dreaming of the post-covid

The past few days have been bleak for us all (see: covid restrictions, limited Christmas, Brexit chaos, threatened food shortages), so here I am on Christmas eve-eve, surrounded by wrapping paper, drinking cider and musing about my gap year in Berlin. 

Yes, a second gap year. It's happening, I know it's ridiculous and privileged and honestly girl put that £30k to good use and get yourself a career.

But no. I want to mess about for a year, in a ridiculously naive blur of ignorance. And come on, I missed out on almost a year of my 20s!

But for reals, I've had a lot of conversations with myself on dark runs where I think about what I should do and what I want to do. 

I should be applying to jobs, or at least masters, and I should be taking my future a bit more seriously. 

I want to spend a year working a bit, and finding my post-degree feet, and mostly just living in Berlin. Entirely unrealistic as I can speak no German, but honestly it is what my heart is dreaming of.

And I really do think, what is the point of not doing what you want. This degree has been, and probs will be, one of the hardest things I ever do, with a pandemic on top of it, the world needs to catch a break – and that's what I intend to do. 

So, before I justify my break from the capitalist cycle of perpetual labour anymore, here are some muses that have been getting me through the grim Tier 4 news. 

Enjoy my loves!

What are your plans for next year (if you're graduating) or things you are dreaming of. 

Firstly – this song. Because it starts with 'it's my first night in Berlin, and I wanna dance', and honestly. That is all I want. Similarly, Ananas by Bleu Toucan transports me immediately to a hot, sweaty club and I've found myself almost dancing on the street numerous times as I listen to it on my walks. And Peggy Gou, mostly Starry Night. Again, just a vision of me, my friends, pres in an apartment, and hours dancing to make up for all the nights we spent at home. I also saw this quote in my reading yesterday: '...found release by dancing the night away in various gay clubs in East Berlin', and honestly – what a mood. 

My extended essay for the Christmas vac is all about the revolutions of 1989 and whether they were indeed revolutionary. Debate and semantics aside, if there was one historical event I wish I could experience, I think it would be the fall of the Berlin Wall. Beyond the discourse of what it meant, it just looked a fuckin' sick party, and I'd love to feel that momentary thrill that comes round on such improbable occasions (i.e. what I imagine the first night out post-'rona being). 

But I am also just somewhat fascinated by Germany, historically and transformatively. Man, I wanna be there. I wanna see the history I've read about play out for for real. I wanna see the Plattenbau housing and the remaining Soviet architecture and I wanna drink beer and fancy every person that walks down the street.

This is all entirely idealistic and existing in no realm of reality, but, in a year that has taken almost everything, a girl can dream, 'eh!

I had a lovely, drunken conversation with Vassia last week, over fish and chips (tier 2 vibes, am I right?), where we mused over gap year possibilities. Maybe visit her friend in Paris, or her sister in South Korea, or just live together and make up for 2020. But really – I'll go anywhere. Do anything. 

And then real work will begin, I promise! (I have actually got tangible gap year goals – get NGO experience (esp. try and volunteer with a refugee organisation), apply for a masters, join a netball club, run a half marathon, write as much as possible because I've found that is what makes me happy (even writing essays!).

(also I know this is all such a horrible privileged cliche, but today has been v. rough in terms of news (Tier 4 lockdowns, 3rd strain of corona, hospital admissions almost at peak) so I am really just trying to manifest something better for 2021)

(all pics from here)

reading, watching, thinking

I've been home just over a week and it has been a blissful sort of boredom. Early bedtimes and long runs and a lot of reading and much else. I've consumed a lot of good things, so here we go! Enjoy!

Reading:

Mid-term I read Such A Fun Age, which was easy but also super interesting exposing a sort of white-feminism-girl-boss-saviour-complex. It felt very current, and was funny in parts, and was just a good side read as I ate breakfast or before I fell asleep. 

I devoured On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous in the first three days of being home. It was shattering and raw, but so beautifully written. It was perhaps occasionally a little dominated by a 'stream of consciousness-esque' narrative, but much of it was just breath taking. It explores the legacies of migration and war, sexuality and the drug epidemic in America. It is written in the form of a letter to the narrators mother, exposing the things he never felt he could. I think I'd like to re-read it just to get a real sense of the language and poetry. 

Now I am reading The Shadow King. It seems to be a modern (and real!) take on the Madeleine Miller feminist re-telling of Greek myths. It focusses on women in the Ethiopian-Italian war of the 1930s. Again, it is beautifully written and the characters have that skilful complexity of being simultaneously good and bad. There is a lot of foreshadowing, which I feel I haven't read in a while, and I love the way the narrative jumps perspective between the chapters. I shall report back. 

Obvs also so much reading for uni, inc. the sequel to Slavenka Drakulic's 'How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed', which I just happened to stumble upon whilst in Amnesty International yesterday. How fortuitous. My brother disdainfully commented this morning, 'god, is reading all you do?', and honestly at the moment, it is. But I suppose that it is the price you gotta pay!

Watching: 

I devoured Emily in Paris, which I hated and loved. Honestly, I'm craving the second series. I also, like everyone else, adored Queen's Gambit, which successfully portrayed chess as the sexiest game ever. Who knew! The Crown was wonderful, even though I only jumped in at the current Diana series. Although I controversially didn't think Gilian Anderson played a very good Thatcher. My heart broke for Diana, which was evidently the intention, and I realised I am partial to a posh man with a signet ring – which is a partiality that needs to quashed quickly. 

I've also been watching a ridiculous amount of Grackle, purely for the Christmas cooking content, and Helena Rose for the intuitive eating and positive food energy. Perfect in time for Christmas and all the bullshit insta content that is telling us how to not gain weight. Fuck off.  

Listening:

In terms of working entertainment, I am enjoying both this Christmas carol playlist and this one. My MT20 'body in the library playlist' still seems to kind of slap, and makes me happily nostalgic. 

