Written in Dejection, near Naples

The two Beechams have just kicked it and I have a rare burst of energy! I am awake, to the extent that the blurriness is gone and I don't fall when I stand anymore. I have managed to colour in my nail. I don't know how. And now that I've looked I see I've written 3 pages of a story subconsciously, unconsciously? I guess that will be fun to read. Where did all the time go? It was ten o'clock just a minute ago. Oh, yes I went to the bakery and bought a doughnut. I don't care about the size of my ass, I only lose weight when I'm not paying attention anyway. My mum popped in to tell me I looked awful before leaving again.

God, I do look awful. Like some sort of zombie. Rwarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

There's orange juice in the freezer. Orange juice is good for colds. But I don't want a carton lolly. All I can think about is Dylan Moran and his red wine lolly. God, I love him. I want a scruffy Irish man. But I dunno if I can afford the year out to Ireland. Gallway is hella pretty though, it could be worth the debt. Love: potentially worth bankruptcy.

My hair is a bird's nest of disaster. Maybe I should just grow it. Be a girl. Smile demurely and act modestly. Or get it cut and stick a hat on?

Holy crap my right hand is inktastic. This is new ink too because I totally washed this morning. Stupid pen. Why can't you be more like that pen I got in Rome. Best fucking pen. And I wasted it on Bismarck. Nobody cares about Bismarck. Man I miss that class. I never got to pull Agnew up for making up a pirate just to win the argument. Nobody tells me I must have gotten my facts from Johnny Depp and dismisses me like some lovesick little girl.

I was reading Shelley. Well, more like browsing Shelley, too tired for actual reading. Then I came across the heading Stanzas written in dejection, near Naples and spent ages thinking dejection doesn't sound very Italian. You'd think I would have cottoned on when just a few poems before there was "Invocation to Misery". Miserable lot these poets were. Oh, how I love them. Except Wordsworth. Later for him. Full of lies. All these lines composed at such and such a place at such and such a time, only he got them wrong. And I wandered lonely as a cloud? With your sister who was also there.

Man, how good is it to be able to breathe? I had the worst sleep ever. Did I already say that? I forget what I've blogged already and what I just thought about. That's the problem I have with internet journals. Too much like talking to myself and I do that far, far too much already.

Oh, ok, the buzz from my pills is fading into a soft woomph now. Either that or I'm just way too tired. But! with any luck I'll be fine by tomorrow morning. I've psyched myself up for seeing people and I'll be damned if I have to postpone it. Girls are so much work to be around. They turn on you like that. I figure I'll take my rum, trundle up the road and if I lack the energy even fuelled by alcohol then I'll just go to sleep. She has like the most comfy bed ever. Or close to the most comfy bed, because it's a bit on the small side.

I think I might watch The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi again on youtube. It's like the most ridiculous anime I've ever seen and I've seen Tokyo Mew Mew or Mew Mew Power or whatever the hell it is. Creepy, that's what it is. Anyway Haruhi. It makes no sense and it takes the piss out of so many other shows and they dress up as bunny girls for no reason. Look at her judge you. Juuuuuuuudge.

"I am half sick of shadows," said the Lady of Shallot

Yesterday, despite feeling like my face was slowly being crushed by some sort of giant vice I got up, got dressed and sat and watched the clock as I realised I was ten minutes early. Mama came through and asked if I was going in to which I intended to say yes but instead said nah. Half an hour later I was curled up on my sofa, checking my emails (and shouting I am not a number, I am a free man! everytime I had to trot out my matric number) and there's the Histoire secretary with yet another red coded envelope flashing away in my inbox. She sends so many. My eyes scanned the paragraph of notices and noticed that wonderful phrase: "lecture cancelled". Ya beauty.

