well. here i am again, surrounded by boxes and bags, and suitcases, feeling a quaint mixture of dazed, disoriented, and optimistic, slightly confused by all the rapid changes in my living conditions lately, and really, really hoping this will be the last move i have to endure for at least a year.
(back with longer update when i am better acquainted with my surroundings)
I am now a proper North London dweller… or will be, once all these infernal bags and boxes are unpacked.
Back soon, busy being snowed under by my belongings!
An old, favourite poem – I am sure I posted it before but it must have preceded this URL, because I can’t find it in my archives. This morning’s NaNo-prep read of my old Victorian volumes threw up Browning’s name again, as it usually does, and I was suddenly reminded of this; reading it again, it is more poignant and more haunting than ever before.
Oh Galuppi, Baldassaro, this is very sad to find!
I can hardly misconceive you; it would prove me deaf and blind;
But although I take your meaning, ’tis with such a heavy mind!
II
Here you come with your old music, and here’s all the good it brings.
What, they lived once thus at Venice where the merchants were the kings,
Where Saint Mark’s is, where the Doges used to wed the sea with rings?
III
Ay, because the sea’s the street there; and ’tis arched by . . . what you call
. . . Shylock’s bridge with houses on it, where they kept the carnival:
I was never out of England — it’s as if I saw it all.
IV
Did young people take their pleasure when the sea was warm in May?
Balls and masks begun at midnight, burning ever to mid-day,
When they made up fresh adventures for the morrow, do you say?
V
Was a lady such a lady, cheeks so round and lips so red, —
On her neck the small face buoyant, like a bell-flower on its bed,
O’er the breast’s superb abundance where a man might base his head?
VI
Well, and it was graceful of them — they’d break talk off and afford
— She, to bite her mask’s black velvet — he, to finger on his sword,
While you sat and played Toccatas, stately at the clavichord?
VII
What? Those lesser thirds so plaintive, sixths diminished, sigh on sigh
, Told them something? Those suspensions, those solutions — “Must we die?”
Those commiserating sevenths — “Life might last! we can but try!
VIII
“Were you happy?” — “Yes.” — “And are you still as happy?” — “Yes. And you?”
— “Then, more kisses!” — “Did I stop them, when a million seemed so few?”
Hark, the dominant’s persistence till it must be answered to!
IX
So, an octave struck the answer. Oh, they praised you, I dare say!
“Brave Galuppi! that was music! good alike at grave and gay!
“I can always leave off talking when I hear a master play!”
X
Then they left you for their pleasure: till in due time, one by one,
Some with lives that came to nothing, some with deeds as well undone,
Death stepped tacitly and took them where they never see the sun.
XI
But when I sit down to reason, think to take my stand nor swerve,
While I triumph o’er a secret wrung from nature’s close reserve,
In you come with your cold music till I creep thro’ every nerve.
XII
Yes, you, like a ghostly cricket, creaking where a house was burned:
“Dust and ashes, dead and done with, Venice spent what Venice earned.
“The soul, doubtless, is immortal — where a soul can be discerned.
XIII
“Yours for instance: you know physics, something of geology,
“Mathematics are your pastime; souls shall rise in their degree;
“Butterflies may dread extinction, — you’ll not die, it cannot be!
XIV
“As for Venice and her people, merely born to bloom and drop,
“Here on earth they bore their fruitage, mirth and folly were the crop:
“What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop?
XV
“Dust and ashes!” So you creak it, and I want the heart to scold.
Dear dead women, with such hair, too — what’s become of all the gold
Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old.
Glee on a Friday makes me happy! Especially if it follows a long, arduous week which isn’t over yet – though, perhaps rather masochistically, I rather enjoy working the out-of-hours onsite events as they make a welcome change to deskbound labour, so I am looking forward to tomorrow.
Payday makes me happy too :) as does counting down to all the things I have to look forward to.
Mostly I am just feeling really, really tired these days. I miss having my mornings, and I am always too exhausted to do anything after work, so I am trying to both reclaim my mornings and get more done by reversing my day – waking up really really early, getting a bit of housework done, preparing lunch and dinner beforehand, and wasting time online before work so that I can collapse into bed and sleep really early when I get back from work. This went quite magnificently until I got home at midnight from the company birthday party yesterday and messed up my entire sleep schedule :/ so right now I just feel… disoriented.
It wasn’t a great day at work today. I just cannot concentrate on anything when I haven’t slept properly, and I am so much of a creature of habit, a part of me almost feels like I would rather give up having a social life on weekdays in favour of being able to get home and get to sleep at a fixed hour every night. Or maybe this is what growing older feels like when you’ve always been old for your age anyway, alas.