For non-work, my 'time in between' playlist brings me a lot of joy – but mostly I am just listening to 'If It Wasn't For the Night' by ABBA on repeat

Feeling:

Honestly, pretty good. I had a very happy evening playing cards with my family and laughing. I perhaps feel a little resentful of the workload over Christmas (who sets an extended essay due January, after a term of relentless work?), but it also keeps me busy and thinking. I am feeling a little anxious about after, and the conflict between what I want to do and what I can realistically do. But I am hoping they will marry up. I am feeling a little challenged by food, but that always seems to happen when I come home, and distanced from and alien to my home friends – but again, what is to be expected?

Really, I just want to dance until 4am and be sweaty and achey again. Please?!

Doing:

Playing a lot of cards, going for a lot of runs listening to this playlist, spending so much time on Ebay looking for clothes (I just want something fun!), and making up for 9 weeks of no kitchen. One of my happiest moments when I got home was 2 hours in the kitchen, alone, with my tunes, making a ridiculously lavish Tuesday lunch. Bliss.

I miss my friends, libraries and the pub – but am also happy and blessed to be home. And I am seeing my best friend tomorrow! 

Good vibes yh!

both terrible and wonderful

'This has been both terrible and wonderful. At the end I am so grateful and it will all matter in a way you cannot fathom. You've got this, keep on keeping on'. 

This was scrawled on the walls of a toilet cubicle in the Sackler library, along with other sentiments of 'Oxford broke me inside so many times' and 'there is something so beautiful and so terrifying' about this city and this institution. My feelings of this week felt sort of heard. 

It is so deeply impossible to explain the paradox of hatred and adoration I have for this place and how both punitive and exhilarating it is. 

I love it, and have loved every second of it and what it means and how at home I feel, and know if I had a choice, I would never leave. But so many parts of me just want it to stop, so I can catch a breather. 

You get so ridiculously caught up in it, and the intoxication to work a little harder, read a little longer, sleep a little less is so palpable. Only when I look beyond this bubble do I see how intense and destructive it is. That most people aren't expected to work 40 hour weeks, and don't feel burdened by the pressure of everyone else seemingly working all the time. That most unis don't place their crippling mental health crises in the hands of students. That it actually isn't healthy to get up at 6, and have 6 hours sleep, and never be able to catch a break because if you do, you'll fall behind. 

But all of this seems so normal and so necessary and so important because it's what everyone else is doing.  The entire culture is work harder, push yourself further, because you'll probably still not be enough. 

And this 'not being enough' was an intense feeling this week. My tutor called me out in my class week, asking whether I had actually done the reading and reminding me that I could 'just pop in at any time with my thoughts'. Yes, I know, I thought – but why would I say anything when these seven boys are all so articulate and intelligent and confident? What would my stuttering hesitation bring to this discussion?

 I've cried quite a lot about feeling stupid this week. Feeling like I'm struggling, when it seems like everyone else is thriving (another problem: stoicism), and not even being able to comprehend half of what they are saying. It's rough, man. 

But, and here is the real contradiction, I can't even articulate how deeply I love it all, and how really I could just do this forever. And how, even in a pandemic, I am so happy and at peace. And how, finally, I realise the progress I have made and the things I have learned, and how I have academically developed. 

I have never felt the love, or the loneliness, or the happiness, or the pride, or the anger that I feel here. 

***

This was written three weeks ago, what a three weeks its been. Some decisions were made, some very difficult things were dealt with, my tutor was a queen, I cried every day for a week, and now it' the end of term. I still feel stupid and I am unfathomably exhausted but also so content lying in bed hungover knowing I finally can relax. And even if I am stupid, who cares, I'm here – I made it this far. I am excited to go home and eat proper food (not sitting in a perspex box), see my pup and avoid work for at least a day. 

November

And we're here again. 

What an exhausting week, month, year, am I right?

I have been wanting to write in order to process the chaos in my mind and my life, but every night has either been 'library then fall into bed' or 'get drunk for one last time then fall into bed', so almost no self-care has been going on in-between.  

Some nice winter views. The sunlight in these pictures makes me feel calm. One of my favourite things about Oxford is the afternoon light reflecting on the sandstone. 

It's an odd Sunday. Sunday's are always strange here, the days when I pine for a walk on the beach, or a morning to lie in bed. But instead, here is a brain dump – because I am still yet to find time to write in my journal. 

Honestly, I feel depleted by people who require emotional labour, but don't give it back. Depleted by a degree that makes me work for eight hours a day, but still isn't enough. Depleted by a world that seems to not catch a break. It. is. relentless. 

Man, I really didn't mean to moan this much. I guess I've been dealing a lot of other people's moaning without a space for my own, and I've finally found it. 

Really, this is all a bit too bitter. There have been some blissfully happy things, amongst the exhaustion and the chaos. An hour on a bench in the Botanic gardens with my best friend, mostly in silence. Nights of wine and a lot of laughter. The same cafe every day before lockdown. A 10k run that cleared my head. A Sri Lankan meal with a friend I really love. This bowl of cereal I eat whilst I write this, which I am going to refill because no one can stop this bad! bitch! The pink carnations my mum sent me money for. A night with my sister before lockdown. 

I just feel a little defeated by the world. By our government, and their appalling crisis management. By this university, which puts all the emphasis on students to solve 3am mental health crises, a product of them working us way too hard. By my lost youth, because I don't care how privileged it is. Let me have just this moment.

Anyway, back on the wheel we get. To defeat this never-ending reading list, and give too much of myself, and feel a little sad and a little lost, but mostly just perplexed.

Peace out, y'all – send some good vibes, apparently I really need them.  

October thoughts

I am finding this new routine a little confusing, and I feel out of sync with it all. I don't have bi-weekly essays to structure my week, instead just an excessive amount of reading. So much feels scheduled, and I think perhaps that triggered the melancholy sense of monotony that got me down yesterday. 

But, as my friend soothed yesterday, we have had some beautifully fun times, and there have been too many good days to count. Its just a different rhythm and a different world.

Here are some good things

Riding my bike - she's beautiful and smooth and so silent 

The incremental reminder, in libraries or classes, of why I love what I do 

Morning walks in the sun 

Having the time to run, listening to Lizzo, and feeling my body process it all

The college cats I can see from my window 

Hugging my puppy last weekend 

Getting my third replacement university card, and finally getting into the libraries again 

Yoghurt and granola, eaten religiously with a coffee, as I watch the world wake up 

My mum transferring me money for said yoghurt, because despite it only being 1st week, I am skint (thank u student finance!)

