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Below are the 25 most recent journal entries.

	2009.11.25  10.26 for the life of me, i can't seem to find detachable garters on the internet; or in high street stores! or tasteful garter belts, for that matter. how will i wear beautiful stockings without them!!! .... i really should be reading, but Jenny (this lady on the global MA also) sent me an email about paisley shawls (which is what she's writing her essay on) telling me that she'd gone and bid on some really old shawl fragments on ebay. naturally, i had to go have a look, and have now bid on a zillion things i don't need!!! I'm really congratulating myself on the fact that Steve liked my essay plan so that's one long essay kind of settled. Still have this one on early modern cookbooks to go though. Jenny is awesome. material culture is awesome. i think i'm going to enjoy this more than i thought!

	2009.11.15  13.27 i must be overdoing it... i *DONT* need a 17 article bibliography for a 2.5k word essay! it's the one i handed in last week, as a testament to my madness. and i wasn't happy with the essay in the least, to be honest. i suppose we'll see what my tutor thinks. i've since also been reading rabidly, at perhaps an unhealthy rate, my back is starting to hurt from hunching over my computer all day- school starts next week which will force me to get out a bit more at least! not that i haven't already this week, but it would take away the pressure of having to spend every waking hour in front of a book. i wish i had more time really- i like the course and enjoy the reading, but its perhaps a bit much even for me. ah well, back to class tomorrow!

	2009.11.14  17.16 and the title of that book be... FACEBOOK Music: Song Of Bangladesh - Joan Baez

	2009.11.09  15.22 i am suddenly desirous of a pair of black seamed hold-ups. this is not a good sign...

	2009.11.07  22.51 These Boys Have Never Really Grown into Men 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. Music: Rackabello - Martin Carthy

	2009.11.04  16.11 if this is so, i am a true bibliophibian; i am building myself an ivory tower tome by tome. yes, this means that i am spending prodigious amounts on amazon, but i am telling myself that BOOKS! are always justified spending. i just can't help it- every other book that i pick up from the library (that isn't cosmopolitanism) i enjoy, i laugh out loud at, i desire. and i want to be able to take that home with me; to keep me going through lean days and school holidays. so, i have clicked away, and in these few weeks have acquired various texts on early modern england (i'd buy almost anything on early modern england that i could afford, honestly), antique books (assuaging my conscience by posting some to kats), and... guiltily, all 5 volumes of the Child Ballads that i've been lusting after for YEARS but never actually committed to buy. and now i'm dying to have these wonderful john brewer and beverly lemire and patrick collinson and john walter and clive holmes and... it is no coincidence that when i remodel my room at home all the walls are going to be bookshelves. been there, done that, now all i need it the tshirt. Music: You're a Big Girl Now - Bob Dylan

	2009.10.31  16.36 how useful is the concept of gentility in today's day and age? i have always found myself at certain points being immensely grateful for my somewhat 'polite' upbringing and grounding in the arts and the gentle disciplines- probably to my mother's credit, who has always taken a somewhat classical Western slant to the way she brought us up. I have always been somewhat proud of my "accomplishment" according to these (perhaps outmoded) markers of femininity and achievement, but it seems in frivolous moments to still hold a great deal of validity. is it true to say that the singaporean "upper classes" align themselves with traditional modes of European gentility that the Europeans do not necessarily do themselves? i am aware that it is somewhat archaic to be priding myself on such odd qualities as having somewhat reasonable dress sense, an ability to host good parties, cater well, write well, generally hold interesting conversation and behave in an educated, sophisticated fashion with just the correct amount of insanity as to disclaim allegiance with overzealous self-discipline. who needs these values nowadays? and yet i see it as a means by which i can hold other people (skinny jeans/ "vintage-inspired"/ da vinci a la dan brown/ people who keep sorry little food blogs with bad photography and inaccurate english) in contempt. i am surprised in reading about early modern gentility how strikingly familiar it all is; perhaps because the theoretically strict caste-based context in which there is a very strong narrative of personal social mobility is one which seems to be to be very... contemporary singaporean. and also, how very identifiable it is! i am, of course, guilty as charged. sure, i'll never earn as much as that girl i once knew who's doing business studies in NTU, but she will never be invited to my salon!! Harumph!

