FAIL

Had resolved to read less English books... but that was a complete fail. Started on Stevenson's The Black Arrow last night. Having been away so long from that type of literature, found the intentionally and almost comically 'dated' language hard to get used to - in a good way.

Am mildly embarrassed to admit that the longer I don't read 'dialect,' the harder it is to read fluently.

let it go

let it go – the
smashed word broken
open vow or
the oath cracked length
wise – let it go it
was sworn to
go

let them go – the
truthful liars and
the false fair friends
and the boths and
neithers – you must let them go they
were born
to go

let all go – the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things – let all go
dear

so comes love

- e.e. cummings

Reversal

When I first moved to Canada I had to learn English almost from scratch. The house I lived in implemented a strategy: ban the kids from reading Chinese books. I think if we were caught reading Chinese books our pocket-money might have been deducted. Can't rightly recall now.

I've decided to implement a reversal of this ban for myself once I finish the English books I have on hand (not many more left). Since I moved back I've been buying a lot of English books (both new ones and old favourites, because libraries don't stock much English books here). I read English a lot faster and it seems much more natural to me now that I've been using English predominantly for over a decade.

Still, living in Taiwan it seems to make sense to polish up my Chinese again. Though I have been making an effort to read more Chinese, I do sometimes succumb to the temptation of easy reading. At the same time, I absolutely cannot read English books in Chinese translation. It's torturous to me because I spend half my energies second guessing the translator and wondering what the original must have said.

So it seems that I should read more Chinese literature. I've just finished 龍應台's 大江大海 and found myself at once impressed and mildly disappointed. There's a copy of 巨 流河 on my shelf which I'm meaning to attack...

pro patria, non dulce non et decor

This has been on my mind a lot lately for some reason. Especially the lines 'home to old lies and new infamy' and 'liars in public places.' Sometimes my mind gets stuck on an idea or a line or word like a broken record, popping up at random moments...

IV.

THESE fought, in any case, and some believing, pro domo, in any case . Some quick to arm, some for adventure, some from fear of weakness, some from fear of censure, some for love of slaughter, in imagination, learning later . . .

some in fear, learning love of slaughter; Died some "pro patria, non dulce non et decor". .

walked eye-deep in hell believing in old men's lies, then unbelieving came home, home to a lie, home to many deceits, home to old lies and new infamy;

usury age-old and age-thick and liars in public places.

Daring as never before, wastage as never before.
Young blood and high blood,
Fair cheeks, and fine bodies;
fortitude as never before

frankness as never before, disillusions as never told in the old days,
hysterias, trench confessions, laughter out of dead bellies.

- Pound, 'Hugh Selwyn Mauberley'

From this morning...

重看陳雪的「惡女書」。Stood up from the kitchen table exclaiming: 'Good book!! SO good!'
Good morning, world. It's 7:52 am. I like explicit lesbian fiction with my porridge.

虞美人 (蔣捷)

少年聽雨歌樓上，
紅燭昏羅帳。
壯年聽雨客舟中，
江闊雲低斷雁叫西風。
而今聽雨僧廬下，
鬢已星星也。
悲歡離合總無情，
一任階前點滴到天明。

Prayer for Marriage

When we are old one night and the moon
arcs over the house like an antique
China saucer and the teacup sun

follows somewhere far behind
I hope the stars deepen to a shine
so bright you could read by it

if you like and the sadnesses
we will have known go away
for awhile--in this hour or two

before sleep--and that we kiss
standing in the kitchen not fighting
gravity so much as embodying

its sweet force, and I hope we kiss
like we do today knowing so much
good is said in this primitive tongue

from the first surprising ones
to the lower dizzy ten thousand
infinitely slower ones--and I hope

while we stand there in the kitchen
making tea and kissing, the whistle
of the teapot wakes the neighbors.

- Steve Scafidi

A Lullaby

The din of work is subdued,
another day has westered
and mantling darkness arrived.
Peace! Peace! Devoid your portrait
of its vexations and rest.
Your daily round is done with,
you've gotten the garbage out,
answered some tiresome letters
and paid a bill by return,
all frettolosamente.
Now you have licence to lie,
naked, curled like a shrimplet,
jacent in bed, and enjoy
its cosy micro-climate:
Sing, Big Baby, sing lullay.

