the wall

The history geek in me took over my body today and spent three hours tracing the ancient Roman wall of Londinium.  I love the word Londinium. It sounds like I made it up, but I didn't.  That's what the Romans called it.  They came here in 43 AD and stuck around until 400 AD or so, and they didn't even build a wall until around 200 AD.  Some say that they don't really know why the Romans decided that they needed to build a wall.  I think it must have been that they were Romans and Romans need to build massive things.

It was originally 20 feet high and 2 miles in length, and it did end up being useful to raise money since most of the gates were tolled gates.  Most of the wall is gone now, except for little bits, but it didn't get torn down until the 17th and 18th centuries, and a lot of it simply got absorbed into buildings, or used as foundation, and in most spots it's buried 15 feet under the road.  After the blitz in 1940 a lot of the west side of the wall became visible, and all of the awful rebuilding they did in the 1960s (Barbican...ugh) was done around the exposed wall.  I bet they just loved building super modern ugly buildings next to those ancient ruins.  I bet they thought it was a really powerful contrast.  It's kind of funny now that some of those areas seem to be falling themselves into a bit of a ruinous state.

It was a bit tricky to find all the parts of it.  I had to use a walking tour podcast that I didn't really care too much for because it took way too long to do, and a lot of times the guy just read off the plaques that were right in front of me.  But, now I know where to go to find the wall, and I hope I can show other people because it really is a neat thing to see.

Now, ruins trouble me a bit.  I remember when I first saw the Forum in Rome and hating it.  I couldn't see the point a bone yard in a beautiful vibrant living city.  I've since learned that the hot, empty boneyard of the Forum used to be a mosquito infested swamp with some grassy areas where cows lived.  And the horrid bare Colosseum was up until the late 19th century covered in hundreds of plants that weren't found any where else in Italy and had likely been transported there by all of the wild animals they brought from throughout the empire to slaughter.  It used to be a place where poets and lovers would wander and explore and bring picnics.  It's a shame those ruins don't have the same wildness to them anymore.

Another reason why ruins trouble me is because I think I always just took them for granted.  They were there in and of themselves.  I never thought of them actually becoming ruinous, or if I did it was in a romantic sort of decay.  It bothers me when I find out their actual histories.  Rome's Colosseum and Forum became stone quarries, the Parthenon was blown up by accident in the 17th century, the Roman wall in London was fully intact until the 19th century, when they decided to just tear it all down to make room for more buildings.

Although discovering these facts bothers me a little, in reality, I love that cities adapt, get rid of the things they don't need, recycle and reuse building materials.  That's a living city, and I think that's why I found the Forum in Rome so bothersome.  The bone yard, the sepulcher, is out of place there.

I'm glad I went out today to look at this. It is a fun walk, but my favorite part was not actually the wall. I promise to blog about that tomorrow.

nice day for a walk in the dark

Lord Nelson and Big Ben

I love to walk. (I've blogged about it before) Well, I have more of a love/hate relationship with walking, similar to that of my love/hate relationship with reading.  In both cases I hate how annoyingly slow it is; isn't better to watch a movie or fly down the road?  I guess in many ways it is, but I think being forced to take things slowly opens up a whole world of thought, introspection, and experiences that you never would have thought you could have.  That's why, even though I hate it, I'll spend two or three weeks reading a novel or force myself to walk a couple of miles when it would be infinitely easier to get on the tube.

On my way to the British Library the other day the sun was out and the sky was a remarkable blue, especially with the red brick against it.  

Walking forces me to look at things, not just glance at them.  I think I like glancing at things.  That's how I go to museums, I walk quickly through them and feel an odd sense of accomplishment if I've only spent an hour or so and seen all there was to see. (This is why I really need to visit museums more than once).

I went to the National Gallery the other day and took this picture before they yelled at me.  I loved the entrance and the little dome. 

I also like to do that when I shop; I size up the store, have an idea of what's in it, and then go back to the things I want to look  at.  When I am forced to look at things they start to become more interesting.  They aren't just shapes and colors.

I walked past the Burlington Arcade by Piccadilly Circus last night after it closed and it was so ghostly to see it empty with all the lights still on. 

Walking forces me to spend more time with me.  I love listening to books on tape when I walk because walking focuses my mind, but I also like to just spend time with me.  I think about who I am and what I want and where I want to go.  I address issues or insecurities I've been having.

I walk past these buildings on Marchmont Street every day.

So I've made a huge decision.  I'm going to keep walking, but I'm going to take it to a bit of an extreme.  I have a goal to go on two long distance walks this summer.  One is the Coleridge Way in Exmoor where he used to wander about.  It's 36 miles long, but you do it it 4 days.  I'm trying to get my sister to come with me. I think it will be magical.  The other walk is 70 miles through the Scotland Highlands.  Maybe this is madness, but I know that it would be an experience of a life time, plus I don't want to visit Scotland and just stay in the cities. If I go up there I want to be outdoors and hiking across mountains.  I love living in London, but I don't really want to visit cities anymore.  I don't care about museums and buildings.  I want sky and rocks.

