Thus far today I am calm. I have, however, only be awake for an hour. So it would be a little odd if I had worked myself up into a state of hysteria quite yet. I have, however, already glowered. That does not bode well, pre-noon glowering. I think on the whole life needs to start being seen in more positive terms before I make any real effirt to save myself from myself. At the moment - it may sound excessive, but there you go - it's just too darn comforting to think that one could, if one wanted, descend ever downwards into the dark of unbeing. Because my life, dear world, is going wrong. Cue My Ex-Boyfriend: But you are too young for your life to be going wrong. No no no. I am on a trajectory I don't like. I have more or less wasted (in a creative sense) two decades of my life. I have given in too much to the world. Cue My Mother: But you have never given it - I have never known anyone who has given in less to the demands of the world. But there have been such people and I am not one of them. Must Try Harder. Cue My Mother: But you have done so much! Like what? Like exactly what? I have talked the talk alright - but everyone who knows me knows I talk more than I write or indeed more than I do anything of importance. I am in danger of becoming (becoming?!?) a Lord-Henry-Wotton-ish character who sits sadly in a corner hoping someone anyone will talk to them and let them talk because that is the only way they can be themselves - the only expression of any worth they have - becuase they do nothing - they sit and they talk and they do nothing. Always a cristicism my grandmother levelled against my early writing. That they sit and they talk and they do nothing. But words are so much more real to me than the supposed realities of the down-to-earth. This earth of thiers is fascinating really it is but only from something of a distance for my senses stand between it and I and I can but peer at it from a distance like a myopic owl. *Note to self must not call my mother - as I did a few days ago - a myopic owl - however much she resembles one - as, as she says, the middle-aged are senstive beings* Mostly what is going wrong is The Novel. Or, as it might more truthfully be termed, The UnNovel. The NonNovel. The NotNovel.
Interlude:
Ex-Boyfriend: Would you like a drink?
Carrie: Um... Yes...
Ex-Boyfriend: What of?
Carrie: Um um um um um um... Coffee? Instant will do.
Ex-Bofriend: With milk?
Carrie: Splash.
Also what is going wrong is my inability to - without vast hassle - upload any photopgraphs. This is not the fault of Blogger. This is the fault of my computer-situation.
So I inhle the fumes of joss sticks and remember what I was going to write... Ah yes. Christian Saints. A minor obsession of mine last term. (Last Term! Never again until my MA will I be able to order time in that way! And what other way is there prithee? Prithee? Where did that come from?)
Interjection:
Ex-Boyfriend: I have a strange feeling this tarp's going to be as big as this room! At least we won't get wet if it rains! [We?!? You don't honestly believe you are going to pursuade me to join you beneath this bit of fabric in insect-infested woodland do you?!? Think again!!! Oh I sound dangerously like the sort of uber-sensible woman I dislike so much - I suppose I shall just have to be brave...]
There is a chapter in The Book I Read Most Recently entitled: Hunger.. 'Like all fasting, anorexia is a constant struggle with impulse, a drive for self-mastery that may in abjection find some kind of peace' (Melechi, 2003:290). I too have attempted to decide things which ought not to be matters of decision. Whether or not one's hair grows and stays grown ought not to be a matter of will. But I have made it so. I would, like Nietzsche's climber-upper-of-mountains, have will over EVERYTHING to do with me. Remote controls for the Sims around me. The strings to the puppets. The strings to myself. I remember a poem I write When I Was Very Young which teacher considered sinister. It was one of those I Wish poems. After reeling off all the socially-expected things I started on what I really really wished. One of these real wishes was that I knew what other people thought - what was in thier minds. A sort of child-scream against solipsism. It would make life so much easier, would it not? But then other people would know what one was thinking ONESELF! The HORROR! The point of all thise being that once one really understands quite how little power one has in a global sense, so to speak, it becomes imperative to excercise whatever power one actually does have as much as one possibly can. The older one gets, unfortunately, the less of this one realises one has. Even over oneself. The only thing I can refer to is the collection of letters by Oscar Wilde in which he laments that he is helplessly and really helplessly besotted with someone - and that this someone is taking over his life, destroying the hours in which he could be writing, and generally deplete-ing his very self. Making him less divine, less an Apollo, more a slave to a beautiful thing. Well I am the slave to a beautiful sensation and an ugly outcome. Moreover I am also the slave to a beautiful boy with whom I am helplessly besotted. It is horrible. It is horrible to be prone to besottedness and it is horrible to correspondingly have insufficient control over oneself not to leave the destroying of oneself to said besottedness-realted-life-apathy.
Interjection:
My Ex-Boyfriend (singing): 'Too much love will kill you...'
Yes. Yes, perhaps it might...
