It's nearly 4 am, therefore this blog post is coming to whoever in the form of a list.

1. I'm really tired and need better work habits.

2. The Instructions of Ptohhotep are really freaking cool and making me actually care a bit more about the Egyptians! I sort of knew/hoped it would get better once we started reading the actual literature (though I'm still really confused about all Egyptian history ever).

3. I did a lab that made me feel like a real scientific researcher in bio today. I screwed part of it up but it didn't even matter! Yay!

4. The first half of orchestra rehearsal was a nice combination of boring and frustrating. The second half was really fun.

5. I started learning Welsh roughly 48 hours ago. We'll see how this goes.

6. I'm going to attempt BEDA, starting now, with this counting for April 2nd and at some point hopefully writing a post to make up for missing April 1st.

8. I'm weirdly sad that Adrienne Rich died last Tuesday. I feel like "November 1968" had this unexpectedly far-reaching affect on what I want to be like and how I see myself. Like, it feels as personally relevant as "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" even though I feel like I have much less to do with it.

9. I really like Chaia Huff.

10. Henry Tilney should be real.

An Odd Update

I just had a really wonderful conversation with Ayo around 2 AM in the bathroom about antiomers (I think) and what one does with one's life. I love it here. She is so fabulously supportive. And Kelly is so nice and so is Ian and Patrick, and Colin is funny, and so many people I live with are just nice to be around. It would be nice if I could write this paper though, and had any positive feelings about it.

Oops.

Alas and alack, I have been shockingly remiss about blogging on here. And I'm not sure that I currently have a whole lot to say. Mostly I just feel behind on things, and about to embark on a four-day journey home which will prevent me from getting further ahead on any of them. It felt good to go back to my novel today, though it was bad  that it took me so long to write the few words I did, and I am so so far behind. It's not as if I went gallivanting off on particularly exciting adventures in the days that I neither wrote nor blogged. I went on one boat trip, ate delicious food and the most heavenly sorbetto of my life, talked to my best friends for over four hours, and drank a lot of tea. I read quite a bit too. Some Alan Bennett and Tolstoy and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and I finished the annoying, yet sometimes good book by Marisha Pessl. I went to a chamber music concert on Sunday and this evening. They played the Bartok String Quartet No. 5, and a Mendelssohn piece, "Das ist wahr?" I believe, that was really beautiful. I looked at war memorials here from the first and second world wars. Many of the names were the same. I love that sort of continuity. I sort of wish I had that-- that I lived in a town where everyone knew each other and your family had lived there for generations. Today we went to look at the goats my aunt has been keeping. They made me consider a life in which I tended goats. But in both of these lives, I doubt that I could spend as much time on the computer, or read Ovid, or go on to possibly study Akkadian. I think it is a reminder that it is difficult to know how much your life fits you until it is suddenly gone. On that slightly dark note, I will end this for tonight. Once again, BEDA has been not particularly successful, but I've had a much better time when not doing it than I had in April.

The Hour fills my thoughts.

I've watched it a lot in the past few days. Given the power to watch something over and over again, I do, until I've beaten the newness out of it and entered it more fully in my head. Or something--I don't know why I do it, but I do. Freddie remains utterly charming. The attention to detail makes me wish I lived then in a way that period dramas don't. It is somehow written as a love story to that era, somehow, even if it simultaneously abuses it for its prejudices. The prejudices don't quite balance out the appeal of the lipstick and dressing up and men in suits (how I adore men in suits) and the telephones, even if they are anachronistic. I wish someone would recite e. e. cummings (and my favorite poem at that--one I was thinking about earlier that day, completely unrelatedly) and tell me I was exquisite, and snatch newspaper from my hands and take my face in his hands and kiss me. (Ugh, what a sentimentalist I sound.)

Went for a bike ride today. Have yet to work on my novel. Ate delicious pizza. I remain slovenly.

Yesterday's post.

Written around 2:30 in the morning, so slightly scatterbrained, but what was meant for yesterday, and  it reflects the thoughts of yesterday.

It’s 2:33 am. My novel’s in a lamentable state; I haven’t touched it for days. I’ve stayed up because of the way the BBC’s The Hour just compels me to keep watching. I absorbed Episodes 2 and 3 today. Is that supposed to be the archetypal choice—Freddie or Hector? I’d of course choose Freddie, but I think Bel honestly would pick Hector. Freddie’s been around for years—why should anything happen now. But I shall attempt to watch Episode 4 tomorrow (or later this morning, as I suppose it really is.) I forgot to blog, so this will have to do for the 10^th. Today I read Before Lunch by Angela Thirkell, though I didn’t finish it till after lunch. It was quite good—hysterical at moments, and of course I adore Denis. It was odd for anyone to be in unrequited love though—well, at least, unrequited or doomed love that wasn’t purely amusing. Then I went for a walk to Dyce’s Head and thought about poetry and the Awakening and other much more stolid subjects. I must go to sleep earlier tomorrow. And write. And go for a long walk. And watch Episode 4 if possible since I must see my great love celebrate his birthday. He is so cute. I never was someone who had celebrity crushes, and now I have two tv-related ones. What is happening to me?

Baudelaire and an idea for a novel.

Today both my father and I bought copies of Les Fleurs de Mal by Baudelaire at the same bookstore at the same time, without realizing that the other one was. It was actually quite funny.

And I thought up the idea for my next novel, which I think will truly be a novella. It will take place on a jetty because of how it is a metaphor with the journey out and the journey back (the novella can be split into two halves) and the way it is a breakwater and it seems shorter than it actually is, and it is made by a bunch of interlocking, slightly geometrical pieces. And how there were three sets of pairs walking along (Mom and George, then Melissa and me, then Roger and Dad) and the greyness, and what a wonderful spot it was. I must think further about this idea as I quite like it.

But now to bed! To sleep, perchance to dream, as I have yet to shake this mortal coil.

Blargh! Only ten minutes left to blog!

Today I woke up late, but then I read Ulysses and climbed a mountain and went swimming and made pudding so it turned into a productive day.

That book is so seriously amazing. Every time I open it I get sucked into its magicalness, which is only a good thing. I love it because there is so much that I understand, but I also know that there is stuff I'll only understand later on, and then I open any type of commentary and realize there is so much more. So many layers! And apparently being meta is a postmodern thing, and Joyce was modern, so he was ahead of his time! I discussed literary things with George as we were walking up the mountain, and didn't feel annoyed. And we quoted Beyond the Fringe a lot, and then discussed Marx Brothers movies, which reminded me that we really are the other person that each other knows who has had the most mutual experiences, and that does matter. We have been raised on the same humor, and we're the only people who've experienced both St. Stephen's and FCS, and being a child of our parents, and stuff like that. And then after dinner my family had another lovely conversation. And then my dad got a bit annoying, and I remembered that sometimes I'm not utterly upset to be leaving in about a month.

And tomorrow we see Roger and Melissa! Yay!

Oh, and George and I discussed how annoying it is that even the stupid or petty people Stephen is friends with in Ulysses are much more cultured, educated, literate and witty than we are. They talk about sex, but also about God and Hamlet and life. Why don't I know boys like that?