Missing dancing, but being able to drunkenly talk instead

My friend leaving chocolate outside my room 

Velcro Vejas which, despite their excessive cost, I am in love with 

Oscillating between 10pm and 1am bedtimes, and finding no in between – because it's challenging my excessive need for control 

Philip Glass, especially Facades and 'String Quartet no. 2 'Company', for working music 

A trip to buy pens, which accidentally resulted in lunch out, and of course, no pens

So times are good, but they are strange and forever teetering on the unknown precipice. 

Since being here, I've noticed the magic Sertraline has endowed, and how dulled and tame my anxiety feels. Which is a wonder, but the lack of tears is perhaps a little disconcerting, especially when I can feel how much I want them. Odd.

Tonight I am going for drinks, and tomorrow a meal, and after that I can't really think. Just plough through my reading on 1989, try and find a little more rhythm, and continue to excessively worry about what's next. 

How are y'all?

(pic sources: 1) view from my window 2) @butterscotch_isle (via @sweetthangzine 3) @metmuseum 4) @ghastlypeak )

rain and sun

The sky is a perpetual grey, and it hasn't stopped raining in four days. Spirits are a little brighter than the pathetic fallacy suggests, though. Third year has started differently to others, with restrictions reminiscent of a boarding school (being told off for being in a boys room, scandalous!), but its been fun and chaotic, and we're making it work. 

Alongside returning to libraries, and pleading my way in as I've lost my university card for the fourth time, I've drank a lot of wine, been to a lot of cafes, been dragged on a very muddy and very fast run, illicitly hugged a lot of people, kept my crying to a minimum, and felt a strange sort of stability.

These days are odd and uncertain, but my room, with the view over the quad and my friends next door, feels safe and permanent in an idyllic sort of way 

I've learned how to make posh pot noodles with just a kettle, that broccoli doesn't steam in an egg boiler, that I really do miss my puppy and that rain can feel interminable. I have some insanely wonderful friends in this bizarre city, and am trying to fight the irrational thoughts that tell me I am alone. 

So all in all, good times, people. 

After a week of (10pm) nights out, I forced myself to sit with the discomfort of silence and calm last night, but quickly ran next door to Vassia's to paint instead. Something about this place makes being alone so hard. To recenter, I've booked a solo slot at the modern art gallery, to remind myself that my head is my own, and that this is an important and valuable thing to do. 

A new routine is gradually being adapted to, which happens every year but this more than any. Factoring in 10pm closing times, 6pm dinners, and having to clean my own room (shock! horror!). It's strange and a little uncertain, but isn't everything in this mad year.

So this year, my third, might be a little quieter than most. Maybe more evenings reading and chatting, painting or sleeping – but I am trying to remind myself that this is good. Different, but good. 

Now I must brave the rain to get my washing, and clean my bathroom as I've left it a little too long. 

How are you all adapting to a new term and a new life? Let's hope for some sun. 

the beginning of the end

Thoughts on third year. 

Who can believe it, eh? How quickly this has all disappeared.

Six months ago, I got on the train home, in state of quasi-evacuation, and then the weeks and months passed, and now we are here, in mid-September. I've even got a back to school playlist to mark the occasion. 

I feel distinctly mixed about it all. I can't contain my excitement at being back in my libraries and immersed in it all; at living with my best friends, working in cafes, running in the parks, just being away from home. Michaelmas' paper is sick, Autumn in Oxford is beautiful and my yellow bike is going to look iconic zipping around the streets. I cannot wait.

But I almost can't accept it's going to happen. Maybe it won't, who knows in this post-certainty world. But regardless, the prospect of it is idyllic.

And then, there's the apprehension. The hoped idyll that simply won't be fulfilled, because corona and necessary rules mean what feel like the best parts can't happen. Can't go to formals, can't have balls, can't even have face-to-face tutorials. Oh, and I can't cook for myself. Too often I think 'what's the point', and toy at the threads of rustication, suspension, a year out. I just can't shake this profound nostalgia of what was, and I know it won't be like that anymore. And it's like March's grief all over again. So that hurts, in a privileged sort of way.

And then, of course, there's the inevitable anxiety. Anxiety at exams and pressure. And at the end. That cruel creature that caused so much pain in 2017. But it sort of doesn't hurt as much this time. It feels as though there is a little more hope and prospect and opportunity once this is done, and maybe even some excitement (Berlin, please?!). But I also struggle to process that it will end. At the speed with which these three beautiful years have melted and slipped and are suddenly almost concluding. And then who am I? What does my identity consist of? Do I have to get a job? Can I not just read books forever?

And I just can't imagine my world not consisting of these people of whom I am in awe, who are so ridiculously intelligent and caring and driven it is hard to believe they are really real. I want them to be my world forever and to just stop time so I can drink up the hours with them. Really, I'd like to hold on to this eternally, and never let go.

So, for third year, I am feeling both hope and dread. So sad and so hopeful at the same time.

I know it will be hard and too many early mornings and late nights will be spent in the library (I've already had the necessary pre-warning) and in so many ways it will be different, and some of that I won't know until it happens. I refuse to let myself be consumed by the grief I did last time, and instead want to try so, so hard to breathe it in. Enjoy my window looking onto the quad, and the sandstone streets, and the coffees, and the cold mornings, and the laughs and the pubs, and even the hungover working. 

And I'll fuckin' stop with the photobooth pics when I really should be reading. 

Good vibes for back to school, y'all (and hoping beyond hope that a second lockdown isn't on its way!) <3

(pics are from insta: here, here and here)

the reads and the to-reads #2

I seem to have books everywhere: a permanent pile downstairs as remnants of days working, a tower next to my bed of 'to-reads', a shelf above my bed of my favourites, and a collection of history books to feign intellect. Despite not needing another for at least a year, I can't! stop! buying! them!

I've read a wonderful array of things this summer: it's been quite an inspiring few months, literature-wise and I have definitely explored things I wouldn't have otherwise. 

Here are some recs!

