What I feel like today

— via seabirjd —

(Alone, irresolute. Shy.)

When overwhelmed

Nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room;
And hermits are contented with their cells;
And students with their pensive citadels;
Maids at the wheel, the weaver at this loom,
Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,
High as the highest Peak of Furness-fells,
Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells:
In truth the prison, into which we doom
Ourselves, no prison is: and hence for me,
In sundry moods, ’twas pastime to be bound
Within the Sonnet’s scanty plot of ground;
Pleased if some Souls (for such there needs must be)
Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,
Should find brief solace there, as I have found.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

The Most Perfect Dress in the World?

Damn. Damn, damn, damn.

If this baby weren’t reserved, her yellow-polka-dotted YAYness would be mine. Seriously. Stains and all. I would skip up and down the street singing “La Madrague” all day. I would be happy.

Nabokov on Happiness

“Listen: I am ideally happy. My happiness is a kind of challenge. As I wander along the streets and the squares and the paths by the canal, absently sensing the lips of dampness through my worn soles, I carry proudly my ineffable happiness. The centuries will roll by, and schoolboys will yawn over the history of our upheavals; everything will pass, but my happiness, dear, my happiness will remain, in the moist reflection of a street lamp, in the cautious bend of stone steps that descend into the canal’s black waters, in the smiles of a dancing couple, in everything with which God so generously surrounds human loneliness.”

– Vladimir Nabokov in Selected Letters 1940-1977

 

“God”, of course, is not so relevant to my own sense of ineffable happiness. I could replace him equally with “nature”, or perhaps “the eyes”. If I reel in the scent or the sight of summer jasmine, it is not because God has so generously allowed it, but because I have. It is a re-awakening, you know, this recovery-of-life-post-mental-illness.

Happiness for me, too, is a kind of challenge. It’s a point of choice. For one so pre-disposed to be moody, reclusive and critical, to be happy requires a certain amount of force. Sometimes it’s a force I’m not willing to exert. But more often these days I’ll run all circles for a moment’s tilt at that “ineffable happiness”, especially in the presence of trees.

Right-i-o, then. Back to my essay on Wordsworth, Blake and Carlyle and the phenomonology of history. Then next week it’s Kenneth Slessor, ‘Five Bells’, and the world literary space. And then, I’m done. English Honours, kaBOOM.

Mm.

– Isisbridge –

I would like THIS house; it is in OXFORD; it has a RED door and a BUSH and most probably a CAT. There is nothing else that could possibly contribute more to my happinesses, except perhaps this.

War gardeners, 1918. From the Shorpy Historic Photo Archive.

Dispossession

“Let’s face it. We’re undone by each other. And if we’re not, we’re missing something. If this seems so clearly the case with grief, it is only because it was already the case with desire. One does not always stay intact. It may be that one wants to, or does, but it may also be that despite one’s best efforts, one is undone, in the face of another, by the touch, by the scent, by the feel, by the prospect of the touch, by the memory of the feel. And so when we speak about my sexuality or my gender, as we do (and as we must), we mean something complicated by it. Neither of these is precisely a possession, but both are to be understood as modes of being dispossessed, ways of being for another, or, indeed, by virtue of another.”

Judith Butler, Undoing Gender

Envy

Does this girl have the best fashion sense and most enviable locations, or what?

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I mean, really: this sort of excessive styleness is hardly warranted. This woman has the wardrobe (not to mention the hair) to die for. Uh-mazing! So aggravating! Sheesh! I love it!

Check the awesomeness

In other news, the thesis has been well and truly comb-bound and deposited, and I am now fritting my way through the research and writing of three essays all due in the next two weeks. Progress thus far is worrying, and confidence-pipping. But early mangoes and loose-leaf china jasmine is pulling me through. It WILL be done. And then — then! — I have five weeks in Austria and Hungary to pastry-chomp my way through. Ahh!

Comforts

Lately at night I’ve been retreating to bed with Emily Dickinson (a lovely fat Faber collected poems, kindly given me by my brother, for my birthday–he even wrote cutely in the front of it!). Sitting there, by my lamp, reading aloud, is my antidote to these days–these last days of the thesis. During the day, it isn’t Dickinson, but Millay who is taken up for pleasure when the writing and editing gets too much.

Once more into my arid days like dew,
Like wind from an oasis, or the sound
Of cold sweet water bubbling underground,
A treacherous messenger, the thought of you
Comes to destroy me; once more I renew
Firm faith in your abundance, whom I found
Long since to be but just one other mound
Of sand, whereon no green thing ever grew.
And once again, and wiser in no wise,
I chase your coloured phantom on the air,
And sob and curse and fall and weep and rise
And stumble pitifully on to where,
Miserable and lost with stinging eyes,
Once more I clasp, –and there is nothing there.

I’ve taken up residence in my mum’s study, with the built-in-bookcases that make me feel studious, and the deep wooden desk with brass handles, and the ashes of my grandmother. To my right, the leaves of the magnolia; to my left, a cabinet of china cats. This used to be my bedroom. I wonder, looking at the key in the french doors that has not been turned since I slept beneath, whether that is why I come here now: lonely with writing.

The sky is darkening. The floorboards are popping, as they used to. The parents have returned from a weekend away, with a pink cupcake for me, no less. Hehe.

Keeping focused:

 

—createsimona—

Oxford, ah. I could almost die with wishing.

It keeps me going through this thesis, the mere thought of perhaps being there this time next year. Of course, I have to apply first. But……oh, oh, oh! The hope of it sits in my stomach like a little warm, buzzing, ball.