| friday i'm in love |
[24 Sep 2007|04:55pm] |
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it is as if god looked down upon me and every male within a ten-foot radius and said, "let there be uncomfortable interaction."
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| We can learn a lot from this man. |
[20 Sep 2007|12:16am] |
The Arthur of the Welsh
Plowing through swimming-pool waters
end-of-day otters at play
reincarnated Roman baths
on the edge of Aberystwyth:
the old the young the thin the fat
in watery funhouse mirrors
without clothes, stripped clean
bathing-suit pristeen
mass baptism, daily rites,
parades of generations pass:
But where is the lady of the lake,
where is Morgain?
Down at the bottom of this crowded pool
there in the otherworld
in the mirrored glass of the water
the island of crystal and apples
Lundy or other, Glastonbury,
there Arthur sleeps and Merlin frets,
there live not the dead
but gods entrapped in glass
reflected up in those who move
upon the surface of the waters
breathing in enchantment of life
tangibles the gods never knew
jealous from below
at mortals teaching children to swim
showing off to enchanted loves
speaking living Welsh.
Deep below, the lake,
crystal cave and fortress,
old gods yearningly
gaze up to a chlorine sky
wondering why the constellations play so
a living mirror of flesh
where still lives
the Arthur of the Welsh.
by Alf Siewers, my very lovable and bearded thesis advisor (taken from his unusually detailed facebook page)
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| i've been a bad girl, i ain't been playin fair |
[17 Sep 2007|02:30pm] |
i am about to be heavily caffeinated for my greek philosophy seminar. i didn't do the reading for it because i've always hated reading aristotle. and it's RHETORIC. the most BORING thing he ever did. i know, i know, he's like the fucking jesus of philosophy, but he's boring.
so i decided after staring into nothing/being incredibly high this weekend that i need to attend to my "anxiety." i call up psych services. i have dealt with them before and i absolutely hate them but there's no one else to talk to. when i tell my parents i'm stressed they assume i'm working too hard. in fact, i've just been ignoring everything and getting like four hours of uninterrupted sleep a night and staving off weed hangovers that last far too long. and wishing i could write folk songs and wishing i lived on a commune, and thinking those things like "i am dissatisfied with my role as a consumer." (coffee has kicked in.) as per usual, they're booked. they'll call me when they have an opening. now, why are we blowing millions of dollars to revamp downtown (which doesn't need it AT ALL) when there's a shortage of PSYCHOLOGICAL HELP at the university? i think the latter is much more pressing. i should write a fucking article. it'll start off explaining how i'm crazy and when psych services said they were booked, i flew off the handle and said, "i'm writing a letter!" oh my god, i'm never going to be able to sit still for an hour and a half now. i'll probably laugh way too loudly at turner's jokes. i raised my hand today. it was a moment. i said "um, the idea of opposites?" he said yes yes YES! i am a grinning success.
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[16 Sep 2007|03:28pm] |
i want to write folk songs.
i'm still obsessed with the lolcat below.
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[14 Sep 2007|01:38pm] |
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fuck livejournal. i would rather write in my paper journal but i don't. i think because writing there would mean committing to a level of honesty i simply cannot accept. the few times i've tried to sit down and write about the past few weeks or anything that happened this summer, i have to stop. it's so healthy.
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[04 Sep 2007|09:54pm] |
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oh hello social activism. i forgot about you in my cave of tomes.
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| crackerbox palace |
[03 Sep 2007|11:28am] |
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i am going to toronto on friday to see garreth. he's on a holiday there. i am very excited because i haven't seen him since oxford. he saw me off at the bus station with alexis, tom and jenny. i can't believe it's been months since oxford. it still feels like i was just there. it's so strange thinking about things going on while i'm not there. i can imagine everything on cowley road and i know crazy homeless people are trying to sell the big issue in front of tesco and i wish i were there. this "transitioning" shit is terrible. i can't sleep at night and i feel like i'm somewhere else. i'm just going through the motions again with much more pressure to do well. trying to tell myself i'm better off in more ways than one.
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| By thinking of things you could understand them. |
[29 Aug 2007|11:48pm] |
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i still think of this boy from oxford every day. his name was sam zeitlin. i met him at a shabbat dinner and we talked about philosophy a little. i felt that i could be myself around him immediately. he had a crush on me. he actually described it as a crush, which made it all the more sweet and wonderful and sam-like. i didn't know this, though, until we had already become friends and i had decided i liked him very much platonically. i was so happy with our friendship and so glad i had made a friend on my own. he was so interesting and smart. and he was interested in what i had to say about smart things and silly things alike, though i hadn't read nearly as much and wasn't nearly as clever. for some reason i was totally oblivious to the fact that he liked me and then he told me after an unfortunate incident at a peter singer lecture and never spoke to me again. i wish we were still speaking. i've never really met anyone like him.
