what comes next?

Final marks - released today - for posterity’s sake, as they’re likely the final marks I’m ever going to get in my life (unless I decide to take up Japanese again, which I’m considering, and do the JLPT):

71, 73, 78, 70.

It is ironic that the module I did best at ultimately was Romantic, not Victorian - and a part of me can’t help but feel mildly annoyed that my dissertation literally just hit the mark I needed for a distinction grade - but… I made it! After all this time. Unreal.

4 | +1?

please stay for a while

Hey where did we go,
Days when the rains came
Down in the hollow,
Playin’ a new game,
Laughing and a running hey, hey
Skipping and a jumping
In the misty morning fog with
Our hearts a thumpin’ and you
My brown eyed girl,
You my brown eyed girl.

Whatever happened
To Tuesday and so slow
Going down the old mine
With a transistor radio
Standing in the sunlight laughing,
Hiding behind a rainbow’s wall,
Slipping and sliding
All along the water fall, with you
My brown eyed girl,
You my brown eyed girl.

Do you remember when we used to sing,
Sha la la la la la la la la la la te da

So hard to find my way,
Now that I’m all on my own.
I saw you just the other day,
My how you have grown,
Cast my memory back there, Lord
Sometime I’m overcome thinking ’bout
Making love in the green grass
Behind the stadium with you
My brown eyed girl
You my brown eyed girl

- Van Morrison, “Brown-Eyed Girl”

I had a whole long draft typed up, about everything I am feeling this last weekend before leaving York, with all my stuff in boxes and bags once again, but somehow it never reached a stage where I felt it could be published. All the words just seemed so useless; no matter how much I wrote and rewrote whole sentences, paragraphs, I simply couldn’t - still can’t - really, really put across how I feel. So much has happened so quickly over the past two weeks.

And then “Brown-Eyed Girl” came on the radio and I thought, this is it. This is how I feel.

Do you remember when we used to sing
Sha la la la la la la la la la la te da.

Do you remember? I hope I never forget.

0 | +1?

thorns

Life in point form:

• Still internetless at home (nearly 3 weeks and counting)

• Still jobless
• Still missing my family incredibly
• Exhausted from job applications and interviews
• Know I owe emails but am too tired/internetless to send them sorry to Wanyun and Wey Ren specifically, I love you both!
• Still visa-less
• Still, foolishly, stupidly, optimistic
• despite erratically flagging spirits

0 | +1?

disoriented

I am back in York with a week to go to my dissertation deadline (technically less - horrors - since I should really make sure I have it ready by Friday so that it can be bound in time for a Monday submission), a list of jobs to apply for, a messy collection of documents I need to apply for a post-study work visa, a huge flock of unpacked boxes, and absolutely no idea at all where I’m going to stay over the coming year.

Oh, sheer terrifying uncertainty… it’s been a long time since our last dalliance.

1 | +1?

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.

0 | +1?

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.

3 | +1?

welcome to your life

…ever had one of those days where there are so, so many things on your mind, so many things spinning round your head, so many things you know you’ve got to do, but the paralysis from knowing there’s that much to tackle just freezes you and you end up spending all your time randomly gaming and watching telly and uselessly surfing the net instead?

Yeah. It’s been one of those days.

0 | +1?

can’t take it in

i’ve got to make room for this feeling
so much bigger than me
it couldn’t be any more beautiful
and i can’t take it in

- imogen heap, “can’t take it in”

Lin popped by today for a chat this afternoon, because she’s leaving for Cali tomorrow and who knows when we’ll get to see each other again. And the more we talked, about our experiences, our post-graduation dreams and aspirations, the more I realised that I really don’t want to go back quite just yet. There’s so much more here waiting for me to discover outside my academic bubble, there’s so many more opportunities, not just here in the UK but in the rest of the world, and I can’t shake the feeling that this is the time to take advantage of it all. I’m ideally poised, on the cusp of leaving uni behind me, I have a good degree, the next two years are a sprawling, empty landscape to be filled in. I can’t help feeling that it’ll just be so unfulfilling if I go back to Singapore now, take a safe desk job that earns me S$2.5K a month, get an apartment, maybe a secondhand car, settle back into life there. I’ll go back, after a couple of years - that’s as long as the post-study work visa will let me stay, at any rate - but not now. I’m not ready yet.

And it’s just that much more aggravating, thinking of all this, that the only job prospect for me right now is back at home. I’ve got till the end of September for something really magical to pop up here in the UK… and oh, how I hope it does. I’ve always - whenever people asked - expressed a vague interest in staying here to work for a few years, but now I genuinely do feel it. I really do want it to happen. I feel like there’s something more for me in the future besides going home right away to a government-prescribed path of stable job and sheltered existence… and I can’t even explain it, because it’s not like I’ve had a particularly exciting life so far, certainly not anything to make me think that something special should be waiting for me. But - this is the point in my life, isn’t it, when I can do anything? And I’m gonna do it, somehow, whatever it turns out to be. Fingers crossed.

0 | +1?

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.

0 | +1?

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.

2 | +1?

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