mrrrl

22/05/13

Finished and sent off my essay! And somehow whatever I added to it today made it feel much less clunky and aimless to me as a whole. BOOM! One less thing off my mind! Unless the guy assigned as my critical reader is a verrry critical reader. That will definitely get it back on my mind in a big and angsty way. The guy never says anything in class so he could be a big friendly Labrador or an attack dog, I dunno.

Anyway, let the celebratory tumbling commence!

I really need to buy & read Bird by Bird. I know I’ve read extracts of it before but I need the whole thing and then I need to read it every moment I’m not writing/reading something else inspiring. Because the extract I have always gets me going but it doesn’t last. I gotta read it freshly and frequently. I gotta condense it down to a precious stone I can wear around my neck. I gotta I gotta I gotta.

Channelling Shizuku: I LOVE BEING A WRITER. I feel that today. I haven’t even written creatively today! But just talking about books, looking over at the book I’m reading, today, is filling me with warmth. It might not tomorrow but it does today. Maybe it’s the rush of finishing something, even schoolwork. I hardly ever finish any of my fiction. Think of how far and fast downstream that rush would take me.

I want to mention that I’m hugely inspired by reading other people’s short stories and things, and if anyone ever wants me to look at something – even just for the +50XP of another human being reading your words – I’m up for it. I might not be able to read epic trilogies or anything, but scraps and tidbits, like <10 pages, are so so welcome. Fanmail me or whatever if you’re interested, writer pals. GIMME FUEL GIMME FIRE GIMME THAT WHICH I DESIRE

Att få titta på programmet Kobra är kanske det bästa med att bo här i Sverige. Det påminner mig att världen är full av smarta, snälla, kreativa människor som kämpa att göra livet bättre varje dag. Det gör mig glad att känna som jag blir mer och mer svensk varje dag. Det är lite bättre än att vara engelsk, tror jag. Lite.

Har tittat nyss på ett avsnitt som handlade om Umoja, byn som leds av kvinnor. Jätteintressant.

21/05/13

Hungry and grumpy.

Like a page left to do for this essay! Then no more deadlines till August! Wa-hoo.

Every day is libraries and reading and writing. I am books. I gave up the Jonathan Franzen because I don’t read things with terminally dislikeable characters. Oscar Wao is growing on me. I mean, it namedrops and basically has the whole vibe of a Hernandez brothers comic, so I’m into it. (Even though Beto seems to have lost his way a little these days? Maybe that’s just me. I’m a Jaime girl.)

Someone spraypainted over those awful posters in town in a flamboyant bright purple and I love them for it. It’s so important to see that there are equal forces for good out there to combat the bad & the bigoted. This town is so queer and welcoming and right-wing and hateful all at the same time. This country, really. I know that’s true for everywhere, but I feel like the contrast is more extreme here? Enh.

19/05/13

Eurovision notes:

• Norway was my favourite. It was a good song that could believably have come from 2013 in, you know, the real world. Also, that ass.
• Finland basically had Katy Perry. That’s all I’m gonna say.
• Romania, you are fabulous beyond all expectations and scientific reason.
• Who gave Bonnie freaking Tyler that wet fart of a song to sing? No wonder we never win this shit.
• Greece, I respect your plan of attack and your baglamas(?) player’s majestic moustache
• Ireland’s pretty standard OK Eurovision fare was ruined by the seventh-grade-level Powerpoint presentation-looking graphics in the background
• Denmark, why did you bring on the two biggest drums I’d ever seen and only really gesture towards them a couple times. That leaves an even more bitter taste in my mouth, Denmark.
• Sweden’s dancers had penises in their hair. Or rather, like, formed out of their hair? I can’t describe it. I might not have noticed that had the song not been so crushingly blaaaaaaaand. You’re following up an amazing Moroccan-Swedish woman with a political conscience and a voice bigger than Baku with THIS guy? Him?
• I liked Azerbaijan’s dude-in-a-box-of-petals but the song wasn’t anything exciting. I like that when dude-in-a-box-of-petals appeared my friend Lauren texted me, “CRYSTAL MAZE”
• Everything was less excruciating this year but also less varied and interesting. I mean, usually a man singing operatic falsetto in a glamorous evil-queen dress wouldn’t be nearly the weirdest thing in Eurovision. Sigh woe is me
• Does anyone else but Sweden get the joke w/r/t Linda Woodruff/Sarah Dawn Finer?
• Why Petra Mede? Why the awful hair? Why the awful dresses? Why the awful song? Why the awful person? WHY?
• Anyway I was drunk and awful throughout and you’re lucky to get to experience my sparkling commentary in written form rather than my incoherent yelling
• I still love Eurovision because it’s like an office Christmas party for a whole continent where all of us turn up and make fools of ourselves and make unexpected new connections and I don’t know. We are all so ridiculous. It’s nice.

