with a mug of cold tea, in my pyjamas. damn you interweb with your easily accessed stimulation!

2009-09-30T11:14:00.002+01:00

i am now a twittertwat called karaokeflo. hear me tweet.

i don't know what to write, though, i feel self-conscious.

also i'm going to spain in a few hours. hoorain.

cover letter superfail.

2009-09-29T14:57:00.004+01:00

today i have been mainly watching episodes of SUPERJAIL!* as a distraction from the tedious task of writing a cover letter that has thus far taken me six hours for a reason that I cannot fathom.

oh, and eating.

*watch it - it's good.

2009-09-28T22:54:00.002+01:00

OH, and i forgot to say! we got our cat back! found a few miles from our house. entirely nonplussed by her month away from the homestead. happy as larry. now, microchipped as larry.

quintessence of dust, scooters, autumn

2009-09-28T21:56:00.012+01:00

hi! i'm lying in bed listening to radio 4. i know it's early but i've been feeling a little sick again, i think i overdid it on the weekend. but i don't feel too down because i've had a good day today - i got an internship! hurrah! i start on 19th october. i had the interview today just off the king's road. went with hannah, we had lunch in patisserie valerie beforehand. vegetable soup and half a millefeuille. not the most stomach-friendly combination, sadly.

so yesterday we had the party in our house. it was nice and went surprisingly quickly. and i got presents, hooray, including some beautiful books. my mum's friend honor got me the agnes b. collection book, almost a scrapbook of all the things that the designer had collected and that had influenced her throughout her life. honor suggested that i do the same thing. i suppose i do, though, partly through this blog, partly through the little basket that i keep in my bedside table full of all of the little notes and photographs that are special to me and that i look back on from time to time when i need reminding of the people that care about me. a couple of things in the book stood out, as they are things that i like too - a pierre et gilles photograph, and one by nan goldin of jimmy paulette (not this one, but this is the one that i have on my bedroom wall at home).

i ate too much cake though. as usual. hannah and i went to bed at 11 after falling asleep on the sofa about 10 minutes into Withnail & I (despite Paul McGann. also, he looks rather like alan rickman, i think)

on my way home on the number 40 (godsend) bus, i saw london as a jagged silhouette against a sea of pink, turquoise and lilac-infused clouds, most strikingly seen over the water under london bridge. no photograph could have done this justice - this glorious sky. i was astounded that so many people on the bus seemed not to notice.

this sunset was the main inspiration for this post. i feel that, apart from my health (which is still not brill), things are looking up. and i am starting to remember how great london is. though i still pine for Chicago. sigh.

a bientot...

oh. i forgot to say. i want to go to africa. and japan.
also i am engrossed in J.M. Roberts' History of the World. i am currently on The Eve of Civilisation. the book has 1109 pages. i intend to read every one - perhaps i will evolve with the book. it is in fact extremely refreshing to read some non-fiction. and of all subjects, what a fascinating one. it is about humanity but, on a meta-level, surely also about humanity's tireless attempt to make sense of itself. an increasingly difficult task. but to think - all that time ago - the coming of speech! the discovery of fire! the creation of art! the invention of agriculture! we emerged slowly from some darkness; toward what are we heading?

one thing i found particularly interesting - apparently there was a period of some five thousand years in which the methods for creating and the subjects of art stayed largely consistent. how could we imagine such continuity in a world that changes as quickly as ours? reading about these creatures that would become us is strange, but at the same time strangely comforting - to think of this line that stretches so far into the haze of the past, rooting us to our origins. to think of evolution as a movement away from something but also as a sort of concatenation.

right, i need to either sleep or throw up. goodbye for now.

i went walking in central london and on my way to hyde park

2009-09-23T12:59:00.004+01:00

i saw this inscription on a war memorial:

'OUR FUTURE IS GREATER THAN OUR PAST'.

i thought, what a powerful message. i felt hopeful.

i am currently sitting in my study watching two men in overalls prune the trees in our back garden. these monster trees have caused much upset in the neighbourhood, so my mother finally relented and agreed to have them cut back. our 90ft eucalyptus is now a 50ft amput(r)ee. i was out yesterday and monday, but prior to that i had been essentially housebound for a couple of weeks because of my illness. i am on the mend now, i hope, and going out made me feel a lot better. autumn in london is beautiful. emma and i sat in st james' park and watched the leaves fall. i lay on my back and looked up at the lacy canopy. in my mind i made plans to find happiness for myself in every small way that i can, because life is a fleeting thing.

