hubristic

There really isn’t anything for deflating pride quite like receiving your dissertation draft back from your supervisor, with “rubbish” scrawled in the margin next to one of your paragraphs. It wasn’t all bad; there were some ticks, some “good”s, but still. Even when you know that bit was kind of rubbish, that’s just harsh. And heartbreaking. And shattering. Ah, the time-honoured slap in the face tactic…

Courage, a trawl through JSTOR, a thorough reread of Alice and a visit to the USyd library - all long, long overdue. I really have to get it together.

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back where it’s cold

…or not, really. It isn’t that cold here in Sydney - an average of 12 to 14°C during the daytime, dipping down to maybe 9°C or so during the night; significantly colder than currently-summery York but nowhere near the frigid depths of northern English winters, and nothing I can’t take (wait a couple of weeks and I’ll be complaining about not being able to type my dissertation because my fingers are freezing off).

The last couple of weeks in York were whirlwind - drinks, pub quizzing and suffering random harrassment from a creepy American chap with Mander; Red Chilli with Susanna, where we had to order fish to share because she doesn’t take any other meat and I discovered for the first time that York sometimes does have very decent fish indeed; Eleena’s visit and the first proper cooked breakfast I’ve had in York all year, with scrambled eggs, baked potato and bacon; a frenzy of Railway Children activity at the Theatre Royal which involved the filing of a million press clippings and reviews and 1.5 hours of standing at the National Railway Museum giving out flyers; yummy Garden of India takeout and plenty of random chitchat with Kevin and Rokey, thinking this might be the last time for a long time that I see either of them boys; lots and lots and lots of packing and moving, and of course the dissertation final draft (here a misleading term which actually means only about half the thing has been written, and mostly crappily).

All of that, plus passing through Singapore and meeting up with my lovely, lovely friends there, and finally touching down here after two solid days of travelling has stirred up in me that old feeling of being pulled in a million different directions, that question of… how do I balance all this? How do I portion out my time and myself for all these different places and people when I love them all, when I don’t want to leave any of them, when I just wish foolishly that I could pack everything and everyone with me in a bottomless suitcase, have it all in one place? Just when I thought I had it sorted, I find again that I haven’t a clue, I don’t have any answers. I know something’s got to

Now that I’m finally here with my family after nearly 10 months of being away, all I really want to do is catch a breather, sleep in for a week and recover properly from jetlag… but I know I’ve not done anything for a week, dissertation-wise, and if I want to knock out another 10,000 words before September 22nd I have to hustle soon.

breathe, just breathe, I keep telling myself.

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hello to high and dry

…and what a whirlwind June it’s been. I know no less an authority than T. S. Eliot tells me April is the cruellest month, but June always seems to go by so quickly - it fairly flies - and then what’s left but the second half, the winding down to twilight, the end of yet another year?

I have so much to say, about Christie and Kevin’s much anticipated visit, about the unexpected melancholy I felt after watching the surprisingly bittersweet Prince Caspian today, about the fabulous Euro (Spain all the way - go Casillas and Fabregas!), about the amazing beach at Alicante and all the Gaudi in Barcelona that I missed out on last time through cheapo-ness; so many thoughts to spill out about the looming end of an era in York and a farewell to this house, about the continuing job-hunt, about going home, wherever home is -

- but I have still so, so much more to do yet: 1000 words and an outline to churn out (because I really can’t push it any further and I don’t want to, it makes me sick), unpacking my travel stuff, packing all the rest of my stuff, a mountain of accumulated correspondence, photos to upload, books to collect, books to read, sleep to catch up on…

One thing at a time, and the latter first, for now.

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winds

It’s been an oddly melancholy week, and I can’t put my finger on why. Have I - horrors - prematurely reached the plodding, weary phase of my dissertation, having spent the past few days mired in an excellently written but extremely long biography? (Next up, >1200 pages’ worth of letters… joy.) Is it the end-of-term syndrome, where everyone around is either done, very near done, or leaving for good already, and the thought of home and family just beckons so enticingly? Is it the ridiculously indecisive weather, which has been seesawing back and forth between lovely and abysmal with almost daily regularity? Is it my continued deficit of money and employment, and a frightening dearth of further prospects to apply to?

Actually, I suspect it isn’t really any of the above. I’m probably just trying to find excuses to justify the vague, moody miasma that’s been hanging round me lately… and more likely than not, it’s just one of those inexplicably emo things that will go away on its own with time.

