living with a painting, day one

I was thinking the other day about how much I hate museums. I think I hate going to museums the same way I hate reading books: I get overwhelmed by the content and the time it takes for me to get through it all.  I hate that you have to "get through it all" at a museum, like there's a time limit.  You have to see everything in a couple of hours.  I personally can't be in a museum for longer than a couple of hours. I go mad and get angry and want to run away.  There's just too much stuff.  I hate how I can only give each painting a quick glance or, at most, five or seven minutes contemplating its lines and colors and textures and context and subject so superficially that I might as well not even look at it.  I forget it the moment I leave, unless I find a postcard of it in the gift shop, but the postcard is merely a reminder of its existence, a reminder that will probably find its way to the bottom of a pile of postcards, or tacked to a wall with fifty other reminders.

A museum is no way to view art.  Art should be lived with. How can I possibly understand a piece of art if I only glance at it, if it's not there with me to return to when I'm not thinking of anything in particular? It's funny how I thought of this and then when I started reading a book by Stephen Fry called The Ode Less Traveled about writing poetry, he says: Poems, "as with a good painting are not there to be greedily taken in at once, they are to be lived and endlessly revisited. The eye can go back and back and back, investigating new corners, new incidents and the new shapes that seem to emerge."  Clearly I need to live with a painting.

I've had this idea before but have never taken the time to see it through.  So I decided now was the perfect opportunity.  I would go to a local museum, find a painting and visit it every day for at least a week. I would spend at least an hour in its presence, not necessarily staring at it for an hour--I would write, listen to music, read, and the moments when I pause or get distracted I would look at the painting, and allow my eye to slip across it, lingering on a particularly lovely line or shading, sweeping through its figures and focusing on a bit of color I hadn't seen before.  This is how I want to experience art, not rushing through a museum so that I can say I've seen it all.

So today I went to the Tate Britain to meet my painting.  My criteria for choosing a painting were pretty arbitrary: 1) it had to be something I'd consider putting on my wall at home, a painting I wouldn't object living with, and 2) there had to be a soft seat near by.  That's all.  There were some early 20th century paintings I quite liked but not a soft chair in the room, so I moved on to another room  Finally I chose this painting:

It's called Theseus and the Minotaure (Interior at Minos) by Keith Vaughan finished in 1950.  I don't particularly love the painting, but that's one of the reasons I chose it.  It's like when you meet someone at school or church, and you get along fine but they're not your favorite person, and then you get to know them and sometimes you become pretty good friends, or at least you understand them better and can appreciate who they are.  That's kind of what I'm hoping will come of this experience.  

One interesting thing I noticed about the painting is that I counted 78 crescents in it.  That's a lot of crescents. That's pretty much what I got from it today, but I have a whole week to acquaint myself with it and think more about it.  Today was just the initial meeting.  I think this is going to be a fun experience. 

Remember when...

I made this dress for Halloween...

and my lovely friend and brilliant artist Brock used it for a fashion show and this great photo was taken?

And I forgot he was going to use it and when it came down the runway I gasped?  One of the best moments of my life.  Check it out on the photographer's website here. 

papers, travel and melancholia

This week has been a good week.  The paper got done, with an hour to spare, and even though I hate it, it was accepted to be presented at the Popular Culture Association/ American Culture Association National Conference this April in San Antonio.  On Wednesday I registered for the conference and booked a nice, inexpensive hotel room in San Antonio and found some really cheap plane tickets that will take me from London to Utah, Utah to Texas and Texas back to London for only $980.  Incredible.  I also applied for funding with my school for the conference, and I should hear back about that in about 3 weeks.

So that's pretty much set to go.  I'll be leaving for Utah on March 31 and I'll be back in London just in time for the Royal Wedding and research juries.  I haven't bought the tickets yet because I am a little worried about taking that much time off before the juries, which will decide whether or not I can be upgraded from the MPhil to a PhD.  But this is where I am extremely grateful for that wedding because it sounds like the juries will have to be pushed back, hopefully more than a week.  

This week I also started classes. One is a research methods class, and I found out that I have to give a presentation on my somewhat non-existent research on February 8th.  My other class is about melancholy, how it shows up and what it means in culture.  We had a somewhat interesting discussion on this etching by Albrect Durer called "Melancholia I" (no one has ever found "Melancholia II" or "Melancholia III", but it's supposed that this might have been part of a series originally)

The image is of a very heavy, weighed down angel, solemnly musing with a darkened face and curious bits lying around it.  Apparently some German art historians spent decades trying to figure out what it all means. I think the satisfying conclusion is basically that melancholy is not a useless state of being, but a noble state, especially for the scholar and philosopher.  It's a balanced paradoxical state, as evidenced by many of the images in the etching:  the angel with wings who is too heavy to fly, the unringing bell, the hourglass with equal amounts of sand in each half (time that has stopped), the starved dog at rest (the dog was often a symbol of lust, apparently, which was also associated with melancholy, and yet here he is docile and conquered).  It is an image of paradoxical movement and stasis, and I guess that's what melancholy is.  I don't know, that's basically what I got out of the hour long lecture.  I'm excited for next week because we'll be talking about the Gothic, which is kind of my thing. 