i am going to brighton this evening to see the sea and have a few drinks with my good friend ella. then on saturday my cycling around london plan finally kicks off with a free road proficiency lesson in which i attempt to conquer the beast that is Elephant & Castle roundabout with a trained instructor (because i am a pansy). on sunday my family are throwing me a party to celebrate my 21st birthday (only 53 days after the actual day, but who's counting? me). and then on wednesday i am off to spain to see my dad's new house, and my little brothers, who i have not seen in ages. sorry blog, you seem to have become a calendar. but i still like you and i promise to write more in the future (which is greater than our past).

p.s. i have developed, recently, a real fondness for soap. to have soapy-smelling hands is nice, it transports one back to a more civilised time. retro. more people should smell of soap. savon de marseilles is the best. and what the hell happened to talcum powder? other things i dig at the moment are jasmine tea, bbc radio 4 and orange nail varnish. my current shade is 'orange you cute' by sally hansen. i hope it has oranged me cute. i also have been listening to ron sexsmith and bonnie 'prince' billy. i also still miss chicago and am still on the lookout for an american to marry so that i can move there please.

p.p.s. how did i forget to write about Bestival? It was brilliant, i only wish i hadn't been ill so that i could have enjoyed it more slash HAD A DRINK. I will never forget: seeing Kraftwerk with Meera as the sun set/dancing in the reggae tent on sunday/ hearing Elbow sing 'newborn'/thinking i was going to die because i'd inhaled too much laughing gas/having chocolate-covered rich tea biscuits for breakfast/sleeping in all of my clothes and half of meera's every night. i will almost certainly go back next year.

bye for now.

oh but p.p.p.s when i was in soho yesterday i noticed that they seemed to be building a Central Perk! oh look! umm... i have to go now.

2009-09-09T11:01:00.005+01:00

right. i've been ill continuously for nearly two weeks and been to two doctors and i'm still sick and i'm really really really really really really really really really really really reallyreally really really sick of being sick. and my mum thinks it's stress related but i didn't think i was stressed but i am now, because i'm stressed about being ill and the doctors not knowing what it is. and being me i'm convinced that i have all manner of deadly diseases.

2009-09-05T22:49:00.004+01:00

cycology

2009-09-04T17:03:00.003+01:00

so i have set myself a little challenge. i am going to explore london on my bike. the only flaw in my plan is the fact that i don't like bikes and am scared of cycling on the road. so i am going to book a free road cycling lesson (thankyou, London Borough of Southwark!) and see how it goes. i will keep you posted on that. also i have started applying for work. it feels good to be productive, even if nothing happens. i am currently in my room sitting on my bed listening to the beatles really loud. my favourite at the moment is 'in my life'. i think it's very good; well done the beatles. i have also decided that sufjan is even more brilliant than i initially believed him to be. he's playing in new york for the first time in two years. i want to go so badly.

yesterday i went with my friend emma to the ICA to see the most pretentious film i have ever ever ever seen. if i was on my own i would almost certainly have walked out or vomited at the point at which daisy lowe, the 'love interest', started twirling around in a polkadot dress and pigtail and then started kissing her lover whilst they were both standing knee deep in a lake. it was revolting. we walked out before the band noah and the whale, whose film it was, came on stage for the q & a. our exit was badly timed because we had to push past the entering band on the way out of the cinema. i'm sure i heard daisy lowe (who is not as pretty in the flesh as she is in the agent provocateur ads, what a surprise!) tut. then we went for drinks in Retro bar and found ourselves, as usual, surrounded by gay men. a lady came round with a request sheet and emma requested pet shop boys, i madonna (la isla bonita, brilliant) but we left before they played it and went somewhere else and drank wine that tasted of vinegar with sugar in it. then we ran into this girl i don't like and she made me feel ill and i wanted to go home but instead we decided to drink more and snuck into a fantastically grotty member's club on greek street and were invited to be members for £1. my first private member's club. then i walked my friend down charing cross to tottenham court road, walking past the huge illuminated 'priscilla queen of the desert' stiletto on the way, and then, having dropped her off, i walked back to the stiletto, which is where i catch the bus that takes me home. waiting for the bus opposite a big drag queen shoe makes the experience that bit more special.

i am now going to make myself some pasta.

tune in soon/never for more informative fun!

