stitched

So, I’ve just sent my dissertation to be bound. Everyone’s been telling me how I’ll feel when I give it in – relieved, panicked, ill. But honestly, I just feel sad.

Sad because I’ve loved uni, and because, to me, this feels like the culmination of three years’ work and life and tears and hysterical laughter.

I had my last seminar this morning too, with one of my favourite tutors, and I can’t beat away the feeling that it’s all, well, ending.

It is, I know it is, it’s exam period and I knew it was coming to an end. I just didn’t feel like it was. But somehow, giving in that little pile of paper to be stitched together felt a bit like saying goodbye.

And I’m not ready for that yet.

snobs continued...

So, I'm reading the letters of John Keats for my dissertation and have come across conclusive evidence for my hypothesis that English students and their ilk are indeed incorrigible snobs.

Keats hadn't written to the love of his life as much as much as she would have liked one particular week. What was his excuse?

I have been writing with a vile old pen the whole week, which is excessively ungallant. The fault is in the Quill: I have mended it and still it is very much inclin'd to make blind 'e's.

See, happens to the best of us.

snobs

This is something I have learned during my time at uni: English Literature students are the most inimitable snobs. That is, when it comes to pen and paper.

Writing materials, granted, are something of a necessity when attending any course at university, but never have I seen such a glorious array of handmade, embossed, and leather-bound notebooks and fluidly elegant pens than when scanning a lecture theatre full of English Lit students.

You can tell when someone has forgotten their pen - they heave their shoulders in a great sigh of consternation and begrudgingly enquire if their neighbour has a spare. The trouble is that it is not a question of merely borrowing another pen, it is the dismay at having forgotten your own hand-picked implement of perfect weight, nib-size and ink type; the pen which, after trawling through and trialling endless others, you finally rested on as the perfect vehicle for transferring your flourishing ideas to paper. The ink which does not blot, spread or seep through your page, but skates uninhibitingly across its surface.

The page which, naturally, is the perfect size, thickness, and hue to complement your pen of choice. The page bound within the book which you weighed in your hand before making the decision between lined or unlined, and thereby constraint or liberty. 

Then there is the thin margin between quality and ostentation, refinement and frivolity. There is an unspoken principle of vanity which dictates that one's writing is worth reading, and therefore the writing materials should display these luminary ideas in a manner befitting their worth. It is not mere scribbling, it is a masterpiece. We are not mere students, we are Writers.

Honestly, we'd use quills and parchment if we could.

camera

This post is making me feel like the hugest underachiever. To my shame, I haven't picked up my digital camera with anything resembling intent for bloomin' months. 

My attraction to hulaseventy's gorgeous blog is somewhat bittersweet. In fact, the blogging world in general is at once beautiful and nigglingly irksome. Scrolling through endless pages of talented, creative people committed to whichever art form they have dedicated themselves to - photography, writing, film - is bound to provoke some twinge of unease.

Somehow they all find time to be gloriously creative!  Good grief. I need to sally forth into this next term with a much more determined focus - a focus on taking pictures in particular. 

Time to dust off the Nikon and look at the world with new eyes. 

Mary

So, first of all, happy new year one and all! Here's to 2011 - it'll be a good 'un, I can tell.

Secondly. I am currently writing my dissertation (as I'm in my third, and final, year of uni), and I've chosen to write about John Keats and Mary Shelley. I'm focusing on their personal letters rather than their literary works per se, and am discussing their desire to be remembered and their work to be recognised, as well as the huge struggles they came up against despite being incredible writers/poets.

Well, it's a blast if you're into Romantic poetry.

Anyway, I was reading some of Mary Shelley's letters today and came across this passage written after the death of her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley. It's so stunning that it actually made me cry. This lady knows how to write grief. I've kept her spellings:

...I can at those moments forget myself - until some idea, which I think I would communicate to him, occurs & then the yawning & dark gulph again displays itself unshaded by the rainbows which the imagination had formed. Despair, energy, love, despondency & excessive affliction are like clouds, driven across my mind, one by one, until tears blot the scene, & weariness of spirit consign me to temporary repose...

The world will surely one day feel what it has lost when this bright child of song deserted her - Is not Adonais his own Elegy - & there does he truly depict the universal woe which should overspread all good minds since he has ceased to be their fellow labourer in this worldly scene...