The Parisian Affair and Other Stories, Guy de Maupassant 

I have only read half of these, but as they are short stories I feel it is more justified to take a break halfway through. This is a collection of over thirty short-stories, with some just a couple of pages long. They are set in different areas and worlds of France, in the late nineteenth century. They are debauche and scandalous, and some are profanely ridiculous, but they are madly entertaining. Some of the comments he makes about women are so blatant they just make me laugh – how terrifying men used to find us. 

'Really strange, complex...unfathomable creatures, women', 'one of those treacherous looks that so often appear in women's eyes', you get the gist!

I'd highly recommend for a dip-in-and-dip-out book, with some astutely of-the-time comments and some crude humour, alongside a beautiful translation. 'A Parisian Affair', 'Monsieur Jocaste', 'Two Friends' and 'Regret' are some favourites. 

Rainbow Milk

As a debut, this novel was, for me, groundbreaking. I know some people found it a little too explicit, and perhaps buying too overtly into gay stereotypes, but I found it's representation and commentary madly eye opening. It's an intertwining of stories of the Windrush generation, alongside the life of a gay, black Jehovah Witness. The two narratives seem entirely unrelated, until the very end, but it concludes in almost perfect harmony. I found it visceral and raw and very harrowing, but also warm and loving. It made me think a lot about the intersectionality of identity, and as a book that breaks all the conventions, I thought it was just wonderful. 

It's not about the Burqa 

Another recommended reading of the reading group I mentioned in this post. My perception of this book was a little tainted by a conversation I'd had with a friend who said it was rather repetitive and superficial. I can see what she means by this, but for a white-woman entry into the feminism of Muslim women and the intersection between Islam and feminist theory, I thought it was excellent. It's main premise is to reclaim the voice of Muslim women on their identities as feminists, and explain what it means to them, through a collection of essays. The difference it highlights between religion and culture is, I believe, a pretty essential thing to understand, and perhaps offers a starting point for white women questioning the relationship between Islam and feminism. I do agree it is perhaps a little surface-level and repeats its fundamental point, but that I believe is not a bad thing, and maybe White Feminists will finally begin to listen. 

Reading Lolita in Tehran 

This was a slow and long read for me, but enjoyable and eye opening nonetheless. A memoir by Azar Nafisi, it explores life under the Iranian Revolution, as a woman, an academic and a reader. It taught me a lot about Iran that I didn't know, and shocked me at so many points. I adored her analysis of the different texts read in the subversive book group, and I often got lost in the novel itself, rather than her description. Whilst it did seem to take me far longer than most other books to get through, it was worth it as some of her lyricism is just beautiful, and the theme so important. 

So there are a few, perhaps more unusual, suggestions. I've also read The Family Upstairs (a little predictable but very quick paced), Exciting Times, and Women Don't Owe You Pretty – all of them good, but maybe ones you've heard of before. 

In terms of to-reads, I've got a considerable pile to work my way through before October. They include a Virginia Woolf 'Flush', a retelling of a Greek myth ('Thousand Ships', the David Nicholls I've been pining after ('Sweet Sorrow') and one set in the Qing dynasty to ease me back into history. 

What have you all been reading recently?

back to normal but not really normal

I was in the co-op buying snacks for a blissful afternoon on the beach, when my dearest friend asked me 'what would you think if you saw yourself now, six months ago?'.  I question this a lot. How normal signs of 'keep your distance' or wearing a mask or queuing outside a shop have become. How quickly we've adapted. 

I am in the penultimate hour of a very long coach journey, something that seems to have become a seminal feature of my summers. Unfortunately, this one is not preceding a flight to somewhere hot, but instead to a twenty first, with friends I haven't seen since March. 

I've spent this journey working, napping, reading, and eating a soggy pitta that just did not satisfy my evening hunger. I also got lost in the depths of my blog, circa. March, reading the intricacies of lockdown life. I can't stop thinking about how terrifying and horrible it was, and have had numerous conversations about a quasi-trauma I experience when thinking back to it all. My experience wasn't bad, and of course was not unusual, but the anxiety and the claustrophobia feels almost more intense and almost more unbearable in hindsight. 

It's resulted in a lot of reflection, about life now, life five months ago and life a year ago. And I suppose, in response to Evie's musing, my life feels more similar to how it manifested in 2019 than it did in May. Likely, in the midst of a pandemic, that is not a good thing. But, it also feels somewhat safe and reassuring and relieving to have got lost in this semblance of normal. To have forgotten what it was like to be stuck inside, not able to even see my friends for a walk. 

In so many of my posts I wrote about how I longed for a pub and a walk and to see a face other than my mum's, and now I have all these things and have absorbed them until I am exhausted with over-stimulation, I've almost forgotten we couldn't have them.

It's such a strange and liminal space and world, right now. It's all so normal and also so abnormal. That sitting on this coach with a mask, and relentless hand sanitising is assumed as a rite of travel. That life goes on despite two trillion pounds public debt. That the infection rate rises, and still we eat out to help out and travel further and meet up more. But also that my life is busy, that I go outside, and have plans and that so many of the things I said I missed, I can finally evoke in some form or another. 

I suppose I want to write this to remember, that on a dark day in April, when I thought I had throat cancer but really was just reacting to the stress, I would have never have dreamed I'd be on this coach to see my friends, or that Libby would be coming to stay, or that I'd be able to drink cider on the beach and go out for meals and work in a cafe. 

But also how quickly I slip back into taking these things as a given, and for granted, and not recognising how profoundly blissful it is to have them back.

being outside

Much about the last 5 months has been dark, empty and endless. But there has been light and opportunity and time that wouldn't have other wise come about. 

One pleasure I have indulged more than ever is the beauty of being outside, in the warm sun, on the beach, on a hill or just sitting in the cloudy grey in a park. I've discovered a new found adoration for simply being outside, in nature, in the fresh air. When you're time outside is so severely curtailed and when all other possibilities are no longer viable, there is something so freeing about being able to simply walk on a field or read in the garden. 

At every opportunity, I have held my breath and jumped into the depths of a cold and probably somewhat dirty river and swum until I could no longer feel my legs. I've swam in the Exeter canal, in the north sea at sunset, in Port Meadow, and in a valley after a breakfast cooked on a fire. 