The old Greeks got it all wrong:
Narcissus is an oldie,
tamed by time, released at last
from lust for other bodies,
rational and reconciled.
For many years you envied
the hirsute, the he-man type.
No longer: now you fondle
your almost feminine flesh
with mettled satisfaction,
imagining that you are
sinless and all-sufficient,
snug in the den of yourself,
Madonna and Bambino:
Sing, Big Baby, sing lullay.

Let your last think all be thanks:
praise your parents who gave you
a Super-Ego of strength
that saves you so much bother,
digit friends and dear them all,
then pay fair attribution
to your age, to having been
born when you were. In boyhood
you were permitted to meet
beautiful old contraptions,
soon to be banished from earth,
saddle-tank loks, beam-engines
and over-shot waterwheels.
Yes, love, you have been lucky:
Sing, Big Baby, sing lullay.

Now for oblivion: let
the belly-mind take over
down below the diaphragm,
the domain of the Mothers,
They who guard the Sacred Gates,
without whose wordless warnings
soon the verbalising I
becomes a vicious despot,
lewd, incapable of love,
disdainful, status-hungry.
Should dreams haunt you, heed them not,
for all, both sweet and horrid,
are jokes in dubious taste,
too jejune to have truck with.
Sleep, Big Baby, sleep your fill.

- W. H. Auden

On transience...

I know that all beneath the moon decays
And what by mortals in this world is brought,
In Time's great periods shall return to nought;
That fairest states have fatal nights and days;
I know how all the Muse's heavenly lays,
With toil of spright which are so dearly bought,
As idle sounds, of few or none are sought,
And that nought lighter is than airy praise;
I know frail beauty like the purple flower,
To which one morn oft birth and death affords;
That love a jarring is of minds' accords,
Where sense and will invassal reason's power:
Know what I list, this all can not me move,
But that, O me! I both must write and love.

- William Drummond

Pablo Neruda - Tonight I Can Write

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, 'The night is starry
and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is starry and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

translated by W.S. Merwin

p.s. thank you, Kashmali

搜神記

魏景初中，咸陽縣吏家有怪。每夜，無故聞拍手相呼，伺，無所見。其母夜作，倦，就枕寢息。有頃，復聞竈下有呼聲曰：「文約何以不來？」頭下枕應曰：「我見枕，不能往。汝可來就我飲。」至明，乃飯臿也。即聚燒之，其怪遂絕。

摘自 搜神記

In the middle of the Jingchu era in the Cao Wei Empire, strange events occurred in the home of the magistrate of Xianyang. Each night, inexplicable sounds of revelry could be heard; however, nothing can be observed despite lying in wait. The mother of the magistrate was up one night until she became tired, whereupon she rested her head on a pillow. After a while, there came a call from under the stove: ‘Why do you not come as arranged?’ The pillow beneath her head replied: ‘I am being used as a pillow, and I cannot come. You could come and drink with me here.’ In the morning, the rice-scoop was discovered to be the pillow’s interlocutor. They were gathered together and burned, after which these strange occurrences ceased.

excerpted from In Search of the Supernatural (4th Century Chinese Compilation)

--------

A friend of mine felt that perhaps a pillow and a rice-scoop are symbolic. My inclination is to say that they are more akin to tsukumogami ('artifact spirits'). According to Wikipedia:

Though by and large tsukumogami are harmless and at most tend to play occasional pranks on unsuspecting victims, as shown in the Otogizōshi they do have the capacity for anger and will band together to take revenge on those who are wasteful or throw them away thoughtlessly. To prevent this, to this day some Jinja ceremonies, such as the Hari Kuyou, are performed to console broken and unusable items.

It is said that modern items cannot become tsukumogami; the reason for this is that tsukumogami are said to be repelled by electricity.^[1] Additionally, few modern items are used for the 100-year-span that it takes for an artifact to gain a soul.

Another story in a different compilation of supernatural stories I came across features an old pillow (belonging to the ancestors of the protagonist) which has assumed human form. This human figure has no facial features (presumably because pillows are flat and featureless). This pillow got burned too - because someone said that it is evil and will be murderous (the idea is that the longer you leave these objects they older and more powerful they become?).