I'm really struggling right now with my own research.  The idea I had originally is not proving very fruitful, and I keep discovering book that have done all the things I thought to do.  I'm stuck and I'm falling into that overwhelmed state where I'd rather sit and stare at a wall than spend a day reading a book that might end up being useless to me.  I'm scared of wasting time when I'm doing the research, so I'd rather do nothing.  Plus I might not be as interested in the topic as I thought I was.  I'd rather be doing anything than reading WWI history.  It might be time for a refocus, but it might also be too late for one. 

On a final note, Stephen Fry has been making a documentary and tweeting his locations, which for the last week have been in my neighborhood. Alas, all of my attempts to find him, including a sprint to the British Museum this morning, have been fruitless.  Maybe I'll get lucky this week.  I've been listening to his The Ode Less Traveled, a book about writing poetry.  He has exercises in the book that have been very challenging and fun, and I'm hoping it will help me think more creatively.

overcoming the long dark teatime of the soul

I typically hate Sundays. They're always the worst days of the week for me, days when I feel the most tired, the most lonely, the most bored. Maybe it's because I have high expectations for them, or maybe it's more psychological and goes back to the times when I worked Saturday nights until 6 AM and still managed to get up by 11 to go to church. I usually managed church ok, but Sunday evenings just killed me. I don't think I ever really shook that feeling. Also, I often got frustrated, years after I quit that job, when I would want to hang out with people on Sundays and they would all be napping in the afternoon when I never could nap. Maybe that made me bitter.

I'm sure most of you have heard me complain about Sundays before, and I'm sure many of you have heard this quote, which is one of my favorite quotes of all time. It's from Douglas Adams' Life, the Universe and Everything and it describes my Sunday afternoons perfectly:

In the end, it was the Sunday afternoons he couldn't cope with, and that terrible listlessness that starts to set in about 2:55, when you know you’ve taken all the baths that you can usefully take that day, that however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the newspaper you will never actually read it, or use the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes, and that as you stare at the clock the hands will move relentlessly on to four o’clock, and you will enter the long dark teatime of the soul.

I remember the day I read this. It was a Sunday, believe it or not, and I had just taken a bath (the second of the day) and decided that maybe I would just read to try to pass away the rest of the afternoon. I almost fell out of my chair when I came across this passage.

This isn't the first time I've ranted about how much I hate Sundays and it probably won't be the last. However, today was one of those rare nice Sundays. It wasn't the best Sunday I ever had, but it also wasn't the typical Sunday where all I want to do is stab my eyes out because I'm so desperately bored. Since I had been so lazy yesterday, I decided to go for a walk this morning. The sun was shining and it was such a lovely day out. I walked around my neighborhood, which isn't the most interesting place in the world, but I found a few lovely spots to stand and enjoy the sun. When I got back home I felt good and I was actually excited to go to church.

Church went well; we talked about some wonderful principles, about faith and temples, and I felt renewed and ready for my week, and I even did

an uncharacteristic thing and stuck around after the meetings to chat with people. I found out that some were going over to St. Paul's to attend a service and since I had been thinking of doing just that thing earlier today I decided I would tag along. It was quite a nice service, and the church is just utterly amazing. Even the little sermon was quite nice and made me think of Christ and my relationship to God. I love learning and feeling the spirit in other churches; it helps me appreciate my own beliefs and religious practices.

Then I came home and talked with my family, watched a little Top Gear, and skyped with my best friend. And now it's nearly time for bed and I never once fell into that horrid long dark teatime of the soul.

I honestly think that the fact that I forced myself to be a little more laid back and take my time after church to talk to people really made all the difference. I think the thing I hate most about Sundays is being alone. I feel like Sundays are meant for people, to relax and talk and enjoy the company and good conversation of friends and family. I do believe they are sacred days, but when they are spent alone, watching telly, being bored, Sundays just awful. So, I hope that Sundays like today will be characteristic of my future Sundays, and I'm going to put a little more effort into making them special like I want them to be.

won't you please please help me?

Today is officially the last day of winter break. Although it never really felt like the end of a semester around here because it really wasn't. Right now the libraries are packed full of kids studying for their finals, because finals come after winter break. I have been staring at my computer all week trying to write a paper due on Tuesday. So that wonderful feeling of everything being done and being able to relax over the break never really happened for most of us.