I've enjoyed having skin smelling of wood smoke and clothes marked with mud and grass stains, or disappearing on my bike to walk amongst white flowers in an abandoned field. Sandy meals and drinks consumed in a park, as though we were replicating the summers of our teenage years. I've even found odd pleasure in the necessity of hedge weeing that arose out of lockdown. Its all been magically freeing and fresh.

 

And now, as summer rolls into the languorous days of August, I am finding beauty in picking blackberries to cook and eat with mountains of granola, and in picking the veg my dad has tirelessly tended to. Last night, I made an entire meal from harvested foods and it was hugely satisfying and nourishing, despite doing nothing to contribute to the growing of any of it. 

So, although our opportunities and experiences have been clipped and summer did not consist of the baked mediterranean paths and sparkling seas we may have dreamed of, the focus has been adjusted. Just the green spaces around me have a new found worth and beauty, and its been a delight to embrace them come rain or shine. 

longing for art

I am longing to see some art. I don't think I realised, prior to corona, just how much I love galleries, and how peaceful I find room after room of sometimes beautiful, but mostly mediocre paintings. Embarrassingly, I used to rubbish history of art as 'pointless' and vacuous, and now not only do I find myself doing a dissertation on early Islamic art but also frequently dream of sitting in a tutorial in the Ashmolean discussing paintings. I guess I've realised its a lot more than just pretty pictures, and has immense cultural and historic value. 

Recently, I've felt a real affinity with some of my favourites, and can't stop thinking about their spot hidden away waiting just for me to stop and stare. This Constable, of clouds, in a backroom in the Ashmolean which I can never direct myself to, but which I always seem to fall upon. Monet's Antibes in the Courtald, magically warm and rich in soft pinks and turquoises. I think you can find good art anywhere, these just happen to be a few whose delicacy play in my mind. 

Over lockdown, I found a lot of good art online, much of which was shared by my friend Sophie. It felt such an escape to still be able to explore new works and see some of my favourites, even when I was locked inside. 

Some highlights include (above):

Pierre-Auguste Renoir 'Buste de Femme Nue', Claude Monet 'Marine', Edvard Munch 'Standing Nude', Konen Uehara 'Hatō zu', Lucian Freud 'Man's Head (Self Portrait I)', Paul Cézanne 'Les Grandes Baigneuses'

I suppose there is some sort of theme: blues and greens, soft female forms, a lot of sea. And that Lucian Freud. I cannot stop thinking about that self-portrait. 

I also listened to Simon Schama's 'The Great Gallery Tours' which, if you can reconcile yourself to the posh stuffiness that often (in my opinion unnecessarily (because so much good art is free)) comes with art critics, is so lovely. He virtually visits 4 of his favourite galleries (I've only listened to the Courtald one) and describes three of the paintings. It feels just like you're in the gallery with him, and I would very much recommend for a gentle half hour relax. And as soon as I can, I am making a trip to the National solely for this Artemisia exhibition. After sending magazine cut outs to my best friend during lockdown, we've decided we need to go and see it as soon as it opens. 

Much of this is formal, 'traditional' art, But really, art can mean anything. For all its flaws, and all the times I have frantically deleted the app from my homescreen, Instagram is the perfect place to share and diversify creative works. Having just scrolled through my saved, I realised so much of it is art and brings creativity and colour and inspiration virtually. 

Some accounts I'd recommend following are:

@amber_sidegallery (a gorgeous independent photography gallery in Newcastle – Forever Amber's most iconic series was of poverty in the city, but since they have done so much; one of pictures across Syria during the conflict was just breath taking – I can't wait to take myself on a date here soon)

@vangoghmuseum

@museelouvre

@charlotte.ager

@ashmoleanmuseum

@robertoferri_official (a modern baroque-esque artist; obsessed)

@metmusuem

Ars gratia artis – mutatis mutandis (on fb, such a beautiful and diverse selection and it has really exposed me to some gorgeous new stuff!)

And finally, this. Which I think about almost on a daily basis. God, what i'd do for an americano, a croissant, some art and a nap. 

What have you been missing most? And any arty recs please send 'em my way xo

a whole lotta love

A little drunk, and a little lost in the sadness that comes with the end of a fuckin' brilliant few weeks that felt they would never end. 

Originally intended to be a week in Devon with my family, I ended up seeing almost all my best friends in some of my favourite, and new delightful, places. 

I feel sad and teary but so deeply happy and blessed. In a delirious exhaustion on the train from London (?) to Newcastle, I sent a message to a friend saying:

'I just had such a nice realisation that I have the kindest and best people in my life, and what have I done to deserve such goodness'. 

Sometimes I wonder if everyone is as blessed to have as good friends. And I mean really fucking good. The kind that let you cry drunk on the phone whilst they are on holiday with their girlfriend. The kind that swim in a canal with you even though it is raining, or read with you, or laugh so deeply you can't breathe from the stomach pain. The kind who I don't feel I ever have enough time with, who I think of a million things to say in too little time. The kind that, god, just make you feel so full and alive and yourself, and that you just want to hug when you are walking in silence because the love you feel is too much. 

As you can tell, I am delirious from both a lack of sleep and a blur of chaotic beauty, and drunk from too much sangria and good times. I also have 'sure on this shining night' playing because for some reason being in York minster made me need to listen to choral music. See what I mean? Friends that let you be yourself. 

I am adamant this is the best summer ever. I think because of the unexpected beauty of it all. How amazing it feels to be in the presence of my friends and drink their warmth, after months of Zoom. And the freedom, to float around the country and stay in random rooms in empty tenuously known student flats, pretending I don't have a whole dissertation to write and a whole paper to research. Oh, Oxford. 

Delightful highlights include: seeing my best friends for the first time in months and drinking wine, swimming at Exmouth in the sun, eating scones at the top of a hill, reading in bed with a coffee in hand, planning an expected trip to Oxford and the hilarity (and I mean hilarity) that came with it, swimming in Port Meadow, traipsing around bookshops with my bffs, eating tapas with Libby and pretending to replicate the Spanish trip we never got to book. I think I may have been on twenty trains, spent hundreds of pounds and used more hand sanitiser than I thought possible, but man my heart is full. 