Feeling much better I proceeded to spend my free morning watching Who's line is it anyway since it seems to be on constantly now and there's only so much Judge Judy one girl can take. I contemplated the several films I have recorded but half of them are french and the other half are black and white, both of which require glasses which involves getting up. My pen burst whilst I was scribbling over Joe's second chapter but somehow the ink stayed inside and just left little constellations all over my hands. Combined with the edges of the Union stamp on my hand that I haven't scrubbed off yet I look like I wrestled a squid. Well, the sailor look is very in so the lady in topshop told me. I was like no kidding, is that why you've slapped anchors over everything. I like going into topshop and giggling. I mean they picked a coked up model who thinks Pete Doherty is husband material. Not so smart.

Also in my inbox were several emails from bands I haven't listened to in a long while. Like Hot Hot Heat, who are rather like the Kooks only with better lyrics and music and accents. Apparently they have a new album out but I couldn't be bothered checking it out. Then there was We Are Scientists. Now I love this band but their music is kinda boring. I mean you can listen to them a couple of times and think yeah, pretty good, might see them live (I didn't) but then you skip them when your ipod does a shuffle. Their email begins thusly: You Androgynous Amorists, The pre-sale has ended, and general sale has begun, for The Back In Style Tour -- and if you have ANY intention of EVER seeing We Are Scientists again (this spring in the UK) and paying for it, may we POLITELY SUGGEST that you sort yourself out. Hee thought I. And I popped their CD on for all of five minutes when I then got bored and changed it back to that crazy Icelandic lass that everybody slags me off for liking. But then I remembered their website full of 'advice'. They answer submitted questions which sometimes leads to comedy results or at least kills an hour reading. For example: query: how can you understand poetry?
Ah, but that is the point of poetry: to narrowly skirt the line on whose other side lies total gibberish. A poem should suggest meaning, but you should never be sure of what it's saying. A poem that you fully understand is a terrible poem that fails in poetry's one objective: to mystify the reader.

I thought I may as well see if the idea that had struck me at 1 in the morning was workable, especially since it was task orientated and that way I'd be hitting 2 goals. Course I had to wait for my dad to return before I could fill in most of the blanks, I don't trust Wikipedia so much when it comes to religion, and luckily saying the words "Hail Mary?" led to him reeling off the prayer as fast as he could with a little bow of his head at the word Jesus. God bless him. I shan't tell him what I want to do with it but then he won't ask. I told him once that if I had been a religious girl I would have been a Catholic and now I can ask him anything I want. When anybody else makes reference to the fact that he is religious he gets all defensive. Probably because Julie treats Catholicism as this strange and weird thing, which is the school's fault really.

So I wrote a little, I was reminded of Tennyson so I read the Lady of Shallot again, the vague Lesbian relented to my complaints of being dirt poor so we're staying in tomorrow night instead and the boy who thinks he's in love with me told me he wanted to 'sex me up' and then went back offline. All in all, not a bad Wednesday.

I'm really torn this morning. I could go take a healthy dose of as many vitamins and pills as I can swallow and go back to bed or I can pull myself together and go to Archaeology. The timetable says we're doing Archaeology and Lawyers. I don't know what the hell that can even be about. Bed seems to be winning. A day in bed with poetry, Catholic doctrines to rip apart and soup. That's a pretty good Thursday.

If I cannot fly, let me sing

I don't have anything to say I just wanted that big rant to move away. I do rant a lot of crap when I'm tired.

What can I say that isn't ridiculous or boring. Not much really. I spent all my time yesterday that wasn't at Strathclyde reading. I figured I should maybe spend my 2 hours off doing some work. I know, I know. I'm a first year student and I did work. I keep forgetting I'm a first year again. I feel so old when I remember. My classes are full of people either straight out of school or much older people that complain it's so different from college. The annoying thing is when I tell people I restarted they assume I failed last year and I'm repeating the same subjects. They don't seem to get that I just made poor decisions. All because I let a boy sway my final choice. And he was only able to sway my choice because he got me to do his application. There's no way he would have got in to Glasgow on his own merits. But, thankfully, I didn't let that fact discourage me from choosing the University itself.