	2009.10.23  07.34 it's not because i'm an early riser i just never got to sleep last night yes, it has come to this: i am planning my costume party on excel just so i can familiarize myself with it before i start playing with historical data for the QRS assignment. Ofc, it's alienating me (as most technology tends to do) but i shall persevere!! haven't found a suitable database yet, which is just as well because im thinking of changing topic again. it's cold and i woke up to boil myself a hot water bottle. now im going to go back to sleep. night

	2009.10.19  21.08 i don't know why i keep all these poems if im not going to teach lit, but i seem to always think of giving nice poems to my girls at cedar whenever i come across them-- even though im not teaching there any more, and they're all young ladies now forging ahead and doing well (and also, possibly, doing engineering) but well. Engineers' Corner Why isn't there an Engineers' Corner in Westminster Abbey? In Britain we've always made more fuss of a ballad than a blueprint ... How many schoolchildren dream of becoming great engineers? -- Advertisement placed in The Times by the Engineering Council We make more fuss of ballads than of blueprints -- That's why so many poets end up rich, While engineers scrape by in cheerless garrets. Who needs a bridge or dam? Who needs a ditch? Whereas the person who can write a sonnet Has got it made. It's always been the way, For everybody knows that we need poems And everybody reads them every day. Yes, life is hard if you choose engineering -- You're sure to need another job as well; You'll have to plan your projects in the evenings Instead of going out. It must be hell. While well-heeled poets ride around in Daimlers, You'll burn the midnight oil to earn a crust, With no hope of a statue in the Abbey, With no hope, even, of a modest bust. No wonder small boys dream of writing couplets And spurn the bike, the lorry and the train. There's far too much encouragement for poets -- That's why this country's going down the drain. --Wendy Cope Music: Smoke Gets In Your Eyes - Eartha Kitt

	2009.10.19  20.59 Ten Ways to Avoid Lending Your Wheelbarrow to Anybody 1 PATRIOTIC May I borrow your wheelbarrow? I didn't lay down my life in World War II so that you could borrow my wheelbarrow. 2 SNOBBISH May I borrow your wheelbarrow? Unfortunately Lord Goodman is using it. 3 OVERWEENING May I borrow your wheelbarrow? It is too mighty a conveyance to be wielded by any mortal save myself. 4 PIOUS May I borrow your wheelbarrow? My wheelbarrow is reserved for religious ceremonies. 5 MELODRAMATIC May I borrow your wheelbarrow? I would sooner be broken on its wheel and buried in its barrow. 6 PATHETIC May I borrow your wheelbarrow? I am dying of schizophrenia and all you can talk about is wheelbarrows. 7 DEFENSIVE May I borrow your wheelbarrow? Do you think I'm made of wheelbarrows? 8 SINISTER May I borrow your wheelbarrow? It is full of blood. 9 LECHEROUS May I borrow your wheelbarrow? Only if I can fuck your wife in it. 10 PHILOSOPHICAL May I borrow your wheelbarrow? What is a wheelbarrow? - Adrian Mitchell

	2009.10.18  21.24 things i like: the linguistic turn marxism (small m) edward said imagined communities microhistories things i dislike: Cosmopolitianism sociology Orientalism benedict anderson

	2009.10.15  23.22 The Brandy Glass Only let it form within his hands once more - The moment cradled like a brandy glass. Sitting alone in the empty dining hall... From the chandeliers the snow begins to fall Piling around carafes and table legs And chokes the passage of the revolving door. The last diner, like a ventriloquist's doll Left by his master, gazes before him, begs: 'Only let it form within my hands once more.' -- Louis MacNeice Music: Down by the Sally Gardens - James Galway & The Chieftains

	2009.10.11  15.35 ( Read more... ) Music: The Granemore Hare - Martin Simpson

	2009.09.28  22.16 A certain day became a presence to me; there it was, comforting me - a sky, air, light: a being. And before it started to descend from the height of noon, it leaned over and struck my shoulder as if with the flat of a sword, granting me honor and a task. The day's blow rang out, metallic or was I, a bell awakened, saying and singing what it knew: I can. ~ Denise Levertov

	2009.09.28  21.06 Gilderoy Now Gilderoy was a bonny boy and he would not the ribbons wear; he pulled off his scarlet coat, he gartered below his knee. He was beloved by the ladies so fair, he was such a rakish boy; he was my sovereign, my heart's delight, my charming young Gilderoy. Young Gilderoy and I were born all in one town together, and at the age of sixteen years we courted one another. Our dads and mothers both did agree and crowned with mirth and joy, to think upon our wedding day, with me and my Gilderoy. Now Gilderoy and I walked out all in the fields together, he took me round the waist so small, and down we went together; and after he done all a man could do he rose and kissed his joy, he was my sovereign, my heart's delight, my charming young Gilderoy. What a pity it is that a man should be hanged for stealing women, where he neither robbed house or land, he stole neither horse nor mare. He was beloved by the old and young, he was such a rakish boy, he was my sovereign, my heart's delight, my charming young Gilderoy. Now Gilderoy for some time has been dead and a funeral we must have, with a brace of pistols by his side to guard him to the grave; for he was beloved by the old and the young, he was such a rakish boy, he was my sovereign, my heart's delight, my charming young Gilderoy.