And now, we focus. On work, on eating, on myself. I'm scared these can't go hand in hand, that Oxford is just not compatible with a healthy mindset (no matter how deeply I love it) and that some form of recovery, whatever that transpires to mean, may be too hard or too scary. But here we are, it's going to happen because I want to continue loving and thriving and breathing the intense happiness these beautiful people impart. 

(wow, that was a lot - the sangria hit me harder than I thought)

love xo (and listen to sure on this shining night before you sleep <3)

twenty one

This train journey, my third in as many weeks, was supposed to be spent researching early Islamic art in Transjordan, but instead here we are writing. The avoidance I am practicing in relation to my dissertation sure needs to be addressed soon, especially after, on the 16th June, my supervisor said we should 'speak in a month' to 'assess progress'. Of course, progress is limited, but really I've just been trying to soak up as much sleep and laughter and permissible adventure as possible and make up for some of the privileges we have been denied as of late. So I think maybe, in corona times, that is a reasonable excuse. 

Twenty-one feels big and 'adult', neither of which are characteristics I attribute to myself. I'd really like to stay twenty forever, but I think I perhaps say that every year. 

Either way, it materialised into a magical day of sea swimming and cardamom buns and a haircut (that I now dislike) and phone calls and a lot of Prosecco and laughter with some old friends. I felt very happy and very loved and very lucky, feelings that haven't really been in abundance in the last few months. I got some beautiful gifts, notably a yellow 90s racing bike, a paloma wool shirt, and some velcro vejas which I bestowed upon myself, and whilst in some ways it was not the twenty-first I imagined, it was beautiful. 

There are some big things I want to learn at this seminal (?) age and, as I currently have a lot of time to think and reflect and some long convoluted journeys abundant in empty time, I thought I would document them, perhaps for some accountability. 

Break my jealousy streak. Florence Given taught me that my feelings towards others are simply a projection of my insecurities. And jealousy is a big one. I want to learn to share people and to not get angry when they spend time with other people. Trust your friendship and trust their agency.

And I suppose along the same vein, have faith in your relationships. I'd like to eliminate the excessive time spent with dear friends worrying whether they like me, and instead focussing on the time spent with them. 

Learn intuition – with food, with rest, with direction. Probably seek some help for the former.

Have confidence in my worth and don't depend upon external validation to realise this.

Speak up rather than shy away.

Be more critical in my approach. Don't accept as gospel everything I read, even if it is by someone I admire, and have the confidence to challenge it. 

Don't fuckin' freak out about the future or the intense and unwelcome reminder of other people's plans. I think third year is going to be perhaps a little grim for this, as the gossip about next steps and internships and grad jobs amongst inherently driven and ambitious people takes over. Breathe, ignore. 

Challenge my guilt complex, and learn to be. 

Finish my degree (yikes) but don't waste time thinking about the end. 

Thus, a few key things I want to learn. I suppose really all I want is a little more freedom and a little less control, but I think lessons from this pandemic will perhaps aid such a development. Twenty one will in some ways be a big year, but I don't really like to think about it too much. I just want to finish my degree, and not much else. I have plans for after but am a mighty firm believer in taking it slow. So I am envisaging another year out to live a little without 2 essays a week, before embarking on a masters in a subject which probably sounds vacuous, but for which I have fallen deeply in love. But let's not get ahead of ourselves, I need to finish my preliminary degree first. 

I hope you're all well and safe and wearing your masks! I've got an exciting week or two of celebrations and friends I haven't seen in a while and days in Devon, so I feel lucky and more normal than I have in months. 

vicarious summer

Living vicariously through the delicate faded hues of these photos to emulate some form of the summer I dreamed of. 

Evocative of the serenity empty days propose but never totally fulfil, the morning sun I want to lie in with a cup of black coffee, the sea I want to swim in and the salty skin drying in the heat, open windows onto shouts of street vendors and that smell of warm petrol air that only exists in mediterranean cities. 

Each day I create a fantasy that revolves around these improbable hopes, in a time before corona when the world felt deceptively ordered. I've got lost looking at Eurostar tickets and making calendars marking all the movements of my friends in some attempt to create plans that I know should really be left alone. It's a perplexing dichotomy, between shattering statistics and graphs and death tolls, slurs of 'R' related jargon and calls for economic foundations to soften the already pernicious blow, and mindless, reckless drunkness in beer gardens and crowded rooms, a discourse moving on as though it is already tired of this ceaseless pandemic. Somehow, I feel 'all men are liars' really epitomises the world right now. 

In all honesty, I vacillate between the two. I know the seriousness, feel blindsided, condemn the slow response and too-rapid relaxation. But I am also bored, dream of the summer I selfishly convinced myself I 'deserved', as if my privilege could somehow ward off the virus. I've grieved for a life I left behind, which was so good I perhaps know it wasn't real and couldn't last, and sometimes convince myself that tomorrow I will awake and this will have been an apocalyptic, cold-sweated dream forged to remind me to live a little harder. But, echoing something I think Alain de Botton said, why did I think we could avoid this? That we had overcome nature, and could never succumb to its innate powers. 

Instead, this is the world and the times we are living in. Adapting to the lessons it is teaching us and hopefully listening to the calls for human softness on the natural kingdom. I don't think an existence in this hopeful summer is wrong or futile. It gives me promise for the future, makes me evaluate the things of importance, perhaps create a bucket list for post-corona days. 

I'll try and recreate the warmth and serenity of these pictures, somehow. In my morning coffee under my duvet, in walks in the damp drizzle that still feel somehow releasing, in smaller adventures that appease the hunger for newness. I've rearranged my room, stuck anything remotely orange or peach up on my walls and have taken to sleeping exclusively with the window open. I've found some excitement in bought coffees, the hour of cereal eating and book reading that I savour each morning, and the excessive number of silver rings I have collected.

Trying not to think of what the summer of my twenties should look like, you know?

(sources of pics: all found here)

one hundred days

The 100 day milestone of 'rona lockdown sure did hit hard. I cried and napped almost exclusively for two days straight, something I haven't done in a while. 