Anyway, I had several pages of sources to study and one of them was online. It's Rousseau's Emile in case anybody was interested. Reading him made me miss Philosophy. Those Tuesdays in that cosy classroom, talking football, Narnia and what love truly meant. I was the guinea pig for the next year since our school had determined that one Religious and Moral class was enough. So I had a class that the school didn't recognise and my teacher and I sipped tea and thought deeply. I read Plato and Hume and Descartes. I told him I wasn't in love with my boyfriend and my teacher told me he had met his wife in Uni and during his year out in London he'd slept with other women. He also went through every one in the actual Religious class and slagged them off. He told me about the philosopher (who's name sadly I've forgotten) who believed that morals were simply imposed by society, which in itself is nothing new but he chose to live his life ignoring all of these morals. So much so that even Paris was disgusted with him. And then there were the Jesus walking on water theories. The boyfriend accused me of having an affair with my Philosophy teacher. He was only half joking. Started complaining after I was late coming down to lunch because I stopped to talk. Crazy boy, I was far too boring back then to start an affair with anybody let alone an older married teacher.

Anyway, Emile. I must have written down a page and a half of quotes from that source, and I never finished it. It was full of these incredibly interesting insights about women. Explaining why women have to be the weaker sex, not because they are inferior but because if we were the bold sex we would have men completely under our thumb. Fascinating stuff. Not quite as fascinating as the stuff I keep finding scrawled on the walls of the toilets. I swear sometimes I just go for a read. There's a lot of debates and general female bonding going on in those stalls. If it wasn't so inappropriate I'd copy it all down and write a book.

When you are away my heart comes undone

The cold that threatened to ruin yesterday hit me hard this morning. I was spending my pennies on comfort food and tissues. I contemplate heading to Boots and doing the "please help me, little boxes of pills" that I seem to do every other month. But it's raining. That's why my hat is tucked awkwardly in my bag. It's why I'm shivering, huddled outside the Union trying to decide where to go to kill my time. Lovely Lass is away home by now, our timetables don't match quite so well this semester. I have a page of a story that I'd planned to finish yesterday but I wrote about the sleeping boy instead and doodled strawberries so I'll have nothing to present at the Writer's Group but that's ok. I haven't written much lately. I've got a fair few things rolling around my head but no drive to write them. I've been reading instead. Devouring pages of text. There's so many books waiting to be read and I don't have enough time or money to get through them all.

My head has been in the clouds lately. I've not been thinking anything through. I like life that way. I like trundling along and hoping for a surprise. I don't want to make the first move, don't want to make any decision. I care, don't get me wrong. I always care. It's been a long, long time since I gave up caring and I like to think I've grown up a little. I can deal with things better. I'm still floored when people see through me. When they say something, usually offhand, and it niggles away and makes me think far too much. I'm happy to an extent. I know what I'm lacking. I want somebody to curl up sleepy and cosy with. When two bodies fit just right beside each other and you can talk about anything and it doesn't matter. I want to fall asleep in somebody's arms and feel safe for once. There's only been a handful of times when I could make that claim.

But whether I want a relationship is debatable. I love being somebody's girl. I love that thrill when you tell somebody you're off to meet your boyfriend. I love the butterflies in my stomach when I walk down the road to meet him and I wonder what the day will be like. But I've been my own girl for close on 2 years now (which was mostly self-inflicted so I can't complain too much) and sometimes I wonder if I could give myself up to somebody else again. I need control. Maybe I'm just tired of men declaring love. I mean at nineteen years old what is love exactly? When you can't stop thinking about him, and he intrudes on all your thoughts and you just have to be near him? When you lie awake at nights and wonder what he's doing and if he's thinking of you and is it too late to call him? I don't think I've ever fallen in love. Not with anybody I could have a relationship with. My relationships are defined by boys who showed an interest in me and I'd say yes because I figured why not. I'm still unsure about David Number 2, considering he was a boring psycho and a good friend of mine at the time was madly in love with him. Suddenly he was telling me he was in love and people were going on about how we were in love and I realised I was incredibly bored and left him for somebody new. I mean, what the hell was I thinking? The men who consume me are always the ones I can't have and I try not to dwell on them but they fascinate me more than the boys who throw themselves at me.

