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Below are the 25 most recent journal entries.

	2009.07.08  08.56 Restless Farewell Oh all the money that in my whole life I did spend, Be it mine right or wrongfully, I let it slip gladly past the hands of my friends To tie up the time most forcefully. But the bottles are done, We've killed each one And the table's full and overflowed. And the corner sign Says it's closing time, So I'll bid farewell and be down the road. Oh ev'ry boy that ever I've touched, I did not do it harmfully. And ev'ry boy that ever I've hurt, I did not do it knowin'ly. But to remain as friends and make amends You need the time and stay behind. And since my feet are now fast And point away from the past, I'll bid farewell and be down the line. Oh ev'ry foe that ever I faced, The cause was there before we came. And ev'ry cause that ever I fought, I fought it full without regret or shame. But the dark does die As the curtain is drawn and somebody's eyes Must meet the dawn. And if I see the day I'd only have to stay, So I'll bid farewell in the night and be gone. Oh, ev'ry thought that's strung a knot in my mind, I might go insane if it couldn't be sprung. But it's not to stand naked under unknowin' eyes, It's for myself and my friends my stories are sung. But the time ain't tall, Yet on time you depend and no word is possessed By no special friend. And though the line is cut, It ain't quite the end, I'll just bid farewell till we meet again. Oh a false clock tries to tick out my time To disgrace, distract, and bother me. And the dirt of gossip blows into my face, And the dust of rumors covers me. But if the arrow is straight And the point is slick, It can pierce through dust no matter how thick. So I'll make my stand And remain as I am And bid farewell and not give a damn.

	2009.07.04  00.00 After Years Ted Kooser Today, from a distance, I saw you walking away, and without a sound the glittering face of a glacier slid into the sea. An ancient oak fell in the Cumberlands, holding only a handful of leaves, and an old woman scattering corn to her chickens looked up for an instant. At the other side of the galaxy, a star thirty-five times the size of our own sun exploded and vanished, leaving a small green spot on the astronomer's retina as he stood on the great open dome of my heart with no one to tell.

	2009.06.28  23.26 Travelling alone has been strangely liberating, actually- I'm kinda annoyed with myself that I've never done it before. No dealing with where multiple people want to go, multiple map reading opinions (Lol, because we all SUCK at map reading) and various budgetary concerns. I enjoy wandering around places and getting lost, and looking into small shops and losing myself in huge crowds of people. The Tokyo subway system is also immensely navigable (I think I've got the hang of it, anyway!) and I'm feeling quite very at home now. It can't be a bad thing. Can it? I've been pottering around the various districts on my own and have seen sights on my own terms, met interesting people from all over the world, skipped meals or had lavish suppers by myself, spent long periods of time in museums staring at nonsense, not talking to anyone. I walked from Asakusa to Ginza to Tokyo today in the rain, and it was lovely. Maybe I didn't do much in way of "meaningful" activities, but it sure felt good. I think this is probably the way forth when I next travel-- obviously I won't be completely alone (I certainly think I'd have had hell if not for Gerald and Kats) but I suppose just exploring places by myself, staying for fairly long periods of time enough to become acclimatised, etc- can only be a good thing. on a random note: i bought a lovely fabric painting today of morning glories; because i remembered this poem First Love It was a flower. There had been, before I could even speak, another infant, girl or boy unknown, who drew me -- I had an obscure desire to become connected in some way to this other, even to be what I faltered after, falling to hands and knees, crawling a foot or two, clambering up to follow further until arms swooped down to bear me away. But that one left no face, had exchanged no gaze with me. This flower: suddenly there was Before I saw it, the vague past, and Now. Forever. Nearby was the sandy sweep of the Roman Road, and where we sat the grass was thin. From a bare patch of that poor soil, solitary, sprang the flower, face upturned, looking completely, openly into my eyes. I was barely old enough to ask and repeat its name. 'Convolvulus,' said my mother. Pale shell-pink, a chalice no wider across than a silver sixpence. It looked at me, I looked back, delight filled me as if I, not the flower, were a flower and were brimful of rain. And them was endlessness. Perhaps through a lifetime what I've desired has always been to return to that endless giving and receiving, the wholeness of that attention, that once-in-a-lifetime secret communion. --- Denise Levertov *Edited to add second half of the poem- twas on a different page Music: Can't We Be Friends - Ella Fitzgerald

	2009.06.27  23.40 Phillip Larkin, I Remember, I Remember Coming up England by a different line For once, early in the cold new year, We stopped, and, watching men with number plates Sprint down the platform to familiar gates, 'Why, Coventry!' I exclaimed. 'I was born here.' I leant far out, and squinnied for a sign That this was still the town that had been 'mine' So long, but found I wasn't even clear Which side was which. From where those cycle-crates Were standing, had we annually departed For all those family hols? . . . A whistle went: Things moved. I sat back, staring at my boots. 'Was that,' my friend smiled, 'where you "have your roots"?' No, only where my childhood was unspent, I wanted to retort, just where I started: By now I've got the whole place clearly charted. Our garden, first: where I did not invent Blinding theologies of flowers and fruits, And wasn't spoken to by an old hat. And here we have that splendid family I never ran to when I got depressed, The boys all biceps and the girls all chest, Their comic Ford, their farm where I could be 'Really myself'. I'll show you, come to that, The bracken where I never trembling sat, Determined to go through with it; where she Lay back, and 'all became a burning mist'. And, in those offices, my doggerel Was not set up in blunt ten-point, nor read By a distinguished cousin of the mayor, Who didn't call and tell my father There Before us, had we the gift to see ahead - 'You look as though you wished the place in Hell,' My friend said, 'judging from your face.' 'Oh well, I suppose it's not the place's fault,' I said. 'Nothing, like something, happens anywhere.'