The RJ lit trip made a stop at York last Wednesday, and I was very happily assigned to the campus tour group which had Mr Purvis in it And it dawned on me, really dawned on me, how much I have changed since I was the shy silent girl in the back of TS2. I found myself strangely able to have a real conversation with him where in the past I would have been too terrified to do anything other than nod and smile; we had a very thought-provoking chat about literature and life after university as we walked round the campus, and it might just be the very first time I’ve really understood the human side of this teacher who was such a prominent figure in my JC days. He told me about how he was glad I’d kept the faith with English, and that he really regrets not doing a Masters after getting his first degree - and how, now, thinking about it, he’s afraid he’s not good enough for an MA and that his BA was really a fluke.

Hearing that, just that one line, from someone who was almost singlehandedly responsible for igniting my obsession with lit and pushing me towards the path I’ve taken… it was heartbreaking. I felt there were so many things I wanted to say to him: I wanted to tell him he was good enough, that it wasn’t just luck, that he’s been inspirational not just to me but to a lot of other students, and how could someone like that be a fluke of the system?

But I couldn’t find the words. I struggled with what sounded, to my ears, like hollow reassurances; I don’t even remember what I said in the end. We moved on to talk about how beautiful the campus is in spring, my mind trailed off and I started wondering if I should tell them that the lake is really toxic, actually, and I forgot all about it for the moment.

Thinking back, I wish I could have said everything I was feeling. I wish I could have poured it out, I wish I could have found a way to show it. But there will never be a way, when words just aren’t enough, and it will always be one of those increasingly frequent instances where the empty signifiers of everyday language are just sorely, sorely inadequate to the occasion.

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a string of farewells

Yesterday I bumped into Kevin, my very very lovely Popular Romanticism tutor from last term, on my way home from town. He was listening to his iPod and shuffling along the street just like any other random middle-aged man, and I almost walked right past him, but then I saw a widening grin on his face as he waved at me and took his headphones out. And I couldn’t help this huge smile creeping up on me too.

We paused for a short chat; I told him about my dissertation and he told me about the undergrads he was taking this term for the Romantics module, we discussed the merits of Red Chilli (”easily the best Chinese in town,” he says, I’m inclined to agree), he asked if I was going anywhere for reading week before we both laughingly recalled the fact that reading week is somewhat irrelevant when one doesn’t have lessons any more to start with.

And then he wished me well for the rest of the term, I thanked him, and we waved farewell with the parting sentiment that hopefully we’ll run into each other again sometime. Walking our different ways, I thought of so many other things I’d wanted to ask and say - like how was your Easter break, did you like Paris and was it warm when you went, is your family doing well, and thank you for the good grade you gave me on my essay last term.

But by then we were many many footsteps apart. And so I walked on, back towards home, mulling over our little by-the-wayside conversation in my head - thinking, wondering, when I’d next get to see him, or my other muchly loved professors - Bill and John especially - and slowly slowly realising, maybe this is the beginning of the end, when I don’t see any of them very much anymore. Maybe it’s the start of letting go, of saying goodbye, of your life here winding to a close, when you wonder if this will be the last run-in you ever have with your favourite prof, and you start relentlessly dwelling on all the things you could have said to him…

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sleepwalking on a tightrope

The past week has been: coffee with Jake, coffee with Nicole, plenty of thought-provoking talk about school, post-school, life and living resulting; a frantic romp through Alice and assorted criticism to cull quotations; a slow start on Artemis Fowl and the Lost Colony which I have been quite dying to read for a while; the YTR marketing department winning the much-coveted Achievement in Marketing Award at the Theatre Management Association Awards on Thursday, which made me all glowy even though all I do is pop in once a week to do menial odd jobs; Cluedo party at April’s! where I was Miss Scarlet and got to wear a pretty red dress; planning and finally booking a short trip to Spain in June: so looking forward to Alicante, where the hotel has a swimming pool and the beach close by - it doesn’t take a great deal to make my day these days.

So she sat on, with closed eyes, and half believed herself in Wonderland, though she knew she had but to open them again, and all would change to dull reality - the grass would be only rustling in the wind, and the pool rippling to the waving of the reeds - the rattling teacups would change to tinkling sheep-bells, and the Queen’s shrill cries to the voice of the shepherd-boy - and the sneeze of the baby, the shriek of the Gryphon, and all the other queer noises, would change (she knew) to the confused clamour of the busy farm-yard - while the lowing of the cattle in the distance would take the place of the Mock Turtle’s heavy sobs.

It’s not much longer, now, till all this ends; people keep saying September is so far away, but it scares me how quickly nearly five months of this year have flown by and before we know it it’s going to be June and then half the year, half the year, will have gone - where? I don’t want to waste it, I don’t want to lose it, and be harshly jolted back to reality, like Alice, by someone brushing the falling leaves off my sleeping face - realising after all that Wonderland was a dream - but was it?