I'm glad life is starting back up anyway. Next week will be busy and wonderful. I'll have turned this horrid paper in, classes and new projects will begin. Then it will feel like a new year.

Oh this paper. It really is killing me. I feel that it is rife with problems, that it is convoluted and uncertain of itself and I'm being stubborn and refuse to scrap it and start over. If I've learned anything from all the massive amounts of television I consume, starting over never worked in Project Runway, not this late in the game, and I have Tim Gunn in my head right now telling me to "make it work". I'm 1/4 way through my word count and I have 4 more days before it's due, so I think that's plenty of time to make it work.

One of the main problems is that I'm kind of not so much in to the topic as I thought I was at first. I tend to go with my gut on topics, and if something catches my interest and I think about it more than twice then that's what I go for. Typically that involves something with horror or gothic stories and movies, and that's what happened this time. We were talking about science in the nineteenth centuries and I kept thinking about Poe and his interest in science, and about Mary Shelley and H.P. Lovecraft and it just seemed to me that so much of the horror genre was born out of this anxiety with science that existed in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, and I wanted to explore how and why these authors used science as a theme in their horror novels.

I think one of my biggest problems is terminology. Even though they are so obviously connected it's hard to bring these three people into one 4000 word paper, mostly because of annoying differences in labels. I hate to have to categorize them all. Is Shelley a Romantic or a Gothic? Is Poe a Gothic? I don't think so, but everyone says he is. Lovecraft surely isn't Gothic, but he kind of is? Some people say they all wrote science fiction, while technically science fiction isn't supposed to be a genre until the 1920s. They certainly didn't write horror stories, right? Even though they are the predecessors to modern horror. They all come from very different social backgrounds and all have very different experiences with science, whatever category someone puts them in. I guess labels don't matter in the end. What matters is how I connect them and what conclusions I can draw from the connection. The connection I've chosen is the poles, meaning the arctic and antarctic poles. They all have moments of discovery in the poles. That's the key point I think.

I hope it comes together and I can make it work. Part of me really doesn't like the fact that my life consists of me agonizing about a paper, but at the same time nothing is more satisfying than finishing a paper and feeling proud of the work I've done. I'm going to try to keep doing this, and maybe, just maybe, someone someday will pay me for it.

If they don't pay me to write papers, maybe they'll pay me to read them. My sister started an editing boutique recently and I've joined up. We're a two lady operation now and hoping beyond hope that we can get some fishies to bite. The thing is, I've been reading/editing/grading papers now for the last 7 years. I started grading papers before I even knew how to write papers. And after all of these years of writing/reading/editing/grading papers I think I've finally grasped the elusive beauty of the academic essay. I don't mean to boast, but it's basically the ONLY thing I am good at.

What we're doing is offering a whole range of editing options, from Global and Substantive Edits (content and rhetoric) to Copy Edits (grammar and punctuation) to Proofreading (cleaning up typos and making the format pretty). Anything any student or writer could need. And we both have years of experience and we are both really really smart people.

So, I'm asking all of my 3 readers to help me get the word out about our editing boutique. It's called Arch Editing, and you can find us on Twitter and Facebook under that name, and here is the lovely link to our lovely website: http://archediting.wordpress.com/

happy new time

It's a new year! And with new years comes new plans and new goals and a whole new feeling of life. Or it should, and it usually does for a few days. But it is now day 5 of the new year and it doesn't feel much different from the old year in many respects.

I spent the end of the old year in Germany with my best friend, traveling around in the frigid temperature, splurging on dinners and chocolate and spas, and I've returned with no money. It was a good time, except for the fact that I was ill throughout most of it. A cough turned into a cold half way through and I could hardly keep my itchy watery eyes open the three days we were in Munich. At the time I didn't think I was having much fun, but I miss it now. I miss being with my best friend who makes me laugh and smile and who loves me. I miss the expensive dinners and the chocolate too. I don't miss the cold however, and I think we probably could have had just as nice of a time in a warmer climate.

I was very happy to come back to London. The weather has been nice the last couple of days, and it's London for crying out loud. I always forget that I live here. There's still so much I haven't seen yet of this place, but I'm kind of holding out for warmer weather and a little more money in my pocket before I make too many excursions. I can't wait to see London

in the spring.

For now I'm trying to write a paper, and not doing a very good job of it. I'm not sure if I like my topic, and the research I'm doing isn't sparking any new and interesting insights. I am slightly worried because I submitted this paper topic for the Popular Culture Association conference in April, and it got accepted. Also I need to try to impress my professors so that they'll help me figure out a way to finance another 2 years so I can finish the PhD. I'm a little stressed out, and I haven't really written anything these three days. Tomorrow will be it though. Tomorrow will be the day of writing and I'll get 2000 words done. we'll see.