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| be my winding wheel |
[29 Aug 2007|09:06pm] |
i think i have an oral fixation. i can't stop sucking dick. no, just kidding. it's gum. i've chewed almost a whole pack today.
i'm at school. the urge to shave my head and get a face tattoo has increased tenfold. i just want to do anything that sets me apart from the rest of this campus. anything that says "i do not feel the need to be a clone. in fact, i have self-worth." i suppose if i were truly content with myself then i wouldn't need to show everyone that i'm not "like them." but who really truly likes themselves anyway. no one i've ever met. the closest thing i've ever felt to complete self-worth was, i think, purely indignance towards others. thus the head-shaving and the tattoos.
i left my norse mythology seminar work til tonight. it is far too much to complete in one night and i have to do one of those silly reading responses that all of my professors insist that i do. i am following my usual pattern in which i become so overwhelmed by work that i choose not to do it at all. and there is truly so much work. my thesis is quickly becoming a monstrous undertaking, i haven't even begun to study for the GREs, and the only class i'm taking that isn't a seminar is greek philosophy--the bane of the modern philosophy major's existence, in my view. besides nietzsche, of whom we should all beware. i'm also taking a seminar on greek philosophy. cross-over greek philosophy! at least professor turner is a complete whack-job.
i wish i were under my covers. oh, i'm thinking of applying to oxford for grad school again which is the silliest idea ever. and in related news i continue to have dreams involving the destruction of major cities/the world. in my dreams the explosions keep getting closer to where i am. however i'm usually not scared and i haven't died yet. when i wake up i am nostalgic for a time that wasn't very good for me to begin with, and i think about that all day, and hope it comes to catch me again.
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[26 Aug 2007|05:42pm] |
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ugh. FUCK.
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[03 Aug 2007|09:05pm] |
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mood |
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 moody |
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i'm not having a very good summer.
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[19 Jun 2007|02:06pm] |
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mood |
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i'm home. it feels smaller every time and i'm pretty ah..sad. i want to cry a lot. saying goodbye to friends was the worst thing in the world and i had to hold it all in otherwise i would not have stopped crying. i'm sure i will get better, but getting better always involves forgetting, which is something i do not want to do as of now. so i called tom and cried my eyes out. maybe i'll drink lots today.
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[17 Jun 2007|01:24am] |
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mood |
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WHY WHY WHY, i do not know.
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| peter singer: not a minger |
[11 Jun 2007|11:14am] |
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mood |
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 lazy |
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fuck, summer. hot weather is so overrated. people will not stop saying how nice it is outside. even me, since it's become such a default of conversation. it wouldn't be so bad if living here hadn't turned me into even more of a pasty, sun-fearing cave-dweller. the less clothing i have to wear the more putrid i feel. i feel less like a person and more like a skin bag. only cats should live inside such bags. fortunately, it does look like it could rain today. i can always count on this country.
FUCK I HAVE TO DO WORK
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| mush |
[09 Jun 2007|12:37pm] |
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mood |
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let's talk.
...9 days til i go home. i'm starting to get that sick feeling. like i wish there were a few more weeks and i am going to be horribly depressed when i go home, but not that depressed because i'm going to be HAPPY. i just want summer to be fun and less poisonous than usual. i'm really sick of drinking. dahlia's birthday was last night and we went to love bar and i felt so ill the whole time. i drank a florida iced tea, which is a "classic of the OC," hah, and beer and wine because it was free but what a bad idea. plus "house music" is the worst music ever created. and i'm slated to drink again tonight. and of course at least three times next week. four. and you know i never can say no. BLAH.
i am going to london next week, though, to see the damien hearst diamond-encrusted skull! i'm really excited. we might do other fun things too, like go to the zoo. this is tom, alexis, eleanor and i. i'm really happy because alexis is coming to columbia for grad school so i get to hang out with him in new york. he's very funny and cool and german. and extremely greek as well. i'm going to learn german this summer, i think. it's such a pretty language. and then we can have secret conversations.
besides alexis, i'm having those unrealistic "of course i'll see you again" conversations with everyone else. it's actually really sad. karan is coming to america though, and garreth might be too. i can't not see them again. and peter is coming to visit dan for a month so that's good. and my sophaloph lives in ohio so i guess i have to schlepp it up there to see her. aw. but there are others. it's really depressing. i will have to try to make it back here after i finish college, but a lot of my friends aren't actually english. welshies and germans. and a lot of them have finished college this year anyway. hmm. i just don't want to stop going to school here or living here. i love it here. i feel like it's really become my home. i'm glad i did the whole year. though it is harder now.
oh jeez, i still have two essays and some poetry to write. ethics of war ethics of suicide!!!