Thus may I also say - The eight years I passed with him was spun out beyond the usual length of a man's life - And what I have suffered since will write years on my brow & intrench them in my heart...

Wow.

Don't worry, I'll post something perkier next time.

ach

Fairly uninspired of late, it has to be said.

Possibly due to the fact that whenever I do anything that isn't tackling my essay I can't help but feel as though I should be tackling my essay.

Still, tomorrow is Bonfire Night: bangers and mash all round and a nice helping of spectacular fireworks should get the creative juices flowing.

Here are a couple of moments from last year:

breath of fresh air

The wonderful aforementioned Sophie left a voicemail on my mobile last night reading an extract of a poem to me. It cheered me up no end, amidst my great sea of tissues and ibuprofen:

These I have loved:
White plates and cups, clean-gleaming,
Ringed with blue lines; and feathery, faery dust;
Wet roofs, beneath the lamp-light; the strong crust
Of friendly bread; and many-tasting food;
Rainbows; and the blue bitter smoke of wood;
And radiant raindrops couching in cool flowers;
And flowers themselves, that sway through sunny hours,
Dreaming of moths that drink them under the moon;
Then, the cool kindliness of sheets, that soon
Smooth away trouble; and the rough male kiss
Of blankets; grainy wood; live hair that is
Shining and free; blue-massing clouds; the keen
Unpassioned beauty of a great machine;
The benison of hot water; furs to touch;
The good smell of old clothes; and other such
The comfortable smell of friendly fingers,
Hair's fragrance, and the musty reek that lingers
About dead leaves and last year's ferns...

From "The Great Lover" by Rupert Brooke

Leunig on Sunday

(All credits to Leunig)

Dear God,

We give thanks for the darkness of the night where lies the world of dreams. Guide us closer to our dreams so that we may be nourished by them. Give us strong dreams and memory of them so that we may carry their poetry and mystery into our daily lives.

Grant us deep and restful sleep that we may wake refreshed with strength enough to renew a world grown used.

We give thanks for the inspiration of stars, the dignity of the moon, and the lullabies of crickets and frogs.

Let us restore the night and reclaim it as a sanctuary of peace, where silence shall be music to our hearts, and darkness shall throw light upon our souls. Good night. Sweet dreams.

Amen

writing home

I admit, I love it. I think writing letters is one of the most personal things you can do, and - come on - we all get excited when we get a letter in the post that doesn't come from a bank.

I just love everything about it - the feel of the paper and the taste of licking the envelope, deciding what to write and how to write it, and crowning it with a perfectly-written address and golden stamp on the front. I could go on and on about it - and probably will if I don't rein it in - but really there is nothing else like it.

I think one of the things that makes it all so exciting is that you get to see people's handwriting. When almost everything now is typed, with only signatures being the main handwritten words, you can't help but feel you get a little bit of the person communicating to you through their writing. There is a vulnerability to it - voicing your thoughts and feelings through your penmanship. That is why it's so appealing.

Then there is the actual writing to consider. What colour? What kind of pen? Pencil? Lined paper, or plain? So much can be gleaned from these little details.

And that moment, when you almost step over the little envelope on your doormat - with your name on the front.

That's why I love letters.

I may be slightly in love with this man

'This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.'
-- Walt Whitman

A recent discovery of mine, and an utterly wonderful one. How did I ever live without reading this?

this is it

No more procrastinating - the blog is as perfected as you have the energy to make it before collapsing into bed, but now you need something to write. You can't just leave it empty, what kind of that impression would that make on the blogging community? 'Ah, another half-hearted glory blogger, she'll never last.' No, indeed!

So, with a sigh of trepidation and unwilling obligation you settle back down to think of something deeply profound, witty, and - if nothing else - remotely interesting to say.

Nothing. Blank.

Frantically you rack your brains, scrabbling into the deep recesses of your mind, grasping at some intangible and marvellous gem of philosophical or comic potential prose with which to stamp your mark firmly upon your little corner of cyberspace.

Zilch.

Inspiration snorts at you and says, 'Oh, come on. You can do better than this. Next thing you know, you'll cop out and write a some spiel about how you can't think of anything to say.'

So that's what you do.

Then resolve to find something deeply entertaining to write tomorrow.