I've been reading blogs and people do such a good job of making their lives sound fun and interesting. How can I do that? I thought maybe I should just have a more fun and interesting life, but then I realized that it doesn't matter as long as I can make it look fun and interesting. Sort of like one my friends who always said that the pictures of our adventures made us look like such fun people, even though we didn't really feel that fun. Enthusiasm is the trick, you see. So my number one goal this year is to be more enthusiastic, and to blog enthusiastically about my boring life. Maybe if I do that I'll start seeing my life as not boring but totally awesome. I have an inkling that it actually is kind of cool.

Want some pictorial evidence? Here ya go:

That's me on Christmas day in Rothenburg, a beautiful little city in Germany. It was cold and snowy but very picturesque and lovely. That's neat, right?

Here I am eating lunch at the Schloss Nymphenburg palace. That was kind of cool. I ate venison that the waitress called Bambi (she forgot the English word). mmm Bambi.

the ubiquitous Christmas curfuffle

It's been a weird week. On Saturday it snowed and snowed and snowed. The airport couldn't handle it so it shut down and people have been stranded at Heathrow ever since. I've been obsessed with the weather because I'm supposed to fly to Germany on Friday morning, which means I haven't really done much on my essay that's due after the break. To be honest I haven't really done much of anything.

Everything feels odd right now, right on the cusp of Christmas. There's a lot of stress in the air, especially by the British Library, which is right next to the main international train station. There's a queue wrapped around the block, people waiting to get on a train to get home for Christmas. There's also people stressing over the holiday in general. People trying to get to parties, trying to buy gifts, trying to stay happy. There isn't really a lighthearted Christmas cheer in the air, but there is a quiet perseverance, a stubborn resolve to stay cheerful for the holidays. That's admirable, really. Maybe that's what the true meaning if Christmas is: a stubborn resolve to make it through to the New Year.

It's an amazingly difficult time of year. The weather is at its worst right when most people want to travel. Everyone is sick (including me. I've had this stupid annoying cough since Saturday). No one has any money, and yet we're all expected to buy gifts for the people we love. People who are alone feel especially lonely. And yet we're supposed to try our very hardest to stay Christmassy. In an article for the Observer, David Mitchell, one of my favorite comedy actors/writers, comments on this issue I think rather astutely:

Santa knows I'm not the first person to say this but the problem with the mass-produced goodwill of the modern Christmas, where we're constantly wished happiness by carrier bags, receipts, coffee cups and TV channel idents, is that it can feel like a denial of all the things we're fed up or angry about. Charities exhort us to "think of those less fortunate than ourselves" while corporations rub our noses in goodies only affordable by those more fortunate. We're expected to endure stressful family gatherings and gruelling catering tribulations and count ourselves lucky in the process.

It's a tricky thing to do, and I'm not sure why yet we do it. Well, I'm trying my damnedest to stay Christmassy and cheerful, even though I'm freaking out about my trip falling through, not seeing my best friend, and losing all the money I've put into it. Saturday and Sunday were Part A and Part B of a nice Christmas party. We got full, had loads of leftovers on Saturday and so decided to come back on Sunday and finish it all up. The only downside to the weekend was that horrible storm on Saturday. I was out in the snow for 2 hours, not wearing enough clothes, not having an umbrella and getting completely soaked through. Someone smacked me in the face with their umbrella, I got lost, the plans I had made for the afternoon fell through. All of that was pretty stressful and I don't think I was able to flip my mood around and be super happy the rest of the evening.

I remember at one point, however, when I was finally on the homestretch to my friend's apartment, trudging through the snow, I thought "This what Christmas has always been about: trudging through the snow, being cold and miserable, on the way to a warm house full of friendly faces. People have been doing this for hundreds of years, I can do it now."

Another attempt to stay cheery may have worked a little better. I got the last two tickets to see the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra play a Christmas concert last night, and it was just delightful. The music was lovely, the company was lovely, the dinner before hand was super tasty. I finally got to see Harrods all lit up and pretty and I got to see a part of town I haven't seen yet. The concert was really fun, and it was partly a sing-a-long which I just love. It ended up being a really nice, Christmassy evening.

The next few days are probably not going to be so cheery. Fortunately, it looks as if the airports and airlines are finally getting back on track. Lufthansa Flight 921, the same one I'll be taking on Friday, was not cancelled today and actually arrived before schedule in Frankfurt. It looks as if all the Lufthansa flights are going, so that's very promising. The one thing I am worried about now is that the flight leaves at 6:20, and the earliest I can get to the airport by train is 5:00 am, which I think would have been enough time if there weren't 60,000 stranded people milling about the place like zombies. So, if my flight is confirmed, I think the best thing would be to take the tube out there on Thursday night. This is going to suck really bad, but I have to give myself plenty of time to get through the whole mess. The crappiest part of that plan is that I'm getting sick and have already not been sleeping much the last few nights because of a cough. Well, I guess today I'll be cold medicine shopping.