I feel awful. It's not the alcohol because God knows I didn't drink enough of that even if I was less than steady on my feet. My face aches from the cold that I hope goes away soon. My feet buzz from walking too far around the campus today. Luckily the teeny little cut on my hand is mostly healed so long as I don't stretch it or write too fast. I'm rambling again. Honestly I'm surprised anybody bothers reading this. I know I don't after I get it out. This is merely an extension of my mind and sometimes I forget this is public and people who know me read it. And when they mention things I've written later on I get freaked. It's so intimate reading somebody else's thoughts. I wrote in my journal the other day that imagining you reading what I'd written there was like imagining you watching me slip my dress over my head. I concluded that my blog on the other hand was a mere flash of my tits, so quick you barely notice. I remember feeling I'd written something profound and insightful but then I always think that until I look at it a week later and laugh at my pretentiousness.

I'm so bored. It's like my mind switched off weeks ago and nobody wants to wake me up. Is this less abstract enough for you? I barely even rambled on about the past that I dwell in far too much. This is my present. And fuck me am I ever sick of it.

Nevermind. No doubt time will catch up me unawares and deadlines will scream in my ears and I'll be too flustered to give a damn about anything real.

A selection of thoughts written tween the hours of 10 and 2

With a whirr that interrupts the Landau Orchestra the blinds crawl up the great windows and the gothic spire looms before me. The clouds themselves part to let the light in. I sit in this cold, hard library chair and the sun, something we haven't seen much of lately, creeps in and makes me sneeze. My heart swells a little at the romance of the scene outside.

And just like that, the whirring noise disturbs my thoughts as the blinds come back down and I take one last look through half-lidded eyes and a too-long fringe. I have next Monday off. Maybe I'll get a haircut.

I'm studying gender again in History. I can't escape it. As a woman, naturally I care. At least it's modern history. Less "nuns, ahhh!" and more "women are boring and silly, lets laugh at them."

What is this song? Oh, man I know it, I know it. C'mon hurry up introduction. Oh, there we go, it's the Eels. Huh. I suck at recognising music.

I don't know whether it is the light or the angle but the window is doing crazy things. I can see the stacks trailing off into the sky and my daft nose floating in the middle of them. The roof in front of me is green and rusty. I think it's the hideous Boyd Orr that everyone hates. I love the view up here. I love going up to East Kilbride, or rather coming down from East Kilbride at that dip in the road where Glasgow stretches out before me and my heart soars. I remember drives through Argyle, round Loch Fyne. I kayaked in Loch Long. I'll be fieldtripping to Loch Tay. I've never been to Loch Ness. One of the Christophers did. He said he saw the monster. Ben who could pick his nose with his tongue confirmed the story.

The light and smell here reminds me of Iceland. Those brightly dull mornings. We went there in March when I was wee. Snow towering above my head. I was four and a quarter so I kept telling my dad's camera. "I'm four annna quarter and we are in Iceland and it is snowing and go way I wanna sleep now Dad. Stop being silly."

Laura and I used to say snow came from East Kilbride as we watched the cars come down the windy hill. She suggested we elope there until I pointed out elope meant running away and getting married.

There's a guy sitting next to me asleep. He has nice thighs.

My plaster is folded in the creases of my palm. When I stretch out it's as if the plaster is my skin.

The air conditioning makes my nose run and my arms shiver. I feel like I'm in an airport. Our flight was delayed once coming home from Rome or Barcelona. Everybody lay on the floor; huddled, bored and Glaswegian. It was cosy.

Y'know what, I'm goddamn proud of myself for being here. I told everybody I was going to get in and then I did. And I got an A in Archaeology.

Blinds are up again, the guy rearranges himself. Those thighs look comfy. If I was a lot more attractive and a little more crazy maybe I'd sit on them. I like sitting on people.