Last week was euphoric. I wrote in my notes whilst sitting on the train that it felt blissful and delightfully exciting. 

it feels like there is so much to look forward to, and nothing to dread. I suppose I hope it can never get as bad or as strict or as lonely or as scary as it was

(side note: i rlly hate the new blogger, and can no longer work out how to make pics good quality - any tips??)

I sort of wish I'd documented the feelings a little better but I managed to see some of my favourite faces, get drunk multiple times, and visit the place most dearest to my heart. Beautiful highlights include lying in the sun of Hyde Park with my best friend, drinking cider, laughing, marvelling in total awe at finally seeing each other. The sunny botanic gardens and feeling a warmth and freedom. Sitting under a tree in the rain, and then in Radcliffe Square drinking gin in the golden silence, and nearly missing yet another train. Crying to another friend at the overwhelming emotions of it all. 

Yesterday, I lay on my floor surrounded by my miscellaneous belongings and paper and copious books and just cried and cried. I felt so much. I think the last fourteen weeks finally sort of sunk in, what I had missed, how much I adore my friends and how much it hurt that I couldn't spend blissful summer months with them. Visiting Oxford was magical and felt like home but walking into my locked room, left as a total still of the before corona times, felt alien and outdated. I sort of struggle to remember that that life belonged to me. 

I also think it sort of hit home that the elated trajectory I had idealised last week of endless progression just isn't true and life isn't going to revert, no matter how much I sanitise my hands or dream of it disappearing. 

So 'rona is bringing some odd feelings this week. I am feeling uneasy about turning twenty-one, am lost in an odd self-contempt and worthlessness, and I have a lot of thoughts I need to process about endings and beginnings and what it all means. This summer, really, is mostly just work. I have a lot to get through and focus on, and I suppose a pandemic is the best time to do it. I've got a dissertation to research (and apparently 'start writing' by the end of summer to 'front load'), and a plethora of pre-reading to tackle for next term. It is terrifying that this will be my last paper and my last 8 weeks of essays written in 4 days and 400 years of history learned in 2. I need to figure out what might come *next*, and try not to get caught up in the 'not-doing-enough' rhetoric. My degree is enough, surviving a pandemic is enough, and accepting the emotional exhaustion is enough. But it's hard to feel that when everyone around you seems to be succeeding and creating and exploring. I'm dreaming of summer plans that oscillate between illegal and improbable, and exciting and spontaneous. I am trying to exist in the thrill of promise and possibility, and not living beyond next the next seven days, even if I can't stop thinking of Paris. 

Today, I am making bagels, trying to avoid the headache induced by too many hours on my phone, walking my usual route and trying to make progress with Reading Lolita in Tehran. There also remains a mountain of shit to put away, washing to do and hoarded items to part with. 

Has the centenary of corona brought any odd feelings for y'all?

some reading and listening

Long time, no see. 

It's been a lot, these past few weeks. A lot for all of us in so many different ways and to so many different degrees. But it's been an important shift in discourse and privilege checking and awareness. In 'obsessed with I May Destroy You', Sophie Duker refers to the bc* world as 'the before times', before 'the world disintegrated' and I loved this description. But the disintegration is in so many ways important. It'd be interesting to consider whether there was a correlation between activism nd corona – maybe privileged white people (like me) feel they have more time to understand, study, research, are more open to other people's stories, recognise that their liberties have been curtailed perhaps for the first time ever, and perhaps reflect upon this. Of course, dialogue relating to race, discrimination, inequality etc has been going on forever, but maybe corona offered the spark to get white people to sit up and listen. But maybe it's all just a chronological coincidence. 

Either way, I've thought a lot, read a lot, listened a lot in these past few weeks. 

Some really good stuff, of varying degrees of educational zeal, entertainment, culture and generally black voices in spaces where they don't exclusively talk about race (not because this isn't so important but because sometimes feel the mainstream media only thinks it necessary to involve people of colour when its about race) include:

Pose (for the Latino/African-American LGBTQ+ scene in '80s New York - both heartbreaking and heart warming in equal measure), I May Destroy You (for a raw, hilarious, cutting exposition of being a woman, being a woman of colour, being a millennial, culture of consent, micro-aggressions, just what the real world is actually like (there are so many scenes that are just not in usual TV but which happen everyday (and show how fake tv usually is – which isn't always a bad thing of course) – e.g. when she is in the toilet w/ her friend and puts a pad in with no reference to her period), Obsessed with I May Destroy You (BBC Sounds podcast, a funny review of the show and its reflection of the experiences of black women in Britain – also she has some sick guests, and along with the actual show it feels like the BBC is finally waking up from its prude watershed conservatism a bit??), Growing up with Galdem podcast (for safe, real conversations about childhood through a diary entry/letter/text message from their younger selves – there's also an episode w/ Michaela Cole which I need to listen to asap). 

In terms of more academic tings I've read a lot about race in feminism, which has made me realise a lot and think a lot. Piercing the White Silence by Terese Jonsson, as well as Reni Eddo-Lodge's chapter on feminism for current issues in the feminist movement. Hazel Carby's 1982 article 'White Women Listen!' is a very important read for white feminists, and was crucial to the '80s Black feminist movement. All three are easy reads. And finally, I am half way through Reading Lolita in Tehran which, whilst perhaps different in its topics, is still crucial and shocking but so rich and full. It takes me an hour just to read a few pages because every word feels like a gift, and sometimes  I have to just put it down and think about their trauma and their ceaseless search for escapism.

In terms of stuff I want (but haven't yet had time) to watch/read/listen to:

Watch 13th, and alongside that read Angela Davis – both Women, Race and Class, and Are Prisons Obsolete? And I want to read the rest of bell hooks Ain't I a Woman. Some of my good friends have set up an online feminist theory reading group (called Theory4Thotz, open to all (not exclusive to Oxford at all – find it on fb and insta) that discusses some of the major feminist texts. They've chatted about Adrienne Rich's Compulsory Heterosexuality, Beauvoir's The Second Sex, Womanism, Black Feminism and Beyond by Patricia Hill Collins and bell hooks' Feminist Theory from Margin to Centre, alongside others. I've got quite a lot to catch up on but boy am I excited to get more into it now term is done. For some reason I am really enjoying reading academia just for the sake of it. 