As far as doing anything else today, I don't think I will. I'll just carry on as if I'm flying on Friday and get all packed and ready to go. If I do decided to take the tube out tomorrow night and I'm all ready, I have a ticket for a screening of Scott Pilgrim with a Q&A with Edgar Wright. That's in Brixton at 8, and it might be good to have something distracting and fun for a couple of hours. I can do that, come home and get my stuff and head to the airport.

So there you have it. The ubiquitous Christmas curfuffle. I noticed last night some of the original lyrics to "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" were interesting: "Someday soon we all will be together, if the fates allow, until then we'll have to muddle through somehow." And so that's what I wish for all of you, may you muddle through this Holiday Season with as much stubborn resolve as possible. We'll get through it, it will be over soon. I promise.

I still believe in Santa Claus, even if no one else does.

Well, it's been a few weeks since I last blogged, but that's ok because it was a bit of a dark and slightly unhappy little moment in my life. But I think things are turning around, more or less, and so I've decided to blog about the last few interesting days of my life.

First I'll sum up the last few weeks by quoting a tweet from British comedian Bill Bailey (taking my own twist on it). Into week 10 of studying in London "thru protests, riots, tube strikes, perishing cold, Camilla prodding -yet I will not submit!" There, that sums it up! Well, I guess I can say that in the middle of all this perishing cold and riots I've been struggling with my research, I've been sad and homesick and worried about my future. It hasn't been pretty.

Anyhoo. In contrast, the last few days have been SUPER. First, I got really high marks and kind feedback on my first essay of the term. This restored faith in my research abilities. My professors loved my topic (I wrote about the Ice Palace as a liminal space in a story by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Kubrick's The Shining) and they praised how I balanced the historical and cultural aspects of the topic. It was broad, but also very well contained and focused. My specialty. Secondly, during my feedback session I got a little bit of hope in staying here to finish the PhD. It seems that they want to keep people in the program and they might help me find a way to pay for the next couple of years. I need to go talk with the director at the start of next term, and he said we'd figure something out.

The highlight of the week was definitely seeing The Boy Least Likely To live last night. In fact, that is what I'd like to really focus on writing about tonight. I've blogged about them before when their second album came out, and I've loved them for a long time, ever since the first album was released some 6 years ago. I knew they were a small band from a small town in England and being from a small town in Utah I never ever thought I'd actually get to see them. So last night ended up being extremely special for me.

I don't think I'll take the time to explain what TBLLT are all about. A recent review of their new Christmas album (which is awesome) does a great job of that. I'll just get to the show for now: I was surprised at the small venue, and not being a drinker and being from Utah I was also surprised by how badly the bar smelled like piss and vomit. (After asking around I've found out that this is how most bars smell. guess that makes sense.) I also got there way too early because the tickets just said 8:00and I didn't know if that was when the doors opened or when the first band went on. I was a bit annoyed with myself at first for getting there at 7 when the band wouldn't be on to 9:45, but I forced myself to stick around and fortunately Jof was there selling his own merch. I was really pleased to talk to him and have him sign a Christmas card for me, and he was very nice and gave me a couple of buttons to go with the tote I bought. I loved how when I asked if they were actually not going on until almost 10 Jof's eyes widened and he asked "Is that going to be a problem?" Haha, no, I thought, I'm just an old lady who likes to go to bed early. After buying my tote and talking to Jof I still had another hour and a half before the opening band went on so I just stood around and waited. I went in to the venue when it opened at 8 and realized I had my camera with me and should have got a picture with Jof. I knew he was sitting outside and I knew I had loads of time to kill so i thought, why not, and I went out and asked him for a photo. It ended up being a really awkward photo, which is ok, but I also got to talk to him for a little bit and that was nice. I'm actually proud of myself for asking since I'm usually really shy and reserved in those sort of situations.

The show itself was fantastic. The band had loads of energy and Jof was pretty adorable dancing around on the stage. They played all of their best songs, and I kept feeling a little sad every time they started one because I knew it would end soon and I wished they would play them a couple of times in a row just like how I listen to them on my ipod. The only things that kept it from being a perfect show is: 1) I wish they hadn't had so many long pauses when they played their cover of Faith. I love that cover; nothing makes me happier than to listen to it and dance around my room. The song has always been my #1 guilty pleasure, and when I found out they had covered it I about died. They were cute when they paused in the song and bantered a little bit about it, I have to admit that, but still I wish they'd played it all the way through. 2) I wish they had played more songs from the Christmas album. It's odd, people usually hate it when bands play too many songs from their new album, but this is the only thing I've been listening to the last three weeks. It's got me through that little bit of dark time I mentioned before, and I would have loved to hear them play The Wassail Song, Jingle My Bells, Christmas Isn't Christmas Without You, and The First Snowflake. What better time and place to play such awesome Christmas songs? Well, as I said before, if it were up to me I'd have them play all their songs in their discography and twice over.

