thoughts, that breathe and words, that burn*

* Thomas Gray, ‘The Progress of Poesy’

That line gives me shivers.

I don’t know what to do, I think I’m fallin’ for you

Midnight, Friday just ended 9 minutes ago.

I’m supposed to be reading Samuel Richardson’s ‘Pamela’, but I was pulled away from reading about her virtuous resistance by my Chinese floormate who was very bored and needed to be entertained.

Just about a month in, I think Edinburgh is growing on me, cold, wind, et al. I’ve yet to go back and visit the graveyard nearby, to ‘do’ the Museum properly and to go shopping for warm winter things; instead I’ve been watching TV serials in a therapeutically obsessive manner.

It’s strange being alone most of the time, despite the fact that a lot of people on the streets are alone. I really have no idea what to do with myself when I have free time; after our carefully structured life at Stella, having to take this much responsibility for my time is just disorienting. Am I supposed to be at home reading a lot? Or ought I to be in the library researching something useful? The great mysteries of academic life.

I’ve been intermittently reading a biography of Shelley. Yes, I know I tell people he’s my favourite Romantic but I think that’s more because I believe I ought to have a favourite Romantic than any particularly intellectual choice made on the basis of poetic merit. Nonetheless, with my unerring instinct for picking obsessions that gratify my own self-love in some obscure way, Shelley is proving to be every bit as exciting as I could have imagined.

Sometimes, I feel less than literary. I feel like I ought to have a more mesmeric attitude towards words and writing; I ought to know more, read more, love more, quote more. Being around a large number of people whose aspirations are so identical to yours that they strip away your carefully-cultivated aura of bookish uniqueness is both humbling and disconcerting. Especially if your most important measurement of self-worth is derived from ridiculous comparisons with other people.

Nonetheless, Shelley:

Spirit of Beauty, that dost consecrate
With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon,
Of human thought or form, where art thou gone?
Why does thou pass away and leave our state,
This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate?

from ‘Hymn to Intellectual Beauty’

my feet hurt.

…and that title, in effect, sums up everything that this past week or so has been for me.

I’ve been drunk twice, been hit on multiple times, had my arm groped, my cheek kissed and been proposed to by a drunken man who uncannily resembled Barney from How I Met Your Mother. I feel incredibly happy – well, those superficial achievements ought to count for something – but the thought that keeps rearing its ugly head behind all of this is the fact that I still don’t have proper ‘friends’. Well, good things come to those who wait, or so they would have us believe.

My feet really do hurt!

elektra.

I’ve been attempting to write my bibliographical assignment all day – ok, not really, I’ve been involved in my usual cycle of work-procrastination-work-sleep-procrastination all day and I’m tired. I think the time has come for some dialogue with the Self, or is it a monologue, since I’m the only one talking? But am I one person or two when I’m talking to myself? Is there a Self and an Other within one person i.e me?

Yes, I’ve been reading theory.

So. I’ve been ruminating on the fact that I’m currently terrified of relationships but as a source of temporary comfort and future debilitating hurt, they’re indispensable as an antidote to my perennial boredom. Unfortunately all the men I have ever felt intensely attracted to are either a) fictional b) older than my own father c) too far away to reach. Possibilities for romance = zero.

I keep seeing these less-than-appealing men on tv, or in books and somehow, they have an ineffable magnetism about them, despite their general misanthropic attitude to life and their addiction to being ‘grey’ all the time, never black and white, despite a strong sense of self-assurance and power, stemming not from physical attractiveness but rather, intellectual superiority and sense of the self as being independent from social restrictions applying to people of lesser intelligence. That’s why inhabiting a moral grey area makes them appear more reliable rather than less so, purely because the grey area is of their own creation and that, therefore, allows them to control it rather than be controlled by it.

Strange.

The fact that they’re really old is a bit disturbing though. I don’t think I have particularly significant father-issues, but younger men seem uniformly stupid in comparison to older ones and always have been, to me.

Oh well, bedtime.

so.

For the last couple of days, all I’ve done is watch Prison Break obsessively.

I think, in some strange way, being lost in the lives of other people, who don’t exist, is my solace. For those few moments, hours, weeks, months, I’m not me.

I wonder if other people allow themselves to be as absorbed into an alternate reality; to the point where you cannot distinguish your life from theirs, where you wake up in their world, listen to their voices, speak their language.