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| the laziest person alive |
[03 Jun 2007|03:44pm] |
i'm trying to figure out how i ever managed to do work in the first place. so far i have read the first two sentences of "Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person" and then laid my head in my hands for a while. i would rather do that, apparently, than pretend to read this stuff. it's really sad. obviously there was a time when i was a better worker, otherwise i would not be here. i'm actually really bad with holding interest in things, long or short-term. i can't read more than two sentences. likewise, i can't finish out a school year. my interest and momentum tapers off. and yet all i can do is flap my gums about how much i want to continue school after college. maybe i just suck at philosophy. i mean, ethics is truly bullshit. you can't say one true thing about it without saying an untrue thing. you can't say definitively that moral values can be categorized as this or that. well are we trying to say what they are or what they have become? what were they when the world started? well that's very different from what they are now. cause somewhere along the line, somebody got involved.
in the end, the problems of ethics don't even matter. we discussed consequentialism last week and i was trying to come up with examples of actions that were bad in themselves, not just because their consequences are wrong or bad. it didn't work. the law and the moral code clash over and over again, and what does it matter? the law is still the law. and moral codes will be moral codes, no matter if they are objective subjective consequentialist rationalist blah blah. there are always loopholes in ethics, unless you deal the vaguest and most general of meta-ethics, which will make your head explode.
choosing to study philosophy almost feels like deciding to study physics now. i'm not actually very good at it, the harder it gets, so why am i doing it? there's a reason your interests and your strongest skills coincide, apparently. as restrictive as that is. i guess i could study much harder. maybe ethics just isn't my bag. really analytic philosophy was my favorite, it always blew my mind. but i wasn't good at it. too much math. i'm just good at writing flowery bullshit. if i were doing a proper english tute this term i wouldn't even have to try. it's kind of annoying. i want to be good at something that seems harder. i know it's not an easy thing to be good with words, but i am still unimpressed.
i shouldn't be mad about philosophy though. i remember being so happy when first taking classes, and really looking up to my professor, anne eaton. she was so excited all the time about philosophy. and we talked and she said that i was well-suited to it and she could see me doing a really cool thesis on animal rights or something. and yeah, that would've been great. she went to princeton though and it's not happening now. but i am glad anyway that i knew her. both female philosophy professors i had really influenced me. it's such a male-dominated subject. it was cool to see really smart women in philosophy. especially professor barker, who taught analytic. i was just really impressed by her, and she was so kind. and i did well in that class, because i thought the problems were interesting. so i'm glad that i chose to stay with a subject that isn't necessarily easy for me. anyway.
i was talking to john ballam my poetry tutor and he said i could get some of my poems published, specifically ones i wrote for the james joyce assignment. then if i get 50 or 60 published i can have a book. he made it sound so easy. i guess it would be cool but it's not my life goal. i have a friend here who works on his poetry every day. it's his "craft." he just discovered he liked writing like a year ago. for some reason when he talks about it i want to punch him in the face. i really like him but it pisses me off that he's made it into a job. i think it also makes me mad cause all my other friends regard him as some great future poet who is amazing (even though they've never read anything he does, they just know he's working). my closest friend here was like "he's one of those people who i really want to do well in life." well shit. i do hope he does well too and writes great poetry and all that. i guess it's just a bit of jealousy. why can't you wish well for me, cause i don't seem to try at anything? when i write a poem it's like puking. i puke and then i clean it up and then i'm pretty much done. the point is it was about expulsion. i'm not making little buildings out of popsicle sticks.
after all these years my views on writing are still very romantic. i don't want to hear about economy. but i know there's always been economy.
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[29 May 2007|12:52pm] |
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i have no respect for the oxford educational system and will continue to do all my reading/essays the day before a tute. sadly this works pretty well and i've never gotten a bad grade. i don't actually enjoy bullshitting or having a reputation for doing absolutely nothing. but if i was worried about it, i would not admit it.
one day my mind will focus, and that is the day i will move to a small self-sustaining village in the forests of vermont.
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| 15 big ones/love you |
[24 May 2007|02:03pm] |
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mood |
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 better |
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"oh my gosh, i saw this really attractive person today"
"well what made her so attractive?"
"well, i mean, she was over 55..and she weighed 25 stone"
"oh, mm, yes, wow, i can see why you'd find her attractive"
-peter king discussing aesthetic value. i love his examples. also, i made him laugh by telling him about the drunk guy i saw this weekend who pissed in an alleyway and then insinuated that i did not know vivaldi. but i know who vivaldi is. and peter king said that he thought i was the type who would know who vivaldi is. OMG! HE LIKES ME.
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love_vs_wilson's journal