My general impression of tsukumogami is that they are rather ambivalent - they can be good or bad. So maybe burning them is the safer option.

The idea that objects have life and feelings and don't like to be wasted reminds me of this Spike Jonze IKEA advert.



The idea that the new one is much better is obviously quite consumerist. Are tsukumogamis everywhere crying for the little lamp?

In Edinburgh? Good, in that case I recommend...

The Interminable Suicide of Gregory Church
by Daniel Kitson.

'Gregory had fifty seven letters to write. He'd never written that many letters, not in one go. In fact, he'd never written a single letter and it was taking significantly longer than he'd anticipated. He'd started, full of optimism, curiously enough, at 9 am and now here he was 8 hours later half way through letter twenty four. He glanced at his watch and then at the noose hanging over his head.

Gregory sighed.

Had he known how long suicide letters take, he thought, he wouldn't have cancelled the milk for the morning.

A story of death postponed by life.'

... I've always liked stories, particularly a certain type of story. Stories like those from my childhood copy of The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, or One Thousand and One Nights and the Chinese folk-tales in my 12 volume hardback edition of Chinese folk-tales for children. At some point though these stories gave way to novels (one of the earliest novels I read and loved was Jean-Christophe by Romain Rolland, can you believe it?), but I really never stopped liking stories of the other variety. It's difficult to define just what's so different between a novel and what I consider to be a 'story' and really, the boundaries are ill-defined, but I know a 'story' when I see one.

Daniel Kitson is undoubtedly a fine story-teller and I was mildly surprised when I saw him for the first time recently in Regents Park, performing the first in a series of three Stories for the Starlit Sky. I had been told that he's a stand-up comedian and I expected something of a cross between male-confession, airing of dirty laundry, whacky sound effects that some humans seem to be able to accomplish with the aid of a microphone, maybe political commentary (if I'm lucky) and maybe self-pity or out-right whinging (if I'm unlucky). Instead I was treated to a story about love. Yes, that's right, a love story.

Does that sound horribly naive and/or passe to you? But since when did love go out of fashion? (around the same time that SEX came into fashion? surely not).

The story I heard that night in Regents Park was a story of bittersweet unrequited love - that and many secret passions and acts of love - of the grand variety (Taj Mahal) and of the lesser, more mundane variety (watching a lover as he/she sleeps). Whatever the kind of love or acts of love, however, it was Kitson's ability to bring out the extraordinariness of ordinary lives through his particular brand of enthusiasm, extremely rapid speech, and the combination of resignation, amusement, and exasperation in his narration that made this story stay with me for a long time. Oh, and the fact that it was simply a GOOD story, the kind that makes no beans about being clever or complicated or post-modern or any of that crap but simply stands out for being a well-constructed, neatly-polished, and expertly-delivered story.

So I was particularly interested in seeing him again in the Edinburgh Fringe since I didn't have tickets to the remainder of his three Stories in London. I managed to book four tickets for The Interminable Suicide and I went there with Richard, Iain and Danuta. I'm happy to report that we all walked away chattering happily about how much we had enjoyed the show. So, if you happen to be around right now, go for it, get yourself a ticket.

I hope that some time in the near future Kitson will consider releasing his material in the form of video/audio recording or better yet, as a collection of stories in book format. I know it sounds really 4th grade to say that I learned something from a story but honest to God I feel like I did. It's very rare for me (the big-head pretentious pseudo-intellectual that I am) to go away from a night's entertainment now feeling like I've really gotten something out of it that I can take away with me and keep warm with, but this happened on both occasions when I've seen Kitson. And you know, recently some friends of mine, for various reasons, have been going through difficult times. I often think that hearing these stories would do them good and sometimes I draw a little bit of comparison by telling them a part of the story and it seems to cheer them up. But of course my personal rendition is woefully inadequate and I wish I could buy my friends copies of Kitson stories as Christmas present instead.

Did I mention how much I like stories?

Sonnet

I listen to The Writer's Almanac religiously and repeatedly, though I hardly ever remember anything I hear and am often (rather too often) surprised by my own ignorance in my supposed academic field. Once in a while a line or an image will stick and if I don't look it up at the time and make a note of it, going back through all the podcast episodes to find it again can prove difficult - depending on how much detail my sieve of a brain has preserved.