The crowd was small, which made my wild dancing right at the front feel kind of conspicuous, but I ended up not caring. That's how I do concerts, and I make no apologies for it. Nothing beats the restorative properties of dancing to fantastic live music. I came away from that show feeling like a new person. My head was cleared of this terrible cloudy feeling I've been carrying around all week, and I felt deliciously sore from dancing and standing around for hours. And happy. Oh I just felt so light and happy, and it's carried through today.

I think things are starting to turn around for me here in London. I was worried before that I had no place here, that nothing I do was going to matter and that I'd come back with nothing to show for my time spent but a massive load of debt. But maybe not. Maybe I do have a place here, maybe I can create some good work, and maybe there are going to be the opportunities I've hoped for. I'm feeling really optimistic. I hope nothing comes along and destroys it all...

Oh, I nearly forgot. MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

now that's Brighton, not Bath

This last week my friend Sara and I decided to go to Bath to see a play done by her favorite theatre company. She was busy during the day on Saturday so we left around 2pm. It took 2 hours to get there and by the time we did all of the things to do and see in the city were closed. I didn't get to go into the abbey church, which was one of my favorite buildings to study when I did gothic stuff, we didn't get to go into the Roman baths or any of the museums or anything. Fortunately we could do a tour of the bell tower of the church and there was a Christmas market going on in the church square that we could hang out and walk around in before the play at 8pm.

So I asked Sara if she knew where the theatre was yet, and she said she hadn't looked it up and figured we could ask someone. So she pulled out the tickets and they said, "Brighton Ballroom, Brighton UK". "uhhhh..." I said. "Are we in the wrong city?" Indeed we were in the wrong city. We ran to the nearest internet cafe we could find and discovered that Brighton would be a 4 hour train ride away from Bath and we would miss the whole play altogether. So we tried to make the most of it. We at dinner and walked around the little city like 6 times, tried to do a little shopping at the Christmas market, and finally found a carousel, which isn't the worst thing to find on a cold winters night. The lights were cheering, and it was fun.

We eventually got on a train around 9pm and got home just after 11, and even though I was cold and tired I didn't get to bed until 2:30. I don't really want to blog about it, but I should note that I had a conversation that night that probably changed my whole future. Isn't it interesting when you want something so much, and you pray for it and hope and work for it, and imagine just what life will be like when you get it, and then when you don't get it you're entirely relieved? That's happened to me twice this week, and I've really never felt so unfettered and hopeful in my whole life. Even though I lost something and that makes me sad, something better is going to come along, and I know that in my heart.

I also realized a very important thing last week: I am in a research program. I should be doing more research. Stupid realisation, I know, but it might just make everything different. I struggled so much with my last paper because I felt like I hadn't got enough from my course, but really I just hadn't done enough research. One of my professors said the other day that it's not what you know, but how well you can find what you need to know. I need to take that to heart. So today I'm going to try to get entirely caught up with my course reading so that I can start getting ideas and move out to do the research that will lead me to an excellent paper.

mission: accomplished

I've had such a good productive day so far that I thought I would blog about it. First I got up early and actually got some exercise in before breakfast, then I finished planning all my travel arrangements for my trip to Germany this Christmas. I made sure all the hotels and hostels were booked, bought German rail passes, and figured out how much the whole thing is going to cost us. I'm pretty proud of myself. The most we pay per night for a hotel is 30 Euro. After that I studied for German for an hour, then I went out and got some cash and lunch, then went to the Student Union and got my National Union of Students card, filled out an application for a National Rail Pass and walked over to the train station nearby and got the Pass. Easy peasy. Then I went to the British Library and got my Reader Pass so I can go in there and study and do research when I want. I'll order all my books and they'll be waiting for me tomorrow to start reading. I'm so proud of myself for getting all those errands done in 2 hours. It was only my third try getting the Reader Pass and just my second try getting the Rail Pass. I also now have a bank card, my loan money in the bank, and all my fees and housing paid.

My collection of cards since I got to London:

3 Student ID cards

4 Library cards

1 Oyster Card

2 Rail Pass cards

1 Bank card

Hopefully I'm done with the cards for a while. This will be an exciting week. I have an interview at the British Library for a PhD Studentship and I'm super nervous about it. I am terrible at interviews and I want the studentship really bad. Then on Thursday we're going to have a little Thanksgiving dinner and on Saturday I'm going to Bath to watch what sounds like will be an incredibly awesome play.