And the horriblest thing of all being that until I am as I wish to be - as divine as I wish to be - hubris alert! hubris alert! - then I feel I cannot reasonably pursue anyone else. And I have a horrible feeling that to give up on my rather Ancient-Grecian-beloved would be to ruin my life. But I know also that probably it is some silly bit of my brain that leads me to think thus when practically what can one DO if someone is only marginally fond of one but burst into tears for a few evenings and then JUST GET ON WITH IT?!? '[I] could be marvellous, [I] could be fabulous - soon...' Yes and that is the story of my life. SOON. I will stop tearing my hair out - SOON. I will fall in love with someone who actually wants me to - SOON. I will write a novel - SOON. 'Tommorow and tommorow and tommorow.' Then death. That is what I am afraid of. Twenty years have elapsed and I have a limited number of twenty-yeas-es left. Perhaps - who knows? - not any. I MUST GET ON WITH IT. But inertia reigns like the thing in 'The City Under The Sea'.
Interlude:
Ex-Boyfriend: Would you like a drink?
Carrie: Um... Yes...
Ex-Boyfriend: What of?
Carrie: Um um um um um um... Coffee? Instant will do.
Ex-Bofriend: With milk?
Carrie: Splash.
Also what is going wrong is my inability to - without vast hassle - upload any photopgraphs. This is not the fault of Blogger. This is the fault of my computer-situation.
So I inhle the fumes of joss sticks and remember what I was going to write... Ah yes. Christian Saints. A minor obsession of mine last term. (Last Term! Never again until my MA will I be able to order time in that way! And what other way is there prithee? Prithee? Where did that come from?)
Interjection:
Ex-Boyfriend: I have a strange feeling this tarp's going to be as big as this room! At least we won't get wet if it rains! [We?!? You don't honestly believe you are going to pursuade me to join you beneath this bit of fabric in insect-infested woodland do you?!? Think again!!! Oh I sound dangerously like the sort of uber-sensible woman I dislike so much - I suppose I shall just have to be brave...]
There is a chapter in The Book I Read Most Recently entitled: Hunger.. 'Like all fasting, anorexia is a constant struggle with impulse, a drive for self-mastery that may in abjection find some kind of peace' (Melechi, 2003:290). I too have attempted to decide things which ought not to be matters of decision. Whether or not one's hair grows and stays grown ought not to be a matter of will. But I have made it so. I would, like Nietzsche's climber-upper-of-mountains, have will over EVERYTHING to do with me. Remote controls for the Sims around me. The strings to the puppets. The strings to myself. I remember a poem I write When I Was Very Young which teacher considered sinister. It was one of those I Wish poems. After reeling off all the socially-expected things I started on what I really really wished. One of these real wishes was that I knew what other people thought - what was in thier minds. A sort of child-scream against solipsism. It would make life so much easier, would it not? But then other people would know what one was thinking ONESELF! The HORROR! The point of all thise being that once one really understands quite how little power one has in a global sense, so to speak, it becomes imperative to excercise whatever power one actually does have as much as one possibly can. The older one gets, unfortunately, the less of this one realises one has. Even over oneself. The only thing I can refer to is the collection of letters by Oscar Wilde in which he laments that he is helplessly and really helplessly besotted with someone - and that this someone is taking over his life, destroying the hours in which he could be writing, and generally deplete-ing his very self. Making him less divine, less an Apollo, more a slave to a beautiful thing. Well I am the slave to a beautiful sensation and an ugly outcome. Moreover I am also the slave to a beautiful boy with whom I am helplessly besotted. It is horrible. It is horrible to be prone to besottedness and it is horrible to correspondingly have insufficient control over oneself not to leave the destroying of oneself to said besottedness-realted-life-apathy.
Interjection:
My Ex-Boyfriend (singing): 'Too much love will kill you...'
Yes. Yes, perhaps it might...
And the horriblest thing of all being that until I am as I wish to be - as divine as I wish to be - hubris alert! hubris alert! - then I feel I cannot reasonably pursue anyone else. And I have a horrible feeling that to give up on my rather Ancient-Grecian-beloved would be to ruin my life. But I know also that probably it is some silly bit of my brain that leads me to think thus when practically what can one DO if someone is only marginally fond of one but burst into tears for a few evenings and then JUST GET ON WITH IT?!? '[I] could be marvellous, [I] could be fabulous - soon...' Yes and that is the story of my life. SOON. I will stop tearing my hair out - SOON. I will fall in love with someone who actually wants me to - SOON. I will write a novel - SOON. 'Tommorow and tommorow and tommorow.' Then death. That is what I am afraid of. Twenty years have elapsed and I have a limited number of twenty-yeas-es left. Perhaps - who knows? - not any. I MUST GET ON WITH IT. But inertia reigns like the thing in 'The City Under The Sea'.
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