2009-08-31T23:54:00.002+01:00

i miss Chicago please

3 coats of 203 Miami Peach

2009-08-31T16:17:00.002+01:00

and now for a job. i have a cold in my head and feel quite bad. but being home has been surprisingly ok, i have done all of my filing and finally feel at the stage at which i can actually do things. perhaps apart from keep up to date with my blog. shredding my bank statements from as far back as sixth form was immensely therapeutic. with each dusty bucketload of massacred paper i felt a little happier. so i would feel quite good today if it weren't for this cold and the fact that i am all but bedbound on the day of the carnival - but i've got used to always being the kid that stays at home and misses the party. ha.
i don't know when i last wrote, but i have officially been at home in dulwich since the 22nd. before that i was in leeds with my grandfather, whom i accompanied to hospital every day for a week. i'm getting used to hospitals now, which is good, because i used to have a big fear (possibly induced by watching too much rolf harris in my youth). and i daresay i find death a little easier to get my head around too. i probably shouldn't say that but it's true. the more that you are exposed to something the less terrifyingly it seems to loom.
our cat has gone missing; i miss her even though she didn't like us very much.
i am worrying about money, but i know that this is normal for a graduate. however i have become a little more thrifty and have developed more of a make do and mend attitude - i've done a lot of sewing of things and have returned broken things to shops for replacements and things like that whereas before i might have bought new stuff. i did buy a beautiful dress the other day though, it is a cream creation from the fifties that is covered in a japanese print that involves pink blossom creeping over a trellis. it also has japanese characters on it posing as flowers which, according to the lady at the shop at which i bought it, says 'pretty blossom'. clever. i do have my suspicions that it might say 'oyster happy friend' or something similar, though. you never know. unless, of course, you can read japanese. speaking of japanese i am addicted, officially, to murakami. reading his books is like reclining in a bathtub full of custard. with an oyster happy friend. i love him. my current read is dance dance dance, recommended to me by a man in chicago (how i miss that place!) who served me falafel. i have read a bit but it hurts to a little to read at the moment so i'll wait until my head unclogs.

ppphhhtlll.

'He just didn't know what he was looking for, until after he found it.'

2009-08-29T18:01:00.002+01:00

- Leonard Rosenman on Stanley Kubrick

2009-08-14T01:38:00.003+01:00

firstly, i'm wearing a jumper with dancing santas on. WHO STOLE SUMMER? please return it. very strange moving from the very sunny if not too sunny climes of new york city to this grey shit.
and secondly, HEllo Blog, i'm back! i returned from the states on tuesday, having had to fly via dusseldorf. the aeroplane was boiling hot and i was sitting next to an overweight teenager with body odour problems. i tried to watch the inflight entertainment but was unnerved and distracted by the woman seated in the aisle opposite me who insisted on eyeing me intently throughout the flight. the second flight from duss to stansted was very nice though - i've never been on such a small plane before, and because the flight was just an hour we got little snacks instead of a meal, and i like snacks. so then i got home and it was all very strange. my house seems to be even more claustrophobic than before, seeming to have accumulated a hell of a lot more stuff - there are clothes and bags and mugs and magazines and towels and small animals absolutely everywhere and i don't understand where they came from. i have not yet gone mad because i feel a bit spaced out, it must be the jetlag. this jetlag is numbing slash delaying the approach of the great Fear that i am sure is about to hit me when i realise that i am a graduate and i have to get a job and what the fuck am i going to do. so thankyou, jetlag. i have spent the past couple of days, then, in a bit of a haze, lurching from kitchen to sofa to bedroom like a drunken bee in winter. my bedroom, though, i have rearranged, which is what i always do in moments of crisis. somehow moving objects around to create new spaces gives me a momentary sense of control. i think my room looks very nice now, the best yet. i put a map of ancient rome on the wall. my fervour earned me some pulled back muscles, though, sadly, because i moved my double bed across the room on my own, being an impatient fool.
this house is full of moths. my mum is on a mission to kill each and every one of them but i don't really have the energy to do it. also i think they're quite cute and don't really like killing things. except mosquitoes. this evening i went into the kitchen, having heard a noise, and saw a red admiral butterfly dancing under the ceiling light. i've never seen a butterfly at night before - it was quite special. writing this makes me realise that my fear of insects seems to have lessened over the course of the past few months. over the course of my holiday, in fact, i bravely dealt with both a millipede And a cockroach. next step: molluscs. ok blog the word 'molluscs' has just alerted me to the fact that this is a terrible, pointless, flavourless, ugly and cumbersome post; i both realise and apologise. but i'm tired and can't sleep, partly because i have toothache (damn you, wisdom teeth!) and partly because i am very excited about getting my holiday photographs back. i deposited eight disposable cameras at the chemist's on tuesday, and by my estimation that makes around two hundred photographs. i really can't wait. well, i can.
other things. my dad has moved to spain, which is strange. but i am possibly going to visit him in a week.
i really miss american food. what i wouldn't do for a slab of marinated tofu or a nice, shiny bagel with a soft centre and chewy yet strangely crispy outside now.
ok i'm going mad. i will try to sleep, particularly because i plan on heading to the south bank early tomorrow morning (o beloved spot!)
good night.