Now, even though I'm proud of myself for all I accomplished, it's only 3 and I have made a goal of doing at least 3 hours of research reading a day....so I better get on that!

a new friend

This is my new plant. It's a gardenia and I love her. I always thought it was dumb when people got "pet plants" because I'd much rather have a cat or a dog, but when you can't even have a little mouse or a fish, a plant just has to suffice. I can't think of a name for her yet (again because I've always thought it stupid to name things that don't cuddle with me and so I'm out of practice), but I do have some ideas.

I just love this plant. Gardenias have always been one of my favorite flowers. I love the way they smell, I love their thick hearty petals and dark heavy leaves. It just makes my room that much more livable to be able to look at her in my window sill.

Go and dance yourself clean

It's been a slightly eventful week. I didn't have any classes so it was technically a vacation week and I managed to get some fun stuff worked in there. On Wednesday my Only London Friend (or OLF) and I went to see LCD Soundsystem. It actually turned into quite a little adventure, and it was my first time out of my Zone on the Tube (and I did it wrong so it cost me like 8 pounds in fees). OLF had class until 6 and the show started at 7 and so I met up with her at her school, then we got some delicious Chinese take out (I got the roasted duck on rice, of course) and headed to Crouch End and the Alexandra Palace. When we got there, there was seriously a mile long queue. I have never seen a line so long in my life. I decided to walk to the front to see if I could find a different line for picking up my tickets and I walked and walked and walked, leaving poor OLF behind. (Ha, ok, I'm sorry Sara, if you're reading this, I'll stop calling you OLF. I just thought it was really funny. It's probably not.) Anyway, FINALLY we got in, right in the middle of Hot Chip's set. Sara and I immediately started dancing and didn't stop until the end of LCD Soundsystem's set, but we decided to leave before the encores since there were probably 20,000 people there and we wanted to make sure we got on the bus before everyone else decided to go. I figured since this was my third time seeing them that I'd live, and I did.

I really loved it and I will see them again if I ever get the chance. I love how much fun everyone has at their shows and how much you can dance and totally lose yourself. I love how their songs have a proper amount of tension leading up to a fantastic moment of release. It's euphoric, and I'm totally addicted. I think I liked this show better than the one in New York. They played all my favorite songs, and I was in GREAT company (instead of totally alone like the NY show). Sara seriously is the funnest person.

Also, I have a total crush on this guy. He is adorable in concert.

So the next day on Thursday I went to see a taping of the Graham Norton Show. It was supposed to be the highlight of my life and it turned out to be rather meh. No one makes me laugh like Graham Norton, and so even though the guests sucked, I thought I'd still have fun. I just found out that Stephen Fry and Bette Midler will be on next weeks show and it broke my heart. I LOVE Stephen Fry like no one else. Instead I got stuck with Colin Ferrall (who told nothing but the most boring stories. He has no personality at all), Daniel Radcliffe (who was late and then really annoying, and just ugh) and then a comedian I've never heard of and then Rihanna, who was cute and everything, but I just genuinely don't care about her music. Also I had to stand outside in the freezing wind, and those who keep up with my Twitter area already familiar with the fact that I was not wearing the proper clothing for such an event. It was really really horrible. It hasn't been that cold or windy in London since I've been here. I honestly don't know if it was worth it.

Anyway, on my way to the show I saw this poster in the train station. It made me laugh, because it obviously does not work.

I don't think it does a very effective job of pushing polite behaviour because the Tube is still full of fools who refuse to budge from their convenient spot right next to the door and impede anyone from coming in or out of the train. In New York I seriously got yelled at for doing that one day when I wasn't paying attention. The poster is just too polite, and I think this one will work much better.

Fortunately at the Graham Norton show I was able to fight my way to the front of what had been a very long queue and had turned into a throng of people rushing the door, and I got the best of the worst seats!

HA! The suckers I had to push over to get to the door didn't get to be on the telly at all, but I DID!

So, since Wednesday and Thursday were exhausting I decided to stay in and work on my paper on Friday, and it didn't turn out well. Friday will be one of those days to forget forever.

Moving on, today I took my FIRST real train ride out of the city! I went with my ward to the London Temple. We took the train from Victoria Station to Lingfield and then a short taxi from the station to the temple. I mention this because it was also my FIRST time in a British taxi! And the first time ever driving on the wrong side of the road, and yes, it is the wrong side. Seriously, driving on the left side is totally counterintuitive, and it's the one cultural difference I'm having a hard time getting past, especially since I've almost got hit crossing the street several times because of it.