	2009.06.02  00.57 i am feeling very sentimental all of a sudden( Read more... ) Music: Diamonds & rust - Joan Baez

	2009.05.13  09.50 FFFFFFFFF the flight my parents booked is full so either i have to fly back myself (how stupid is that??? or they'll have to pay through the nose to change flights and book me another flight. just wehn i thought it couldn't get any worse. bloody hell. i told them to book earlier, and what did they say? nooooo the flights will allll be empty trust us, yada, yada, yada. god i am so so urgh, bloody hell. Music: Earl Richard - Tim Hart & Maddy Prior

	2009.05.06  12.31 its punjabi suit weather, and i'm feeling the deprivation!!! all my punjabi suits are at home :( i've also decided that when i get back to teaching i shall invade the D&T dept and make myself tonnes of things a la this website. now, who's with me?

	2009.05.06  10.04 Voices by C.P. Cavafy. Ideal and beloved voices of those who are dead, or of those who are lost to us like the dead Sometimes they speak to us in our dreams sometimes in thought the mind hears them And with their sound for a moment return other sounds from the first poetry of our life like distant music that dies off in the night

	2009.04.30  13.35 Perhaps disgraceful, but i am a bit distracted from my revision by reading Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution. Cheap courtesy of Galloway and Porter, which is the best bookstore on EARTH. Yet another reason to come to Cambs next year!

	2009.04.26  19.52 ( revision rambles again )

	2009.04.16  14.35 misc. update i am finally, Finally, FINALLY finished with my dissertations! double whoop, yell, handstand, cartwheels! ( Read more... )

	2009.04.11  18.11 nigel and i went a-walking yesterday, and we met this cute little fellow down mill road: ( don't click kinny, it's a cat! ) today i am taking too long to revise my notes. i should be writing my last essay (c'mon LAST ESSAYY) tomorrow, after which i shall give myself a couple days off and then plunge headfirst into the revision. :( HOKAY so back to simon schama.

	2009.04.10  12.50 Atlantis- A Lost Sonnet by Eavan Boland How on earth did it happen, I used to wonder that a whole city—arches, pillars, colonnades, not to mention vehicles and animals—had all one fine day gone under? I mean, I said to myself, the world was small then. Surely a great city must have been missed? I miss our old city — white pepper, white pudding, you and I meeting under fanlights and low skies to go home in it. Maybe what really happened is this: the old fable-makers searched hard for a word to convey that what is gone is gone forever and never found it. And so, in the best traditions of where we come from, they gave their sorrow a name and drowned it.

	2009.04.05  15.44 i've been looking for a poem to set for a former student of mine who's been doing PCs for me as practice for A's (she really needs the help) and so looking through the poetry communities. lots of good stuff! although i haven't found anything to set for her yet. anyone got any suggestions? The Cat's Song by Marge Piercy Mine, says the cat, putting out his paw of darkness. My lover, my friend, my slave, my toy, says the cat making on your chest his gesture of drawing milk from his mother's forgotten breasts. Let us walk in the woods, says the cat. I'll teach you to read the tabloid of scents, to fade into shadow, wait like a trap, to hunt. Now I lay this plump warm mouse on your mat. You feed me, I try to feed you, we are friends, says the cat, although I am more equal than you. Can you leap twenty times the height of your body? Can you run up and down trees? Jump between roofs? Let us rub our bodies together and talk of touch. My emotions are pure as salt crystals and as hard. My lusts glow like my eyes. I sing to you in the mornings walking round and round your bed and into your face. Come I will teach you to dance as naturally as falling asleep and waking and stretching long, long. I speak greed with my paws and fear with my whiskers. Envy lashes my tail. Love speaks me entire, a word of fur. I will teach you to be still as an egg and to slip like the ghost of wind through the grass.

	2009.04.05  15.31 lucifer's beginning poetry workshop // philip memmer Lucifer loves the beginners. He loves how their hands shake as they pull their Xeroxed drafts from their untattered folders, and the way, bright as they are, it takes them two months to learn to pass those poems to their peers in an organized fashion. It reminds him of creation, the galactic mess spinning from his Father’s hands— hands beyond holding, as white as starlight, unblemished but for long-bitten nails. He likes to read the descriptions of his students’ fathers’ hands, huge and calloused with labor, as if they’d done something new beneath the sun. He savors their familiar emotions, the familiar deserted woods where each walks a well-beaten path they insist is less-traveled. Give up, he tells each one, Try law, medicine, the clergy— even God had the modesty, after making this first failed world, to take a rest. But in truth, he applauds how they go on, how week after week the dreadful drafts are brought forth... Lucifer reads them all and calls them good.