So, in order to get ready for these trips I'm going to save my money as best as I can (and good news this week I got the rest of my loan so I actually have a little bit right now) and start doing long distance walks around London.  There are actually a few "trails" set up called The Big Seven and I'm making it a goal to do all of them.  One is actually 150 miles in total, but you take it by 8 miles or so in 24 increments, and it loops around the whole of London metropolis.  It's actually called LOOP (London Outer Orbital Path)

I'm really excited about this. I'm excited to walk and see everything. My first long walk will be a 6 mile walk through London tracing the  routes outlined in Virginia Woolf's novel Night and Day which I just finished reading.  Walking is a major theme in that novel, and most of the events happen when the characters are walking by the river.  I've been to most of the places in the novel, but I think it would be good to make a morning of it and stop by the Tate Britain since I haven't been since last week.

 St. Martins-in-the-Fields by Trafalgar Square.  

Emil Alzamora's Stretched Figures

I love these sculptures by Emil Alzamora, seen on Beautiful/Decay Cult of the Creative Arts. I love how they stretch and manipulate the human form to create such beautiful, and disturbing, shapes. And I love how with each one, no matter how odd the manipulation may be, the beauty of the human form shines through.

take me down to the country, honey

I miss animals.  I miss the country.  I miss the desert.  I miss my family. I miss good Mexican food.  I feel like I'm torn between two worlds.  I love London and all of the art, the libraries, the beautiful old buildings, the museums, the history and the culture, the myriad of languages and accents I hear chattered outside my window, but half of me is in Utah.  As much as I love Utah, however, I was never satisfied there; I never felt at ease.  I was always anxious, always ready to leave, to travel or move far far away.  I was always anxious about friends too.  If I didn't spend quality time with an array of people throughout my week I felt lonely and miserable.  In London I'm alone 80% of my time, and I don't notice it.  I don't feel lonely and miserable.  I may miss everything I left behind, but I'm finally at ease.  Surprisingly, I feel most calm on the Tube. Shoved into a crowded Piccadilly train headed to church or to a museum, I know that all is right in the world and that I am where I want to be.  Odd, I know.

my little sister Lindy with some puppies. the North Hills are behind her

I love being in cities, and I love being in the country.  My earliest, most formative years were spent in the country, surrounded by beauty and sadness, life and death.  Living in the country can be as busy, beautiful and tragic as living in the city.

Some of our doggies. the border collie in the middle was my puppy Bobbie.  I loved her more than anything.

We lived even outside the small town, and I'm grateful for that.  There's a distinct difference between small town life and proper country life.  I'm pretty sure I blogged about it before, but outside of small towns you live a little more distanced from the local politics and gossips.  I rarely played with neighbor children, just my sisters and my dogs, and I think it gave me a spirit of independence I wouldn't have got in the small town nearby.  I had 20 acres to explore.  I was the luckiest girl in the world, and I know that that is what made me who I am today.  Like Wordsworth above Tintern Abbey,

Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye and ear, both what they half-create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognize
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being. As cheesy as it may sound, that's what nature is for me: the anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, guide and guardian of my heart, soul and moral being.  And yet, here I am in London.  Is that strange?  Will I ever be able to go back to the country and feel as satisfied there as I do here?  I hope so.  I'd like to bookend my life with the country, with animals and gardens, fields and mountains, and hard physical work keeping it all from falling apart.  If I have a family I'd like them to benefit from life in the country like I did. yeah, we played in the mud mom liked to dress us up and take pictures of us in the garden Tomorrow I'm going to the London LDS Temple and it will be nice to get out of the city and enjoy a bit of the countryside.  I'm looking forward to some peace and quiet.  I think they also have some geese and ducks by the temple, and I just love ducks!   P.S. My post title is a reference to a T. Rex song I like.  I love T. Rex.

i love London: the British Library

My life is changing.  I'm becoming one of those people who spends all day, hours on end, in the library, eagerly and frantically reading and taking notes because there simply is not enough time to learn everything.  I never understood before how people could do it every day.  I only ever did it at the end of terms when final papers were soon due, but never without anything impending.

And yet, here I am in the library, reading page after page without break, because there's something I must uncover, and I'm not sure yet what it is.  There's no time for a break, but I'm at the point where the words I read don't actually go into my brain, so I thought maybe that means it's time I start pouring out some of the extra words so I can start filling it up again.

I had a bit of a crisis this weekend.  I was supposed to go to Oxford to visit a friend, and since last week had been a little awful, I wasn't feeling so great.  The stress was building and then I found out that I might not get all the loan money I need this term and I just snapped.  I started crying in a puddle on the floor and ended up missing my train to Oxford.  It was dumb, and I was very mad at myself.   But, it pushed me to start working on finding a job so I spent the whole day looking.  I applied for 3 jobs on Sunday night, which I was proud of myself for doing, but I haven't heard back from them yet. I desperately need an income, so I'm really hoping something will work out.