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using ideas as my maps

Spiffing new domain, spiffing new layout, and you will not believe what went into coding this… I don’t even really want to think about it now that it’s done. I’m particularly proud of having successfully negotiated both horizontal and vertical centering and then relatively-positioning a text block within that div layer. I’ve also cleaned up a whole lot of old code by doing this up from scratch instead of appropriating and adapting an older layout, which is kind of the digital equivalent of cleaning out the dusty cupboard. And and and, the comment layouts have been revamped! (But you’ll have to leave a comment to see that.) /geek

It’s kind of empty right now though because I have literally spent near on eight hours just working on this layout, wrangling PHP and CSS, tweaking colours, tweaking code, doing things with block elements that I’ve never done before, &c and I am too braindead to think of how to fill up my etc. section. I was going to upload some music, but I’m afraid you all will have to wait to hear the dulcet tones of The Byrds (whose cover of Bob Dylan’s “My Back Pages” inspired this layout).

*

I was stumped for something to write to make this a noteworthy first post for my shiny new (hopefully permanent) space, and then I remembered I had yet to post about the Matchbox Twenty concert.

L to R: kyle, rob ♥, brian, paul

As you can see from this photo, Jia Min, Jenny and I were in the unfortunate position of being stuck in the upper circle with many people’s heads and a lot of space between us and the stage. Sadly they’d decided to make the stalls standing room only, and as much as I love MB20 I wasn’t about to gladly sacrifice my feet for them.

But distance aside, the concert was wonderful. They did so many of their old songs - “Hang”, “3 AM”, “Long Day” all way back from their first album - and nearly all of my favourites - “Real World”, “Disease”, “Push”, “Downfall”, “Bright Lights”, “Unwell”, “Hand Me Down” - all songs that I’ve listened to over and over again, so so many times, songs that are so in my system that I could sing along to them in my sleep. Rob played piano on “Bright Lights” and I have such a weakness for my favourite musicians on the piano - so that was good. Undoubtedly (for me, at least) the high point of their performances for the night was “Bent”, which is probably fitting as it’s the title most people would name if you asked them to name an MB20 song off the top of their head. “Real World” and “Downfall” lacked a teensy bit of oomph - perhaps it was just that their live backing music was different from the CD backing tracks and I’m too used to the latter - but “Bent” was explosively powerful. I’m not actually such a big fan of the newer songs, I think the music isn’t as catchy as the Mad Season/More Than You Think You Are era and the lyrics aren’t as simple and honest either, but as always with a good band, hearing the songs live made me like them more.

The best thing about the show, as Rob himself said, was how many people were just so into it; he said the thing about being in the UK was that reporters always asked them what it’s like being here because they’re a band that’s so much bigger in the States, but then they do shows like this and they’re blown away by the realisation that there are so many people in the UK who’ll pay to come see them (the Manchester Apollo’s not a small venue at all, and it was absolutely packed). And it’s just… so true. I remember back in first year when my seminar group were having drinks at a pub and Beth and I were discussing the sex god that is Rob Thomas, and everyone else had never heard of him, and I’d always thought I’d never get to see them here because they just aren’t that famous in the UK. But everyone at the concert were clearly fans, everyone was singing along, so loudly that you could hear the audience as a collective voice singing their hearts out along with Rob. The girl sitting in front of me couldn’t have been more than 10. She was wearing an MB20 T-shirt, and she and her mom were clearly having a ball of a time, and her mom knew every word to every song.

rob at the piano

in all fairness, MB20 isn’t the best live act I’ve seen in my concert experience (that would be Michael Buble). But for some reason, some inexplicable reason that I can’t put my finger on, they’re a band that mean a lot to me; I remember the heartbreak I felt when Adam Gaynor left and it came back fleetingly, wrenchingly, when the band took to the stage and there was only 4 of them and not 5, I remember singing out loud in my room to Mad Season late at night when it was just me and my CD player and a last-minute assignment, I remember all these individual songs that spoke to me at different periods of my life - “Bent” and “The Burn” in secondary school, “Bright Lights” and “Unwell” in JC, “Mad Season” and “Real World” in university - so many times, I’ve just been listening casually to my iPod and suddenly the lyrics of an MB20 song would hit me with that yes yes yes feeling. I feel like if there’s any band I can say I grew up with, it would be them, they’re the one band from my teenage days that I haven’t grown out of and who’ve followed me all this way here to York. And seeing them live was such a big thing for me… I almost feel that I’ve come, in an odd way, full circle.

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