	2009.03.23  14.39 once again it is spring! last night i dreamt i was at a joan baez concert and she autographed one of my albums and we had a nice chat (although i can't remember what it is we chatted about heh). a couple days ago nigel and i went thrift shopping. its not characteristic but here is a photo post-- just take it that i'm bored! ( large amount of photos ahead )

	2009.03.19  00.57 ALBERT you are as cute as a button!!!! This one!

	2009.02.22  23.40 'In reality, the peasant conception of time was intimately connected to a certain immobility in rural society, From the start, birth imposed a fixed social position on everyone. Only a minority of people who fell in social status or who rose in society by accumulating wealth escaped this constraining destiny. Hence it was impossible to view one's own life as a continuous social progression that rose from one stage to another, then fell step by step to old age and death.' R. Muchembled, Popular Culture and Elite Culture ( Read more... )

	2009.02.12  17.27 i am now a proud owner of a 1907 singer 28K (??? i have to double check if this is the right model, but it seems to be so..?) ( cut for gorgeous photos ) now, if only those long bobbins weren't so expensive on ebay-- this is a (gasp) shuttle machine so they're not the same as the regular round ones. when i get home i guess i'll have to bring this in (and bring my grandma's i guess) for some restoration work and suchlike, does anyone know any good contacts? oooh im so excited! when my essays are done i think i shall try it out!!!!

	2009.02.11  15.31 Under the Harvest Moon Under the harvest moon, When the soft silver Drips shimmering Over the garden nights, Death, the gray mocker, Comes and whispers to you As a beautiful friend Who remembers. Under the summer roses When the flagrant crimson Lurks in the dusk Of the wild red leaves, Love, with little hands, Comes and touches you With a thousand memories, And asks you Beautiful, unanswerable questions. Carl Sanburg

	2009.02.08  23.12

	2009.02.07  00.22 malcolm came over with a bottle of white this evening, so we shared that and some choya, and got right sozzled and had a proper drunk-ish conversation and such. haven't been so happy in a while i believe!

	2009.02.06  09.24 BY THE GODS this is awful weather, i can't even get out of my little room for the council's want of grit. iit's so bad national express (who are normally el cheapo) advised me to change coach ticket even though the service i'm on is still running today. now, before i end up worshipping the sun-god or something in desperation. i'm hoping the weather clears up just for a wee bit tomorrow so i can get to cambridge. can't imagine reading week over here, i think i'll go mad and write shittier essays than ever before in my life..! halppppp

	2009.02.03  14.00 again, from theysaid Slowly | Donna Masini I watched a snake once, swallow a rabbit. Fourth grade, the reptile zoo the rabbit stiff, nose in, bits of litter stuck to its fur, its head clenched in the wide jaws of the snake, the snake sucking it down its long throat. All throat that snake-I couldn't tell where the throat ended, the body began. I remember the glass case, the way that snake took its time (all the girls, groaning, shrieking but weren't we amazed, fascinated, saying we couldn't look, but looking, weren't we held there, weren't we imagining-what were we imagining?). Mrs. Peterson urged us to move on girls, but we couldn't move. It was like watching a fern unfurl, a minute hand moved across a clock. I didn't know why the snake didn't choke, the rabbit never moved, how the jaws kept opening wider, sucking it down, just so I am taking this in, slowly, taking it into my body: this grief. How slow the body is to realize. You are never coming back.

	2009.02.03  13.55 from theysaid Being Bird-Blooded | Edie Rhoads Ready said the night. The cold clipped, pinged—like silver spoons at a campfire. In the cornfield by the tracks the toothless crones— crows—whisk and stir. Where does the air get that blue-black color? The night is like a lit bell hole or a beehive humming underwater, like the stars, all talk and powder. Then the raisin-eyed owl pops and lifts, stuffing his craw with mice. I have understood snow as a set of diamonds over hay, as the pavement of a city where the people are still, all sleeping. In the Orient, in pails of deep amber, someone who belonged to me once lies quiet. Awake and above dreams, listening for that heart, I eat my piece of moon and wail, like the broken hawks. Down the last road on the hill between the barn and the falling-down schoolhouse, newts wander in wet dirt. Stay by the pond, stay by birches turning silver with fog. Don’t forget the soup we made together, out of nothing but water. We watched the kind green monster and the silly ass with the pot held between us. Out in the night sky, the bats are taking up post, skating. They pivot, tacking their kites knit with moth wings. At the end of August I stacked your silence at the back of the wood shed, under back-aching layers of pine and seasoned ash. Pick an apple, bake a bread pudding—at the limits of sadness, the appetite stiffens. Nitpick. In a new voice, I start the heron. Ruffled grouse drum in the hemlocks. Chickadees pilfer crack-shelled almonds and their nests grow damp. Abandonment. We feel like forgetting ourselves. Here, the birds know. In late autumn they gather by family and farm their way south, making arcs, craning necks, leaving the old year in the tooth of the plow. Winter comes last. The birds sing before it.