Anyway I'm glad I was able to dig this one up, because I'm a fan of meta-textual poetry (I'm sorry if that makes me sound like a ponce - what I mean is poetry which talks about the act of composition), of playing with form, of Petrarchan love, and of anything which briefly brings the Middle Ages to life. The Almanac gives a rather good introduction to the sonnet, which explains some 'inside-jokes' for anyone unfamiliar with its history and devices.

Sonnet
All we need is fourteen lines, well, thirteen now,
and after this one just a dozen
to launch a little ship on love's storm-tossed seas,
then only ten more left like rows of beans.
How easily it goes unless you get Elizabethan
and insist the iambic bongos must be played
and rhymes positioned at the ends of lines,
one for every station of the cross.
But hang on here wile we make the turn
into the final six where all will be resolved,
where longing and heartache will find an end,
where Laura will tell Petrarch to put down his pen,
take off those crazy medieval tights,
blow out the lights, and come at last to bed.
- Billy Collins

[via The Writer's Almanac and Billy-Collins.Com]

*incidentally, thank you, Billy Collins, for putting your poetry online. I'm not sure if you make all your poetry so freely available but I sure am glad that this one is there.

Questions, by Stephen Dunn

If on a summer afternoon a man should find himself
in love with only one woman
in a sea of women, all the others mere half-naked
swimmers and floaters, and if that one woman
therefore is clad in radiance
while the mere others are burdened by their bikinis,
then what does he do with a world
suddenly so small, the once unbiased sun
shining solely on her? And if that afternoon
turns dark, fat clouds like critics dampening
the already wet sea, does the man run—
as he normally would—for cover, or does he dive
deeper in, get so wet he is beyond wetness
in an underworld utterly hers? And when
he comes up for air, as he must,
when he dries off and dresses up, as he must,
how will the pedestrian streets feel?
What will the street lamps illuminate? How exactly
will he hold her so that everyone can see
she doesn't belong to him, and he won't let go?

"Questions" by Stephen Dunn, from Local Visitations. © W.W. Norton & company, 2003. [buy now]

[via The Writer's Almanac]

Bye bye, MSt

I've just emailed my dissertation and all peripheral documents to be printed off by Dan at the computer lab (saves me 100+ pages of cost in printing). These 9 months have gone by so fast. It's been a terrific slog, and I hope that I get an overall distinction so I can come back to Oxford if I want. But if I don't get a distinction - well, I tried my best.

Looking forward to going home and packing up my things, and a celebratory dinner tonight.

I'm so grateful for all the help that people have given me. Dr. Sally Mapstone for her unending support and words of encouragement (plus her minute attention to mistakes on my bibliography and her suggestions for ever more reading). Ralph for his ingenious advice which leaves me so baffled that I decide to stop whinging and just get on with it (???) - and for answering my miscellaneous questions about absolutely everything (from paeleographical questions to queries about architectural features at Keble). Maria for being my fairy godmother and producing hugs and cups of tea at all the right times, reading and proofing my outlines/drafts, and sending me home to rest when she knows that's what I really need. Sergi for doing the same - but also for his patience and understanding because of all people he knows my strengths and weaknesses best (and is probably heartily sick and tired of my split infinitives). DJ for always abusing the com-lab's resources and printing off my papers and for scrounging for envelopes for me at the very last minute. Alison for her time and energy spent on giving my papers a last once-over and advice that makes me think if only I had another 3 days my paper would be perfect...

and of course all the friends I've made on the course and my MCR family... and the anonymous but familiar faces I always see in the Upper Reading Room and the Keble Library, who make me feel like I'm not a loser for spending ALL my time in such places...

It's been good.

Abstract for graduate discussion evening at Keble

'Sheer high-spirited fun': The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedy

In this talk I will give a general introduction to the Scottish tradition of 'flyting': invectives in verse as practised by some of Scotland’s most well known poets – and consider whether they constitute 'sins of the tongue.'