(But then again, as the 50-year-old head of the local fire brigade said to me last night with a wry smile, upon hearing how old I was: “Ah, you’re still a baby!” So true, sir, so true.)
I went to see Up in 3D tonight, one day earlier than expected due to a rare burst of spontaneity, and it was wicked awesome, but I will write more about that (and the other animated films I have seen/will see this week) another time.
What I really wanted to say was – the Barbican cinema, which is where we saw it, is 2 storeys underground and has no reception.
I can’t be the only one who thinks this is a genius way of terminating phone-pest behaviour during movies? Because it really bothers me. Texting and that buzzy vibrating noise are massive annoyances (let’s not even get started on actual phone ringing, and worse still, people picking it up and going “I’m in a movie!!” in what they think is a hushed tone but actually isn’t). I just think that unless you are a massively important VIP, in which case you can afford a private viewing of said film, there is no reason why anyone needs to use their phone during a movie.
So why is it not more common to just build cinemas with no reception? Singapore, take note!
i just had an 8-hour nap. possibly longer, as i can’t remember when i collapsed into bed, but it was definitely before dinnertime, or i would’ve been a good girl and eaten my dinner before crashing. what a strange feeling to stir from sleep and realise the day has vanished. what an exhausting day, and week, it has been.
i can’t remember the last time i was awake at 1am.
it feels strange, and quiet, and cold, though not all that much colder than when i wake early in the mornings. but there’s definitely now an autumnal chill in the air, the sort of crisp, decisive, pervasive cold that isn’t dissipated by sunlight. toes tingling, fingers balled into warm little fists in my pockets as i walk down the street, i can’t help constantly thinking of the warmth that awaits in a little over a month’s time. it’s not the only thing keeping me going, but it is the main one for sure.
happy birthday, daddy. 51 and you’re still the #1 man in my life. i don’t think that’ll ever change, because you’re just that awesome.
things that keep me going through a manic time at work and a notoriously contagious office flu bug that has just found its way to me:
stupid things i have done recently include:
and on top of all that, work is piling up very rapidly and suddenly… watch the blonde moments pile up as my sleep deprivation increases! to be continued.
there are some songs that just start your morning off with a euphoric bang. bon jovi’s “you give love a bad name” is one of them. so is, as i discovered this morning, matchbox twenty’s “real world”, which plastered a silly grin on my face as i walked to the tube station and which i am sure made me an object of ridicule to passersby, embarrassment fortunately offset by the said induced euphoria.
i ache everywhere (no, there is no explanation, i just ache despite a marked lack of physical exertion of late), i am really tired, i have an unprecedented amount of work to do, there are unforeseen snags with stuff, i have not left the office on time once in the past few weeks, monday promises to be a crazy busy day and i still can’t find anyone to take my extra proms ticket for monday night… not to mention i am perversely continuing to sleep deprive myself by wasting time online when i could be sleeping. why, why do i do this?
but! on the bright side there have been several pieces of good news from friends lately (yays all around), some good-ish news for myself, and teasingly tentative summer weather beckons this weekend. oh BBC, you and your vague, non-committal “sunny intervals”. you’ll probably change your mind in the morning too, as well as throughout the day, fickle and heartless as you are.
anyway, to all, i am very well, i know i owe multiple people emails/messages/chat time (i think the victorians had the right idea about setting aside a letter-writing time everyday for personal correspondence; it really piles up), but i haven’t forgotten and hope to catch up soon… “hope” being the operative word! the work and jobhunt and other annoying offline obligations never seem to end.
oh and the trailer for tim burton’s alice is really weird. i have decided to drop the idea altogether that it is an “alice film” and instead think of it as an entirely new fantasy world and characters which bear some vague, very distant resemblance to carroll’s – i am sure it will be a fabulous film but let it be said it has very little similarity to alice! it’s almost as egregious a departure as ella enchanted was, the latter being worse only because it made the pretense of being like the book while alice has the saving grace of being a sequel.
Many bajillion interviews later, I feel that I am far less nervous than I used to be, but the whole process still confounds me. I still leave interviews with the feeling that I could have done better, that I ought to have seized the opportunity to say things that I forgot to say, that I am an incorrigible rambler and completely fail at giving nice concise answers.
Thankfully, these past few days have been a reminder that I have the best friends in the world – FACT! Seriously… love you guys. ♥
Roll on July, bring on summer. I can’t wait to see where I’m going next.
sq
cui
LcT