Under The Net.

"Arriving in Paris always causes me pain, even when I have been away for only a short while. It is a city which I never fail to approach with expectation and leave with disappointment. There is a question which only I can ask and which only Paris can answer; but this question is something which I have never yet been able to formulate. Certain things indeed I have learnt here: for instance, that my happiness has a sad face, so sad that for years I took it for my unhappiness and drove it away. But Paris remains for me still an unresolved harmony. It is the only city which I can personify. London I know too well, and the others I do not love enough. Paris I encounter, but as one encounters a loved one, in the end, and dumbly, and can scarcely speak a word. Alors, Paris, qu'est-ce que te dis, toi? Paris, dis-moi ce que j'aime. But there is no reply, only the sad echo from crumbling walls, Paris."

e.g. scooters, holidays, autumn

This photo was taken in Rome. I was very very hot and had just walked up a very big hill only to discover we had gone the wrong way and had to go back down again.

This is how I feel today.

I want to go home.

I don't want to be in the library any more.

I don't want to be sitting here, headphone-less due to my complete lack of ability to not lose everything, doubting myself and my work and my timing issues and the fact that I STILL haven't applied for Masters and my stupid stupid stupid dissertation which could have been written by a child...

This is not what Friday nights are meant to be.

Dover Beach.

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the A gaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Matthew Arnold's poem, "Dover Beach" talking about his struggle with his loss of faith. I'm not applying it to my already over-dramatised and melodramatic life, I just think it is exceptionally beautiful and heart breaking. You really get a sense of his devastation, he has lost everything, where he once found meaning, now he finds nothing.

But then maybe there is still hope.

This was written when Arnold was on his honeymoon.

I'd be pretty upset if my husband pranced about writing poems about how shit everything was rather than being in bed with me....

nerves.

"It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do."

I bet Atticus wouldn't get this worked up about a stupid AGM.

Be Good Or Be Gone.

New Blackberry.

I am not a very happy bunny today.

I don't know what will make me happy.

R.I.P

Today I broke my Blackberry. Apparently, walking fast and moisturised hands aren't a very good combination and I dropped it and a white screen of death appeared and just refuses to piss the fuck off.

And I feel pathetically lost. I hope a nice man somewhere can fix it... poor baby Blackberry.

Never Forget.

I am proud of me for my 72 in an essay.

I am proud of my friends for having amazing summer plans.

(Well, proud and jealous. Oh to have a life of plan and direction. I wonder if it is too late to plan something wonderful? Surely not?!)

I am especially proud of one of my friends who is just having an awful time at the moment looking after her poorly Dad. And you just can't tell. She is quiet about it, quiet about the day to day shitness of the whole situation. She just handles herself with SUCH strength and reserve and generosity. I have the utmost amount of pride and respect for her and for her smile. She is wonderful.

I think you feel proud when someone surpasses your expectations or the limits of what you thought was possible/probable for them. It's not that your limits or expectations were low, it's just that suddenly you have to raise the boundaries because of the amazing things that they are capable of.

I know EXACTLY what I am trying to say. Oh look at the words not coming out right...