The main focus of my paper will be on The Flying of Dunbar and Kennedy – one of the earliest printed texts in Scotland (and the first f-word to roll off a press), featuring choice episodes of scatological humour, and a selection of my favourite Older Scots terms of abuse ('wanffukit funling' is only the beginning). No previously knowledge of Older Scots necessary (many epithets don't require translation anyway).

------------------------------------

I'm actually slightly nervous about this talk because it is being chaired by Dr. Marc Brodie, the Senior Tutor - and the invitation is open to the Senior Common Room (read 'important people who know a lot of stuff'). Hopefully will get a good showing of MCR friends to give some moral support!

p.s. on the day of the presentation I changed my title to 'How to curse in Older Scots and get away with it: The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedy.'

The Sowtar Inveyand aganis the telyeor Sayis

Quhen I come by yone telyeoris stall
I saw an Lowiss creipand vp his wall
snop q the telyeor snap q the scheiris
Cokkis bownis q the lowiss I haif lost myne Eiris

Ane vder

Betuix twa foxis / a crawing cok
Betuix twa freiris / A maid in hir smok
Betuix twa cattis / A Mowiss
Betuix twa telyeoris / A Lowiss
scahw me gud ser not as a stranger
quhilk of thais four is grittest in denger

Anser

ffoxis ar fell At crawing cokkis
ffreiris ar ferss At maidis in thair smokkis
Cattis ar cawtelus in taking of Myiss
Telyeoris ar tyrranis in kelling of Lyiss.

Euphemisms Galore

Euphemisms and Verbal Play: Figures, Metaphors, Flippancies and Remodellings

Her scotches, long and slender
Reached to her kingdom come,
Her hobsons, low and husky
Made my newingtons go numb.

I took her for some Lillian Gish
Down at the chippy caff.
We squeezed into my jam-jar
And drove back to my gaff.

She then began removing
Her full-length almond rock,
Revealing size nine how-de-do's
Which gave me quite a shock.

And with a sexy butchers
She murmured 'I'm all yours.'
SHe then took of her fly-be's
ANd dropped her early doors.
(From 'Cockney's Lament' by Ronnie Barker)

scotch (peg) = leg
kingdom come = bum, fanny
hobson's (choice) = voice
newington (butts) = guts
Lillian Gish = fish
jam-jar = car
almond rock = sock/frock
how-de-do's = shoes
butchers (hook) = look
fly-be(-nights) = tights, pantyhose
early doors = drawers, underpants

Go away, I don't like you.

I know myself well enough to know when I'm in a mood. I used to get seriously depressed, and at one point contemplated suicide. I say contemplated because I don't think that it was in me, really - but that's the crazy thing about depression. It makes me think what would otherwise be unthinkable to me, because depression is made up of all those things that really aren't me. Do you know what I mean? It feels like going to a party with the wrong dress on - something that really isn't my style. Well, depression really isn't my style either, but it's not like a dress I could just slip off. (God, the thought of having to wear the wrong dress to a party is itself pretty depressing).

Rather than a dress, my depression and negativity always manifests itself as a person in my head - the person I emphatically don't want to be - my non-self. This person has the ability to interpret everything in a negative light. If I text a friend and they don't get back to me, it's not because my friend is in a meeting or cycling down the street, but because my friend actually hates me. If I have just finished having coffee with someone, and am cycling away, this person in my head begins to analyse everything that was said (and more importantly, unsaid) - and tries to make me believe that the entire event was a disaster, that I have fucked everything up in a fundamental way (and that my friend hates me). The theme which begins to emerge is: everyone hates me.

I could go into speculations about why such is the case, i.e. why I sometimes get depressed, and why my depression chooses to manifest itself in this form - but to be honest I'm not actually very interested in that at this particular moment.

Thing is, tonight I had dinner with two of my very good friends. We cooked together, ate a hearty meal, drank wine, and laughed a lot. But when I left them this person came on stage and tried to ruin it all. I then met up with another friend and enjoyed myself just fine. But, by the time that I was half way home my non-self was once again carrying on and on in her own negative downward-spiral, and I was sick of it.

So I decided to acknowledge her existence. Hello, my non-self. Let's get something straight here: my friends don't hate me. You hate me. Go away. I don't like you. I am not the person you want me to be, and I will never be the person you want me to be. So you can fuck right off.

