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Michaelmas

  • 2nd Dec, 2008 at 6:14 PM
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Michaelmas is coming to an end. Somehow I never quite thought it would. I can't remember what I have been doing; days and books and tv shows and walks are all bleeding into each other. There has been Jacobean tragedy, I think, and libraries, the West Wing, and Port Meadow, and a lot of Latin. But I might have dreamt it.

Oxford

  • 8th Oct, 2007 at 6:34 PM
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It seems I am in Oxford, and have joined the college chapel choir, and signed up for the Gregorian Chant Society, the chess club and possibly something to do with role playing. Oh dear.
In other words, everything is mightily busy and very beautiful and quite lonely in its ways. Tomorrow the real work begins. I am trembling.

Harry Potter

  • 20th Jul, 2007 at 12:37 PM
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Just one more day. Too excited to talk much. Trust Snape.

Graduated

  • 9th Jun, 2007 at 8:49 PM
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My goodness, school is finished. This means I am now somewhere between confusion and university. How did this happen?
  • Mood: confused

Going blind?

  • 8th Apr, 2007 at 12:03 PM
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I broke my glasses and now I can't see very well - in fact, I am feeling much like Claude Monet circa 1922. I used to think it was quite funny that I could choose to perceive the world as a blur of colours and lights, but when I am forced to do it, it isn't that amusing. Right now I'm working a "beat-up nerd" look with taped glasses - heavy, grey baggage tape - and waiting for the Easter weekend to end so that I can get someone to fix my glasses a little more artfully. Well. John Milton went blind and wrote a sonnet about it, so who am I to complain? At least I still see something.
  • Mood: cranky

snow, Paris, life

  • 22nd Feb, 2007 at 8:54 AM
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Oh, snow, dancing around the lampposts, and grey skies, and fifteen degrees below zero, and the prospect of a visit to Paris on the horizon -- tisane, madeleines, the Shakespeare bookstore and Quartier Latins in the soft May light. Life is looking all right, I think; manageable for once. The derivative didn't kill me, so the exponentials definitely won't, either, and I'll soon tie up the last ends of the French course. Then it's just a few concerts, some choir practices, and a long string of various holidays. Everything will be fine.

Various and sundry

  • 2nd Feb, 2007 at 3:11 PM
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The snow has disappeared, but Venus is here to make up for it. I got to do a bit of brilliant naked eye-observing the other day, which is really one of the best kinds of observing. I climbed and rambled through the forest, dressed like Amundsen, a small pair of binoculars in my pocket, while the sky turned a lovely shade of aquamarine and the birds grew silent in the trees.
Winter is a good time to be here. I fall in love with the countryside all over again, and am prone to solitary walks in the spirit of Wordsworth -- all grand romantic thought and youth and singing brooks -- I mean, you have to make the best of your dull everyday life, do something to counteract all the homework and train journeys and sci-fi tv show-watching.
And of course the dullness of dull everyday life is relative; it's really a blessing in itself. When I am tired from a long day at school or work, that's a very good sign, and I know that I have taken a step closer to a normal existence -- I'm coming closer to a place or state of mind where different things matter, real things, things outside my own brain and fear of phantom catastrophes. Maybe the real world isn't such a threat, after all. I don't know. I still prefer the library and the evening sky, and I'm not so sure I want that to change.

Cold

  • 19th Jan, 2007 at 7:15 PM
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Oh, Friday. The weather's turned cold, all of a sudden: I woke up this morning to a fine dusting of snow, roads glazed with ice and a wind that must have come straight from Antarctica. I don't find it as pleasant as I thought I would, having moaned for weeks about the lack of winter weather; but then again, there's too little snow for any serious winter pursuits (like mad sleigh races and snowball fights). Still, it's a certain kind of cold, sharp and urgent, and I am savouring it. I savour everything these days, knowing I am about to desert my country and be happily exiled in England for the next three years. I don't know if I'm just being melodramatic, but it's quite sad to move away from home -- not just one's family home, but one's country, the familiar customs and foods and TV shows, and the meadows and fields... I'm glad Oxford is such a small city, and such a friendly one. And they do have meadows, and deer. Perhaps there's even some northerner society I can join...

UCAS, I love thee

  • 5th Jan, 2007 at 2:24 PM
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An unconditional offer from Oxford. I have known it for a while now, but still - now it's really official. It's there. On UCAS. Oxford University, Q300, O (which apparently means Balliol), Unconditional. Unconditional! I keep wanting to burst into song; I can't really believe it... I'm going. I'm moving to England. I will wear academic dress and swear oaths not to deface Bodleian books. I will pay disturbing amounts of money for bad accomodation and kitchenettes. I will have to learn to do my own laundry, and to open a bank account, and my school has a crest with what looks like a strangely compelling cross between a lion and an hippogriff. Wow.
I dreamt of this for so long, and now it's real, it's happening. I never really thought it would, it seemed so far away -- all those hours in school and on the bus with dreadfully heavy books on literature history, all that essay research, all those forms and statements and all that waiting, and people smiling at me and saying "That's a brave thing to do" or "What a funny idea", and that look in their eye that said they thought I was a bit crazy, and the guidance counselor who told me Swedish people had no chance in Oxford... life works out in the most fascinating ways sometimes. I've prayed hard for this, so hard, and I've hoped so much. And now it's there on UCAS and not just in my nice letter from the college, and there's a little virtual button to click to accept my offer, and I don't have to sit any more exams or write any more essays until October... wow, wow, wow. Despite all this rambling, I really am speechless. And grateful! So grateful.
  • Mood: jubilant

German fencing

  • 31st Dec, 2006 at 2:48 PM
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This is quite fascinating, idiotic and romantic. What more could you wish for?

A strange urge

  • 28th Dec, 2006 at 3:31 PM
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Oh, I am ill. I blame my raging cold and fever for the fact that I awoke today with the idea of writing a comparative piece on Rilke's "Archaic Torso of Apollo" and Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn". Yes, I know, I need a life. Or, I need school. Real school. I long to go to Oxford, and I feel terrible when I think about all the time that is left until I can return. I was there for less than three days, and yet I felt like I had come home, and, upon leaving, like I had always lived in Oxford - or belonged there, at least. I still can't believe I have actually been accepted. It's quite weird.
But then, I am weird, too. I get urges to write literary essays. I am not forced to write a single little essay until October, there is no reason for me to write an essay, and yet I yearn to do it. I wasn't cut out for the slacker life, I suppose; my musician friends are better at that. But on the other hand, they do practice six hours a day...

27th Dec, 2006

  • 4:38 PM
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Despite my strict policy, I have made a New Year's Resolution (notice capital letters). I will defend myself with the fact that it is the only resolution I will make, and that it is something I would have had to do anyway.
Yes. It is true.
I shall read Dickens.
I must read Dickens.
I will read Dickens.
I mean, I have to. How could I go to university to read for a degree in English literature with no Dickens under my belt, save A Christmas Carol? It's quite impossible, like applying for the space program without any knowledge of, er, elementary physics.
I suppose it is in part because of this scary decision that I've started this blog. I'm not exactly the master of light chit-chat and funny everyday details, and the most probable outcome of this blogging thing is that I will be utterly alone, unread, and shut-down in a few weeks' time, but still: I'm going to read Dickens. The greater implication of Dickens is of course that I'm going to university, which means moving out of my cosy family home - and not just to the neighbouring town, oh no, but to another country. That is, England. I need to write and think in English, and I need to moan about all the books I'm reading to prepare for uni. Especially Dickens.
So if there is anyone out there... or if there's not. Here I am, with a blog. With Dickens. We'll see what happens.

Bye for now.