facebook.vom

2009-07-24T03:11:00.001+01:00

each ending is a new beginning. when one door closes, another opens. life begins at 40. etc.

2009-06-26T12:13:00.007+01:00

do you know what feels really good when you're in a sad mood? deleting facebook friends. try it. this may be the one advantage of facebook that i have discovered.

things i've done recently:

1. thrown the detritus of my life into bags which then went into my parents' cars and sped off back to the dreaded suburbs. i was literally emptying the contents of drawers into plastic bags. i'll have to sort it all out when i get home (i am still in cambridge now, waiting to travel home with friends this afternoon. sitting in a computer room with a purring air conditioner.)
2. graduated; what a strange ritual; what a sad day
3. found out that michael jackson is dead. it gives me the heebie jeebies.
4. booked a return flight from new york on 10th august, meaning i'm in the states for about 6 weeks from tuesday (starting in san francisco for independence day!)
5. had a lot to drink
6. cried a fair bit; about various things.

suffice to say i am feeling a little drained now. i'm a bit of a zombie. think i'll need to sleep solidly for a few days. maybe on the sofa. with my cat.

the next time you hear from me i will be in the states, provided i don't get the dreaded black swine death/provided they let me in the country. when i'm there i will be writing on my travel blog. watch that space.

2009-06-19T10:13:00.001+01:00

oh oh oh oh i get my exam results in an hour oh i feel so sick !

2009-06-01T22:25:00.002+01:00

i'm mending things. i just sewed up a white shirt that i tore a few months ago at a party. and then sewed four buttons back onto a dress i bought in paris. both of these items were damaged on drunken nights. i must take more care of myself/my things. also my phone is broken - i spilt water on it. and my ipod. oh.

but today i bought a dress. it's a classic black vintage long-sleeved thing with a scalloped neckline. it fits perfectly and i like it, but it makes me look like a victorian widow. maybe that's good. maybe i am a victorian widow. near enough.

fire escaping

2009-05-31T23:36:00.004+01:00

oh gosh blog i was really scared then, i thought i had lost my account. whoosh into the cybether. phew.