My hands smell of play-doh. They always do on a Monday after yesterday's clean. Rubber gloves? Chemicals? This looks like a job for science. Room is brighter now and emptier. My reflection beside me is mirror clear. I look scruffy. The guy is fast asleep again. My bic is sticky from the plaster. Plautus remains unread. The main building looks beautiful in the muted light. I want to jump that boy. Is that wrong? Wrong that I want him to wake up and see me and ask me out and take me back to his cramped apartment.

Valentine's Day is approaching. Dunno why I thought of that. How dull. Profess your love with chocolates and roses. What does it matter if you don't love her anyway. Although the roses on Byres Road look beautiful, but then they always do.

Once again love drives me on that loosener of limbs, bittersweet creature against which nothing can be done - Sappho. Found on the toilet roll dispenser in the library toilet and I had to note it down.

Becky Stark is in my ears now. I want to scoop her up in my arms and carry her away. She would be wearing a white dress with flowers in her hair. But no time for love, Doctor Jones. Time for Sweeney Todd.

"Uhh," said the man to the lady

The screech of feedback distorts the conversations that had threatened to engulf me. I turn the volume up higher and higher until I can feel the squeals of the guitar vibrating my nose. The pause between songs brings the sea of voices washing in. "E's a fat bastard. A fat speccy bastard." "Aye, aye I get that, but what's he doing there?" A child shrieks and I shut my eyes and wait.

There must be a devil between us
Or whores in my head
Whores at the door
Whore in my bed
But hey, where have you been?

If you go I will surely die...

The leather of my jacket is soft against my cheek as I slouch down further in the bus seat. I had my legs tucked up comfortably for half of the journey but this angry woman in front of me ruined things. She's eating salt and vinegar crisps and the smell takes me back to school. Thoughts of the skinny girl who always took charge. She organised the games, in which I was nearly always the evil witch although I also got to be Belle and Jasmine and Mildred Hubble when we attempted to recreate rather than invent our own. She would sit next to me eating salt and vinegar crisps and press two pence coins into my legs in preparation of my big death scene. I had to wear long socks that week. She'd ask me for advice. I was the go-to girl for solving all of life's mysteries. I was more than a little in love with her. We would giggle under cardigans and rub noses like eskimos. We'd link arms and gossip about boys. She had a bay window in her bedroom with a sofa. We sat in the porch of her old friend while we waited for her to get dressed and her little brothers ran out naked and pressed themselves against the glass door. We hid each others eyes and agreed that boys were icky.

The woman in front has finished eating by now and memories of the skinny girl float away. The blue of my plaster peeks from my sleeve and I wince just a little as I stretch my hand out. Only I could cut myself with a mop. The pen in my pocket rubs along the inside of my hip reminding me I have so much to write. Of course, it would be my right hand the mop attacked. There's a man in his bedroom spying on his neighbour.

The sirens sang so sweet
And watched the sailors going down
You talk to me in siren song
Yeah, anyone would drown

There's a child delirious in her bed. Things moving in the dull light. Ever had a poster that looked like the faces were moving at night? There's a girl. She's mostly me. She keeps walking down this road, tripping over tree roots and she gets to the bridge on Kelvin Way and she puts on her favourite song and looks down into the grey water and

The music stops. I'm out of battery. Which is bullshit because I just charged it but my ipod is pretty old now. Everybody is talking too fast and too loud and the woman's hood has that stupid fur around it and my eyes are heavy and the bus is too warm. My head spins and I'm losing track of my thoughts. I miss my stop and I have to trudge along East Kilbride Road but it isn't raining so I don't mind too much. My jaw is clicking again. I clack it down my road and don't care how obscene I look.

And then I shut the door on my Sunday. I hope yours was more entertaining.

Aw craps

Feeling bored, I took out the last of my birthday money and went shopping. Intending to have a quick perusal while Julie purchased more Final Fantasy figures I came home with a dress that might be too school girly, Percy Shelley, and 2 pairs of socks. I mean they're pretty damn great socks but now I'm home with the remnants of my bank account and BAM here's comes the crippling financial blues.

S
I
G
H

I should really start looking for a job again.