Anyway, today is rainy. I have to work but not know how work?! I finished The Marriage Plot and am onto Jonathan Franzen’s Strong Motion. It’s not his best. I get bored of men musing on their hatred of women while ogling their breasts. There’s pretty much a canon of that already. I am saving The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao for last because I have an inkling that is best? After this batch I’ll probably return to my usual women-only policy because yay ladies.

Ehh.

18/05/13

Eurovision is happening in my neck of the woods tonight and everyone is Very Excited. Music and cheers pumping ominously from everywhere. I will watch it from the comfort of someone else’s home and hopefully thereby avoid bros.

But yes GO BONNIE TYLER. Not ‘cause I’m patriotic just ‘cause BONNIE TYLER. Voice like an electric beltsander flying at you through dry ice

It’s a nice day but my body forgot what hot felt like. I am wearing these snazzy patterned trousers which are thin and breezy jersey so that’s OK. Finally worked out how to make them not look like pyjamas and that was to hem off the 10+ cm that were dragging on the floor. Now I look very fashun.

There are little chickens in the park. I said hullo.

This is not one of my more insightful posts.

I could murder a watermelon right now.

I write stories fastest when I’m impatient to get to the smutty parts, let’s be honest. Clearly I need to plan a novel with an orgy at the end so I can write it in like a week and then edit the orgy out. WRITING TIPZ

16/05/13

Hi.

“Classes cancelled” were beautiful words to read in the subject line of an incoming email, okay, but I’m sad that the opportunities to see my classmates just dramatically reduced in number. Because damn if I’m going to electively ask anyone to hang out with me outside class. That would be absurd!

But I want to be friends with them so badly, especially the one person, because we’re actually on the same page politically, and I need that to feel comfortable, much as I hate to admit it. I feel crushed by how bad I am at making friends and how fragile the bonds are even then. I hate that when I hear something I don’t like I flee rather than confront it and try to work it out.

This prompted by a brief conversation w/ other good friend about “political correctness” and the “OH NO” siren going off in my head.

Blah blah.

Anyway, am in Foggysphere with The Marriage Plot. Strikes me as another kind of cool author growing more conservative as he ages. Or maybe I’m having narrator/author conflation problems as I do. Either way, what the hell kind of author photo is this to put inside the back cover:

He looks like he’s just taken off his glasses and stopped what he was doing to march towards me and kick my ass. With his vest jacket flapping around all theatrically. Calm down, Jeffrey.

At least I look kinda nice today having finally showered and dressed after a good three hours of wearing a green blanket around the apartment like some sort of beast coaxed in from the wild.

Convinced there is a nudist on opposite balcony but hard to tell given that the rail thing is at waist height. Fascinating.

14/05/13

Like 600 words done, good, WHATEVER!

Cutest cuteman signs off email from his iPhone, “sent from my telegraph machine”. He is on his way to see a show. I am listening to Free Music Archive stuff. There is so fucking much of it! But I’m still glad I didn’t delete my entire iTunes library last night like I thought I did. Well, I did, somehow, but it was all there in the trash. Strange.

I am going to paint one of cuteman’s nerdy miniatures while watching old Whose Line? I think. This is an OK day.

13/05/13

Went to library, wrote 750 words of essay, this is a positive thing

Horrible cissexist + misogynist posters in town are a negative thing

Sad attacks yesterday, negative

Violent envy, negative

…

Reese’s, positive

3 books I’ve been wanting to read available at library, positive

Roof over head, positive, yes

Impending chilli time, positive

Went outside, positive

Alive, positive

Feeling that being alive is positive, positive

12/05/13

I’m so shit at school I’m so shit at school I can’t do write this fucking thing I just sit and watch movies forever. I know 85% of Tumblr are in the same situation at any given time but if anyone wants to reassure me that would be nice.

Decided to watch one of the Ghiblis I haven’t seen from that list of links that’s going round. Now on Whisper of the Heart and it’s exercising my tear ducts. The scene with Seiji playing the violin and Shizuku singing and the rest coming in and playing along, why does that really take it out of me? Every emotion I have I have to pick up and interrogate these days. Where do you come from, little piece of happysad?

I’m guessing it’s that 1) boys with violins make me think of my when my teens actually started being good, i.e. when I got into music-proper at 16 and started going up to London for gigs; I would be tired as a rock the morning after but it made everything feel ethereal and sparkly with hope, like I was finally becoming a someone, separate from other someones, with my own tastes and adventures.

And 2) that Shizuku earlier exclaimed “I love being a writer” and I miss feeling that way so much.

And 3) one of my top ten fondest memories is to do with music happening spontaneously around me like that. I’m still embarrassed because it meant 100x as much to me as it did to them – they were musicians by trade. But it was a sunny day, I was young and becoming a someone, he played guitar, she harmonized, I had a cup of tea and a Tunnock’s teacake (I think), I had dogs at my feet, there were dogs in the song, they were a band of some renown and I was a girl of no renown being treated as an equal.

4) My life is not what felt possible in those moments.

5) More accurately I am not who I thought possible. I’m so much less. But little Shizuku is writing up a storm so I should finish this movie and see how it turns out for her instead of crying my heart out to you, Tumblr.