Taking a step back I realize that the situation is the same whether I choose to read it positively or negatively. Stray to far in either direction and there is a problem. However, if I were to err, I would rather be unfailingly positive rather than unfailingly negative - and really, the choice is mine.

This reminds me of my first year of undergraduate studies in Edinburgh, when I hit the lowest point that I have ever been in my life. I remember being unhappy, and getting drunk, and therefore becoming even more unhappy. I remember waking up in bed one night, in that uncomfortable stage between drunk and hung-over, and stumbling into my kitchen to find my flatmate speaking to an upstairs neighbour, in the middle of the night. I remember them asking me if I was ok. I remember breaking down in front of them, standing in front of the kitchen sink trying to fill my glass of water. I remember them taking me and putting me back into bed. I remember lying there crying uncontrollably as they tried to comfort me.

I remember listening to my non-self, and believing the nasty things she says. I remember being so frustrated at all the bad things in my head that I fantasized about taking a drill to my temple and finally having the satisfaction of spilling it all out. I remember deciding that I won't commit suicide because it can only have 3 possible outcomes (I die and there is an afterlife, in which case I'd probably be fucked because most religions don't condone suicide; I die and there is no afterlife, which I'd be ok with; and, I don't manage to kill myself and end up being a nuisance to everyone who has to find me, take me to the hospital, and look after me etc.), 2 of which are undesirable (options 1 and 3), thus making it a bad investment in time and energy. I remember staring out at the street lights in the night, in the rain, with my forehead against the cold glass of the window, and feeling despair well up inside me and tears pouring down my cheeks.

I don't want to go back there.

Do you know Walt Whitman's Song of Myself? In some of my lowest moments I used to read a passage of it over and over because it seemed to speak to me.

Trippers and askers surround me,
People I meet, the effect upon me of my early life or the ward and
city I live in, or the nation,
The latest dates, discoveries, inventions, societies, authors old and new,
My dinner, dress, associates, looks, compliments, dues,
The real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I love,
The sickness of one of my folks or of myself, or ill-doing or loss
or lack of money, or depressions or exaltations,
Battles, the horrors of fratricidal war, the fever of doubtful news,
the fitful events;
These come to me days and nights and go from me again,
But they are not the Me myself.

Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am,
Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary,
Looks down, is erect, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest,
Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next,
Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it.

Backward I see in my own days where I sweated through fog with
linguists and contenders,
I have no mockings or arguments, I witness and wait.

It made me want to be that distanced, calm observer of my own life, amused, complacent, compassionate, idle, unitary, who could listen to the voice of my non-self and know that the theme 'everyone hates me' is merely the real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I love. I wanted to believe that these things - my depression, my past, the world around me, are not the Me myself. I wanted to believe that there is someone inside me who is inalienably Me - who has the integrity to stand unaffected by uncontrollable external factors, feelings of guilt, bouts of doubt, and even moments of elation. I know that you will have read Song of Myself differently - and I confess that I know next to nothing about Walt Whitman - but this is how it made sense to me at the time (and now).

So it seems that things will be ok.

Back on track?

I've been struggling to get myself into the right head-space for a few days now. Ever since the deadlines passed things have been kind of adrift. Not bad, just floating. I've done a few things which are productive, which makes me feel good (I finished knitting the April Showers scarf!) - but left with time on my hands I just end up thinking to much.

Which does me no good at all.

There is a difference between thinking about a problem constructively and coming to terms with it or solving it - and dwelling needlessly on this that or the other. Also there are times when someone who is emphatically not who I am starts voicing negative opinions in my head. That's when I find myself talking to myself while walking dully along and I think it's a bad sign.

So today I am back in the Keble Library. A book which I ordered for my dissertation work arrived and I dipped into it a little just now (I love the idea of 'dipping' into a book, like slipping toes into the water's edge when sitting on a pier), and it's really well written and stimulating. The book in question is Seven Words You Can't Say on Television (read a review here), by Steven Pinker - published by Penguin 2008 (actually an extract from The Stuff of Thought).

Now I am going to go and take some notes while reading this - and think about our mini in-house conference in week 3 of Trinity term, where all of us MSt students are going to give a short paper on our research.

I look forward to swearing profusely, with impunity.