hi. i've finished my exams; i'm still alive. i went home on friday for lunch in a restaurant near tower bridge. i met some distant relatives from america. maine and florida. i came home that night. blog everyone else still has exams, or is at home. there's not an awful lot to do in cambridge at the moment that's not lonely.
today i went to the fitzwilliam museum. i wandered around among the pottery and was struck by the ugliness of the early british pottery in comparison to the chinese. the british stuff looked like it was made of bread, lumpen and coarse and deathlike. the chinese artefacts mesmerised me. the lines so fine, the colours the most beautiful but subtle, like those reflected on water in autumn. i stayed in the museum for several hours, inspecting this world of things. all of these randomly-arranged homeless objects. when walking around a museum i sometimes feel lost. metaphorically lost. i did today. in these things made. is this mankind, here, in this collection of specimens?
i then went to walk by the river and ran into my friend nina, who invited me to go punting with herself and her sisters. i accepted. it was a hot day, very hot. greenfly all over the river. we had to pull the boat up on these rollers to get to another bit of the river. it was hard, but on the way back it was easy and the boat started to roll down on its own. it was going quite fast and nina shouted to jump in so in a move worthy of arnold schwarzenneger i leapt in whilst the boat was speeding down on the wheels and then found myself speeding out into the middle of the river without a pole. luckily there were people on the bank (into whom the boat crashed) who helped out, quite reluctantly. it was funny. then i came back to my room, where i have been since then. i finally ventured out onto the rusty fire exit because it was so nice outside and i wanted some air. i sat up there for a couple of hours with a pot of jasmine tea and a book (the man in the high castle, i have just finished it, wonderful. also i've just realised that is a coincidental title.) and a warm jumper as the sky became a deeper blue and i read, and watched the crows and pigeons scud across the sky and land on the roof of castle house and felt quite peaceful, in my little spot. i was too scared to put all my weight on the escape, though, because it is really quite rusty and i don't want it to collapse and kill me. so i had to sort of sit inside my window ledge, which was not the most comfortable.
and then i created a googlemail account for myself to signify my moving into another era of my life. i am now fully prepared.

since i last wrote i have seen star trek:the movie three times. ohh dear (oh yes). i'll try not to leave it so long next time blog. sorrybye.

r u i n s (i found it)

2009-05-19T12:10:00.007+01:00

Isabel took a drive alone that afternoon; she wished to be far away, under the sky, where she could descend from her carriage and tread upon the daisies. She had long before this taken old Rome into her confidence, for in a world of ruins the ruin of her happiness seemed a less unnatural catastrophe. She rested her weariness upon things that had crumbled for centuries and yet still were upright; she dropped her secret sadness into the silence of lonely places, where its very modern quality detached itself and grew objective, so that as she sat in a sun-warmed angle on a winter's day, or stood in a mouldy church to which no one came, she could almost smile at it and think of its smallness.

- - Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

vive le cinéma

2009-05-17T20:54:00.006+01:00

Nadar: 'My dream is to see the photograph register the bodily movements and the facial expressions of a speaker while the phonograph is recording his speech' (Feb 1887)

i wish i could imagine what it was like to see film for the first time. even this gives me goosebumps - the moving photograph!

2009-05-14T16:20:00.001+01:00

miaow.

i hate Oedipus, stupid eye freak.

2009-05-13T22:53:00.001+01:00

i have chewed all my nails off.

i am going to fail my exams.

2009-05-09T23:27:00.001+01:00

i have blue nails.

i just saw star trek. brilliant.

also. i'm pissed off because 'someone' is having a party downstairs. it's exam term. seriously.

ok.

2009-05-09T18:02:00.006+01:00

i'm ill. when i get a cold i always feel like i'm underwater. submarine.

saw beirut last night in london. sadly, not as good as last time i saw them. they lacked energy. and enthusiasm. and incidentally zach has put on weight and now looks like the guy from keane.

they played 'nantes' first. they didn't play 'guyamas sonora', my favourite.

think i might go to the cinema tonight to combat the feeling of shitty helplessness that one gets when one is poorly.

i bought a nail varnish today called '291 Cobalt Blue', by Barry M.

crabs

2009-05-06T22:15:00.005+01:00

today i went to a class on lucian freud. one of his models, the benefits supervisor, spoke in an interview. she said that she thought she looked, in his pictures, like a 'fat crab'. it made me laugh. partly because i realised that she, the model, was a real woman. i had never really considered that the models in his paintings could be anything other than strange bodies. somehow i didn't conceive of them as real people with clothes and opinions. opinions on versions of themselves that are, actually, not them.

when i am at home, and worn out, i go to the south bank by waterloo bridge. i like to sit on a bench by the river and watch the lights merge and separate on the water until i feel that i am no longer myself but a trembling light that dances and merges with them. - i would like to be there.

tonight i reread it and i think that maybe the tragedy of romeo and juliet stems from the impossibility of reconciling the lovers' desire to flee together into the darkness with the audience's desire to have the lovers forever in view. the treachery of the stage.