Moving on the important part of my post...  I love London.  And I love the British Library.  It's really not the most charming of buildings, especially squatting next to what I like to call the Gothic Monster (St. Pancras train station).

 But I still love it.  I love the big terraced courtyard, and when it gets warmer it will probably be a nice place to read a book in the sunshine.  I also love the inside.  I love all of the natural lighting and the tall ceilings.

It's really a beautiful space.  I couldn't take pictures of the readings rooms, but they're similar.  Large, open, with vaulted ceilings and lots of natural light.  They also have large desk space and big comfy chairs to sit in.  I love the reading rooms.  Here's another view of the main entrance.

I forgot to take a picture of it, but there's a painting on the wall by the entrance that is just the word YES over and over and over again.  I love it.  It's very affirming.  

So this is where I've been spending most of my time lately.  One of the other perks is that it is literally a 2 minute walk from where I live, so I can come home for lunch very easily, and it's only 4 train stops from where I plan on living in the summer.  I'm so glad I get to spend so much time in this building.  I love it.  

you are not my typewriter, but you could be my demon moving forward through the flaming doors

I've found that when I title posts with lines from songs I can trick the people who are looking up lyrics to read my blog.  So, if you're here looking for lyrics to Wilco's "War on War" you're still in luck!  They're at the end of the post, along with a nice video from youtube.  I hope that means if you're a Wilco fan you'll love me and start following my blog.  

Anyway, I thought of this particular song because, as you'll see, I mention a book in this post called Krieg dem Krieg, which translates into War on War.  It's a hard book to look at, so I don't recommend looking it up, but it's basically a propaganda book published by a pacifist to show the horrors of war.  It's very gruesome and unpleasant, but I think he drives his point home well enough.  Anyway, on with the post. 

I went to see the doctor today.  It was my first experience with national healthcare and I have to say that it so far really hasn't been that much different from my experience with privatized healthcare.  I did have to wait for twenty minutes, but I can't remember ever being directly ushered into an examine room in the States.  The appointment was for only 10 minutes, which is quite short, but I felt that it made it far more pleasant for me. The doctor was kind and efficient, he listened to me and referred me for blood tests and then I left.  The best part was that I left without having to settle a bill.  

Did you know that the NHS was established in 1948 so that healthcare could "meet the needs of everyone, be free at the point of delivery, and be based on clinical need, not ability to pay"? Such insanely radical, communist, ideas that can undo the entire economic and social system of a once great, and soon to be fallen nation.  oh.  wait.  The NHS was started in 1948? And it's 2011? Where are all the death panels? Am I missing something?

Also, why is it that in the US we rarely hear about national healthcare and its successes?  I didn't even know that the UK had national healthcare for so long.  I know the system is far from perfect, but it seems to be functioning.  I wish I'd known more about it during the healthcare debates last year. 

Anyway, I'm blogging now during my lunch break because I've decided that I need to compartmentalize my time a little bit more, and after lunch I must focus on researching at the library.  I've realized last night that if I want to stay in London to finish this PhD I must work much harder than I have been.  I need to submit papers to conferences and journals and I need to show that I'm using my time very wisely on my thesis research.  I have to give a presentation in a couple of weeks on my research and I want to blow their socks off.  

I've shifted the focus of my topic and I feel a lot less anxious and restrained now.  I'll keep talking about World War One and the body depicted in art from the time, but I've decided to expand the view into other wars and at the same time narrow down the kind of bodies I'm interested in looking at.  The type of body is the grotesque male and female body, and I'll look at stuff from Walt Whitman, to Goya, to the war poets, to Dix, to the Dada movement, to Catch 22.  I'll look at these depictions of the grotesque body often as a type of anti-war protest and also as means of healing and transcendence. That sounds nice, yeah?  Yeah, I thought so.  Here are some images I am considering: 

Dix, "Stormtroops advancing under a gas attack" from Der Krieg, Intaglio etching, drypoint

Goya, This is worse 1812-15 Etching and wash, 157 x 207 mm

Janco, Mask, 1919

Wounded Soldier from Krieg dem Krieg (War on War) 1924

I know that these aren't the easiest things to look at, and I apologize for that, but I think they are extremely compelling and necessary for us to be aware of. Also, I personally love what this artist has done with the idea of facial reconstruction, and I will definitely discuss him.  So now I'm off to the British Library to do some nice reading about the body in wars.  My goal is to spend the next 4 hours in there and come out with some great ideas.   

War on War 

by Wilco 

It's a war on war
It's a war on war
It's a war on war
It's a war on war
It's a war on war
It's a war on war
It's a war on war
There's a war on

You're gonna lose
You have to lose
You have to learn how to die

Just watching the miles flying by
Just watching the miles flying by
You are not my typewriter
But you could be my demon
moving forward through the flaming doors

You have to lose
You have to learn how to die
if you want to want to be alive, okay?

You have to lose
You have to lose
You have to learn how to die
if you want to want to be alive

You have to die
You have to die
You have to learn how to die
if you want to want to be alive, okay? 

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!!