detachment of the self from the familiar and the comfortable represented a path to an otherwise unattainable perfection, even to salvation itself.

It's Monday now, even though it's only 1am, but since I'm still up & reading about compulsary pilgrimage, I may as well sullenly update this blog. Sorry for the slew of shitty, exam-season-y updates; I'll try and get back to better habits next week, after this whole sorry ordeal is over. As well as some more considered Monday Words and the second part of that diary rambling, I.O.U. guys one genuine, actual, university-themed post (remember when this blog had a "theme", also known as a "point"? Ah, happy days), about how I appear to have managed to change my degree. Hooray!

Moving swiftly on, so that I can read a few more pages and then SLEEP, this week's thing is a Frank O'Hara poem. It's not terribly cheery, but you know what? It is, as I have said, 1am, and "not terribly cheery" rather appeals to my mindset. Also it is SHORT.

As Planned

After the first glass of vodka
you can accept just about anything
of life even your own mysteriousness
you think it is nice that a box
of matches is purple and brown and is called
La Petite and comes from Sweden
for they are words that you know and that
is all you know words not their feelings
or what they mean and you write because
you know them not because you understand them
because you don't you are stupid and lazy
and will never be great but you do
what you know because what else is there?

okay cool cheers for that frank

i have recently been attempting to construct a bishop.

I started this blog to be a record of my time at university, but am so absolutely dreadful at keeping it up-to-date that, whenever I think about this little patch of the internets I like to call my own, I feel a profound sense of shame. I've thought for a while that what I might be in need of is a little bit of structure, and now I know what it should be.

Firstly, I am an English student (single honours, although looking into becoming joint with history; irrelevent, but sort of worth noting) and secondly, I half-heartedly keep a commonplace book. I say 'half-hearted' because I'm absolutely as rotten at that as I am at blogging, but I have a lot of love for the whole concept of commonplace books and you will be hearing more from me on this subject at some point.

ANYWAY. For this reason, writing that is Not My Own is a very big influence on my life and my brain, so I've decided that every Monday I am going to post something here, like a poem or an extract from something, but not necessarily either of these things, that I enjoyed. I might talk about why I like it or it moved me, or I might not, but it seems like...it seems like a nice e-rendering of my headspace. A sort of cyberspace version of the beautiful commonplace book I left in Liverpool (and miss), a present from my flatmates.

I know that it's techincally Tuesday now, being 2am and all, but I care not! This week's piece of writing is These Boys Have Never Really Grown into Men by Brian Patten:

These boys have never really grown into men,
despite their disguises, despite their adult ways,
their sophistication, the camouflage of their kindly smiles.
They are still up to their old tricks,
still at the wing-plucking stage. Only now
their prey answers to women's names.
And the girls, likewise, despite their disguises,
despite their adult ways, their camouflage of need,
still twist love till its failure seems not of their making.
Something grotesque migrates hourly
between our different needs,
and is in us all like a poison.
How strange I've not understood so clearly before
how liars and misers, the cruel and the arrogant
lie down and make love like all the others,
how nothing is ever as expected, nothing is ever as stated.
Behind doors and windows nothing is ever as wanted.
The good have no monopoly on love.
All drink from it. All wear its absence like a shroud.

I decided to start with this one because the poet comes from Liverpool - he went to school on the Smithdown Road, apparently - and is, in fact, part of a movement called the Liverpool Poets. That's right. He used to pal about with people like Roger McGough, but I hadn't heard of him until I read this, AND he apparently received some kind of encouragement from Philip Larkin - one of my favourite writers.

The reason I like it, I suppose, is complex, and I don't want to deconstruct it on here (not tonight, anyway), because I don't think that would be dreadfully interesting. But it can be summed up with a quote from an Alan Bennett play:
"The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - that you'd thought special, particular to you. And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you've never met, maybe even someone long dead. And it's as if a hand has come out, and taken yours."

Two for the price of one, this week. And now to bed.

i don't really remember, but i think it is called 'auld lang deslang.'

Note(s) to self:
- stop being awake at super unsociable hours. Half three, sober, finishing an essay? What are you doing with your life? Remember how to write in the day like normal folk do instead of only being able to crack on with anything once it's past midnight.
- finish a damn book. You like reading, remember - that's just about the only reason you picked that degree.
- oh, yeah, and er look into changing that degree while you're on it. whoops

Tomorrow I am going to get up and learn how to function like a real human person again! The festive bit of the year is over and now we have a shiny new one, and it's more than a day old, it's all properly broken in and undeniable and really here, just like such greats as, oh, 2009, 2008, 2007-- you get the picture. Anyway, the long and short of it is that I am no longer allowed to stay up until all hours talking to friends about nothing or listen to Radiohead at 5am and go mental, or any of that sort of nonsense At All. It's business time.

And then, in a couple of days, I get to go see some theatre! I am seeing this and this and this, all for free, because of this. amazing. Part of me's looking forward to going back to Liverpool and part of me is already sad about being so far away from London again, because look, look at all the lovely free plays. ;_;

One of the first things I did in 2010 (after going to bed at 5am and waking up at 10, completely unable to sleep) was some tidying and a bit of light washing up - so I'm taking it as a sign that it's going to be a year for conquering shit. Although I did go back to the mass of duvets once all my friends had woken up, and then I barely moved for the rest of the day, so it's swings and roundabouts I suppose?

(At the start of 2008, I was woken up by my friend's super-excited flatmate bouncing on the bed, then climbing in between us with his chilly limbs. 2009, I was dragged from sleep by a different friend continually getting up to vomit, coming back to bed and then getting up to vomit again. so, ah. Low-key, this year, for one thing.)