	2009.09.22  14.47 Hope is a Thing With Feathers Hope is a thing with feathers That perches in the soul And sings a tune without words And never stops at all. And sweetest, in the gale, is heard And sore must be the storm That could abash the little bird That keeps so many warm. I've heard it in the chilliest land And on the strangest sea Yet, never, in extremity It ask a crumb of me. Emily Dickinson Music: The Blackleg Miner - Steeleye Span

	2009.09.21  22.07 I just wondered—it just floated through my mind.—You’ve taught me that work is everything and I believe you. You used to say a man knows things and when he stops knowing things he’s like anybody else, and the thing is to get power before he stops knowing things. If you want to turn things topsy-turvy, all right, but must your Nicole follow you walking on her hands, darling? -- Tender is the Night, F Scott Fitzgerald Music: Catch Me Daddy [Live] - Big Brother & The Holding Company

	2009.09.20  03.35 A Visit I still remember love like another country with an almost forgotten landscape of salty skin and a dry mouth. I think there was always a temptation to escape from the violence of that sun, the sudden insignificance of ambition, the prowl of jealousy like a witch's cat . Last night I was sailing in my sleep like an old seafarer , with scurvy colouring my thoughts , there was moonlight and ice on green waters. Hallucinations. Dangerous nostalgia. And early this morning you whispered as if you were lying softly at my side: Are you still angry with me ? And spoke my name with so much tenderness, I cried. I never reproached you much that I remember, not even when I should; to me, you were the boy in Ravel's garden who always longed to be good, as the forest creatures knew, and so do I. ELAINE FEINSTEIN

	2009.09.18  00.44 More from literaryquotes Boston I’ve been meaning to tell you how the sky is pink here sometimes like the roof of a mouth that’s about to chomp down on the crooked steel teeth of the city, I remember the desperate things we did and that I stumble down sidewalks listening to the buzz of street lamps at dusk and the crush of leaves on the pavement, Without you here I’m viciously lonely and I can’t remember the last time I felt holy, the last time I offered myself as sanctuary Aaron Smith Music: False Night on the Road - Steeleye Span

	2009.09.17  23.16 Sonnet All we need is fourteen lines, well, thirteen now, and after this one just a dozen to launch a little ship on love's storm-tossed seas, then only ten more left like rows of beans. How easily it goes unless you get Elizabethan and insist the iambic bongos must be played and rhymes positioned at the ends of lines, one for every station of the cross. But hang on here wile we make the turn into the final six where all will be resolved, where longing and heartache will find an end, where Laura will tell Petrarch to put down his pen, take off those crazy medieval tights, blow out the lights, and come at last to bed. Billy Collins Music: You Ain't Going Nowhere - Joan Baez

	2009.09.17  21.03 finally, finally, finally, after long years, i am happy.

	2009.09.11  11.33 Gifts of Love I gave them to you for your earlobes, your fingers. I gilded the time on your wrist, I hung lots of glittery things on you so you'd sway for me in the wind, so you'd chime softly over me to soothe my sleep. I comforted you with apples, as it says in the Song of Songs, I lined your bed with them, so we could roll smoothly on red apple-bearings. I covered your skin with a pink chiffon, transparent as baby lizards-- the ones with black diamond eyes on summer nights. You helped me to live for a couple of months without needing religion or a point of view. You gave me a letter opener made of silver. Real letters aren't opened that way; they're torn open, torn, torn. --Yehuda Amichai Music: java jive - the king's singers

	2009.09.05  19.46 some days i get into a cab and ask for a random destination just because i want to talk to someone who doesn't know me, and who won't judge or possibly even remember me. today was one of those days. but none of the cab drivers wanted to talk. there is no place in this goddamned city where one can drink alone.

	2009.08.24  16.53 You thought I was that type: that you could forget me, and that I’d plead and weep and throw myself under the hooves of a bay mare, or that I’d ask the sorcerers for some magic potion made from roots and send you a terrible gift: my precious perfumed handkerchief. Damn you! I will not grant your cursed soul vicarious tears or a single glance. And I swear to you by the garden of the angels, I swear by the miracle-working ikon, and by the fire and smoke of our nights: I will never come back to you. –Anna Akhmatova Music: Rainbow Road - Joan Baez

	2009.08.21  18.39 so i was at tekka today and bought two punjabi suits-- one sienna red and the other navy blue-- mainly because the lady selling the former was very sweet and addressed me as 'sister' and the latter was a lovely old lady with whom i had a general rant about *ahem* certain long arms of government. i uh, also bought matching bangle sets. which echoes the time i was at ameyoko and was sold a yukata by a very persistent old lady (i found her very amusing) who kept holding up yukata against me and going 'KAWAII DES!!' and the times in the thrift stores when the old ladies titter away and the time.... am i easily sold, or what! i also got the blue one altered at tekka, and was appalled when they charged me $5 to sew two lines down the side seams. i thought they were going to put in darts or something more complicated (i can do darts but i'm horrible) well, sheesh, i could do two simple lines that myself! so i took the red one home to do just that. i've now realised why they charge $5. it's $1 per seam i have to unpick and re-sew. nevertheless, i think i managed okay. i shan't alter the pants though, i think- am starting to appreciate how they are made baggy and tapered towards the ankle. think i'll go set the dyes now.