Anyway, the temple was lovely and I got to talk to more people from my ward, and hopefully made a couple of friends. I enjoyed myself immensely. Here's a picture of me and Sara in front of the temple. We stood a bit too far from the camera, so you can't really see us well, but that's ok because I didn't get a chance to shower this morning and was a bit of a mess.

And that's it for my week off of school! I start back up again on Tuesday and I'll be killing myself trying to get this paper done. I think i might have made some headway in brainstorming with my sister for a bit, but we'll see!

Jasie's Guide to Navigating Bureaucracy in the UK

Dear Reader,

I was going to impart my wisdom on how to do Banking in the UK, but I realized that these steps will work for basically anything you need to do in order to survive as a student. Receiving loans, applying for privileges to read at the library (yes you have to apply for that), registering for classes, enrolling (which I think is different from registering), opening bank accounts, closing bank accounts, doing any kind of banking at all, etc, etc. I hope if you find yourself trying to live in London these tips may come in handy:

1. Banks and other institutions open at an obscenely late time in the day, so don't attempt any type of bureaucratic adventuring before work or an early class. Wait for a day off, go ahead and sleep in, grab your umbrella and head out (it's always raining on days you need to get forms signed).
2. Queue up! Queuing (or standing in a line) and drinking are the national past-times here, and so it is expected that you quietly take your place in the queue and not bother the 5 nice people who are working hard or chatting at their open stations. They're not open, please join the queue.
3. Make an appointment to come back later. Of course, after the queue you're not likely to actually talk to anyone who can help you, but you might talk to someone who can write your name down so that you can come back later and join the lunchtime queue.
4. You'll never have the right documents, so bring everything. Load up that satchel with every proof you have of your existence. Did the bank send you a letter to your house and so will obviously not demand that you bring a some proof of residence (like a letter from a bank to your house)? No chance! Make sure you bring an additional 5 letters, plus your passport, plus the proof of your address at home, plus your passport, plus your birth certificate, and driving license (fun fact! they don't call it a drivers license here and will likely correct you if you do).
5. Repeat steps 1 through 4, ad infinitum. Like I said in the last step, you're not likely to have the right documents on the first try, or even the second or third. But keep trying! That's how the British developed their plucky spirits and won two world wars.

a message in a bottle

I told my one friend in London last week that I wouldn't blog anymore, that blogging was just an exercise in vanity. Why would anyone want to read my blog? and yet, what's the point of blogging if no one is reading it? Well, I guess I don't know the answers to those questions. I don't think many do read it, and I wouldn't know why if they did. But perhaps it is healthy to write even for a pretend audience, especially if I intend to write academically for the rest of my life, which I do.

That pretend audience may have noticed that I haven't been uploading photos every day like I said I would. This is because uploading photos has been taking up too much data and I have a limited amount allocated to me on the school network, which sucks. I went over last week and they punished me by reconnecting me with a 1999 modem speed connection for a week, so I learned my lesson.

The whole month of October everything has been green, and now things are finally starting to change. The weather has basically been the same every day since I got here. Temperature from 50 to 60 degrees, cloudy, a little rainy and really lovely bouts of sunshine. It's so humid that I sweat all the time no matter what and my hair is a big frizzy mess. I don't even know what to do with it.

I've had quite the time getting adjusted. Well, most things haven't been a problem, but the libraries here drive me crazy. I've had to shift my whole style of research, and research I have been doing, or trying to anyway. I'm applying for a PhD Studentship at the Open University and the British Library and I've been freaking out about it for a week. I'm in a fairly good mood now because I think it is mostly done and I just have to print the proposal, the cover letter and writing example out and send it in tomorrow. I have been struggling though, thinking and feeling like i know nothing and have nothing to say, and then magically it all came together this afternoon while I was in class. I was lucky actually because we were talking about argument and we had to try to present an argument to a partner, and since this is what i've been working on all week I attempted to explain to him what my argument is. Here I realized I never had an argument, and that is probably why I've been struggling so much this week. So talking about it was helpful and I finally formulated something and then finished up my proposal. It feels good.

I like my classes. The professors are wonderful. One them is someone whose work I was already familiar with and his classes are just a delight. He is a delightful and kind person and I really must go and talk to him in office hours sometime because I'd like him to be my friend. I have to write a paper soon for one of my classes and of course everything we talk about makes me think of horror movies. So I'm writing about coldness in films like the Shining and Dead Snow which create a world outside of time and space whereupon the horror can be acted out. It should be fun.

I'm skipping out on a student led discussion class thing because the last time i went the instructor did nothing but confuse me more about philosophy. It's hard enough to get Kant and Hegel, and when the person trying to teach you is just as confused as you are it's useless. So I've decided tonight to stay in, study German and finish up this application. I've been pretty good with my German studying. I do an hour a day every day, and I'm thinking of pushing it to 2 hours.