2009-05-05T17:20:00.003+01:00

'At the center of the Arensberg group was Marcel Duchamp, who had arrived in Manhattan in the early summer of 1915, preceded by the scandal attending his Nude Descending a Staircase, which had been dubbed by critics of the Armory Show as "an explosion in a shingle factory."'

WCW & Others, p.37

2009-05-02T18:49:00.004+01:00

hi blog. after lunch it was sunny so i sat by the river with my feet on the ledge just a few inches from the water. i was reading yukio mishima's death in midsummer. i thought it was lovely. i wish i could read it in japanese. i have only just discovered him and have read about his life and his ritual suicide and i find him really so interesting. the suggestion that he planned a coup that he knew would fail so that he could act out his own (gruesome) ending. he made a fictional character of himself, perhaps.

rambling. and then i went to the university library but didn't want to go in because the air was so nice so i sat outside on the steps and read some more. then i ventured in, and to the secret world of floor 6 of the south front. the smell of books clamped in the darkness. so much silent knowledge. i fancy that if you were stealthy you could live on that floor for a few days and nobody would notice.

And then i went to the fac and tried to read some Carlos Williams. i couldn't concentrate.

i have had this poem in my head for a few days.

and something about ruins that i once read. what is it? i remember really liking it; i will try to hunt it down. but that's the thing about memories. they are like marbles; the more fervently you try to reclaim them the further they roll under the sofa.

l'enfer, c'est les autres (le ciel, c'est les chaussures)

2009-04-30T21:56:00.005+01:00

who needs a man when you've got a handsome pair of new shoes that you are wearing now. you meaning Me.

hi blog. i think it doesn't need to be said that i am sorry for neglecting you. very bad.

well, i'm in the middle of exam term. i am being reading things that i am enjoying. today i have reading derrida's memoirs of the blind. he says that when you look at the eye of a blind person it is naked. sighted people hide behind the gaze. also he said the eye is like the sun. and like a curtain. and other things.

good.

blog i am too tired to continue writing, i had a late night last night. tried to dance, but felt a little triste. i promise to write soon.

2009-04-19T18:28:00.002+01:00

i want to live inside Fauré's Pavane, Op.50. i think it would be a beautiful life, I really do.

(if a little sad, but what exquisite sadness.

2009-04-17T02:21:00.002+01:00

hi blog i'm sorry i've been neglecting you but i have been very stressed. i have been neglecting myself also. i'll sort it out soon.

i am in paris today, it's ok

dystopian visions

2009-03-15T18:11:00.004Z

hi blog. it's the end of term. hooray. i am exhausted.
last night i went to my first ever Film Marathon at the arts picturehouse. it was called 'dystopian visions' and they played a scanner darkly, blade runner and a clockwork orange from 11pm-6am. a strangely wonderful experience. especially wonderful to see kubrick on the big screen even if i was asleep intermittently throughout the film curled up in the folding cinema chair with my coat on because it was cold. blade runner was my favourite. what a beautiful film. it seems to me like blade runner is what A.I. aspired to be.

when me and hannah were making our shaky way back to the colony the sun had just risen and orange and pink clouds were spreading over the lightening sky. there was nobody about, save the birds. they were running around on pavements and flapping around windows and perched all over roofs and lampposts, wherever you looked. it was eerie, it felt like the apocalypse had come and the only people left on earth were me and hannah and these birds. when we got back to colony i heard a scratching above my head and saw a little ginger cat hanging on between two boughs of a tree with its claws. it appeared surprised that humans had interrupted its daily ritual, and soon leapt away into the bushes. it seems that cambridge belongs to the animals in the early morning.

for breakfast (at 4pm) i had soup with tomatoes. and now i am meeting ed for dinner at the anchor. and i can hear birds calling outside my window.

2009-03-10T19:11:00.005Z

i am tired.

the moon is big and yellow tonight. veiled in blue mist. i tried to think about what it looks like unpoetically but decided it does actually look like paper. a big circle of paper punched out of a huge yellow sheet by a massively large holepunch operated (in the admin department of heaven) by the HAND OF GOD.

haha.

oh dear. i need to sleep.

oh, and i had fried cheese for dinner. no lie.