I've also watched and listened and read a lot of other (good) but less informative stuff – see: Wimbledon (the film), How to Fail w/ Daisy Edgar Jones, Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan, Portico Quartet Knee Deep in the North Sea for working music. 

In other news, term finished yesterday. It concluded with a coursework practice, whereby I had to write 3 essays in 3 days. Grim. But I am mighty proud of myself of surviving a term at home. I actually have *plans* this week, and am seeing (almost) all my favourite people in a variety of convoluted ways. I remember this time last year writing in my diary that I was the happiest I had ever been. Right now, as I sit outside in the sun with nothing to do and nowhere to be, except to drink in the park with my friends tonight like we are 16 again, I sort of feel the same, but in a very different way. I guess I can finally see the corona light and the thought of seeing my best friend tomorrow (admittedly after a train journey with a mask and a lot of hand sanitiser) after fourteen weeks, and beautiful Oxford in the sun on Saturday, makes me so excited I might wee myself. 

Man, it sure has been a lot!

Please send podcast recs and reading recs, and come to the reading group because its an hour and half of the most enlightening and safe discussions w/ two of the cleverest gals I know.

Oh, and it's nice to be back!

*before corona, obvs

friendship in quarantine

Post-tutorial, I sat on the phone with a friend for a few hours whilst I coloured and we chatted about corona and books and our feelings. She asked me how I'd be finding friendship in lockdown, and I replied that in all honesty, its been a bit odd. So much of friendship is built on shared experience, and obviously the pandemic has put a stop to that. I've read a lot of 'dating in lockdown' articles, which I find generally entertaining, and sometimes perplexing, but weirdly not much about friendship. But it sure has been weird.

The fatigue of Zoom is mounting, and after 10 weeks, I am craving some real-life social contact. A 2D pixilated image just doesn't quite cut it, when all you want to do is hug your friends. I've had some warming and loving hours spent on FaceTime, when I'm reminded just how lucky I am, but after I've closed my laptop and am in my silence, I'm often left feeling just a little sadder that they can't be here with me.
And sometimes it feels I've got nothing left to say, can only ask so many times how someone is or reply with the usual 'oh you know, getting through'. I sometimes worry I've forgotten how to socialise properly. Somewhere I read that you shouldn't ask a virtual chirpse how their day is because 'newsflash: it was probably as boring as yours', and whilst I actually do like this question and the care and interest it suggests, the implicit message that nothing much is happening to anyone carries a lot of weight. And it really doesn't bode well for dynamic conversation. For me, the topics are predominantly either corona or work. Both are undoubtedly of some interest, but god I'd like an hour of post-night-out gossip or hysterical laughter. I feel like I'm definitely not laughing as much.
All this virtual communication has also highlighted just how much conversing exists beyond the language used. Movements, pauses, expression cannot be discerned through a screen - without them conversation can be stilted or endlessly overlapped. With so many of my friends, I love their presence as much as their conversation but silence doesn't carry the same comfort when translated over the internet. Of course, we all know how 'lucky we are' to be in the age of the internet and to be able to see and talk to those we miss and man I couldn't have got through with out it, but boy its also a lot and no real comparison for real life!

I'm also finding some of the expectation of communication exhausting, that the friendship has become virtual and exists solely online can be empty and unrewarding, but that not speaking to them also feels empty and makes me worry I'll lose them. Everyone is available all the time, but such an expectation creates a weird paradox of both being overwhelmed and madly lonely.
Last week, I deleted most of my social media and god it was relieving to just exist in this space. Little feels tangible the moment and sometimes talking to people who aren't really there simply perpetuates this disassociation. But, I then felt sad, because no one had messaged me and the lockdown loneliness ensued. Yikes!
I found a random shitty tweet a few weeks ago along the lines of 'remember who isn't replying to you at the moment and what this shows about whether they care' and I've thought a lot about the expectation this puts on people. Replying can be exhausting and draining and god, sometimes I just want to leave it a few hours or a few days, and really, does it matter?
There's an immediacy and a constancy to lockdown friendship, in a bizarrely transient and distant way. It's both there all the time and not there at all. It makes you feel both full and empty, loved and lonely. And I simultaneously want to spend no time on my own, and all my time on my own. Does anyone else get this?

This madness has, however, also imbued some beautiful strength and longevity to relationships. It's made me reach out to old friends more and spend more hours talking to my g's who I don't get to see, corona or not. It's led to notes in the post, and cakes on doorsteps, and book suggestions and unexpected phone calls and messages saying they love you. It's made me think a lot about who matters the most to me, and what I value in friends.

Last week I had a bit of a meltdown that I didn't think I could see my friends again, that I'd forgotten how to socialise, wouldn't enjoy it, wouldn't know what to say. Obviously, this was irrational angst. It doesn't really matter what I say or do, just seeing them will be enough. But I definitely think there is an unspoken weirdness to friendship in quarantine. An empty intensity that leaves you both connected and lonely, and mostly just reinforces how much you long for something like normalcy.

yearning

This week has been a bit stifling. I am, for the first time, really craving independence and freedom. I've always loved home, love coming home, and in my year out I didn't really feel I wanted to escape, even though it was predominantly me and my parents and not much other entertainment. But now more than ever I am feeling the need to break free. I've tried changing my walks, running further and further, to new places, but I still feel confined. Its been 9 weeks, and now I am yearning to live on my own and just be in my own space and thoughts and time. Home is quiet and calm and really very nice, but I just want to be back on my own. I've looked into renting a room in Ox for a month over the summer. I don't even really care if any of my friends are in the city, I just want to be able to walk in the meadows and do my own food shop and ring home with updates, rather than having the same conversations everyday over breakfast. I know living alone in a pandemic absolutely would not be this idyllic, and I'd probably get stuck and lonely and want to come home, but in my head, for 4 blissful sunny weeks, it feels like the dream. So maybe that can happen, although what's the point of planning ahead any more?
I've thinking about the phrase the 'new normal' and how everyone says they want life to go 'back to normal' and how much I really fuckin' don't want normality because now this is the normal. Everything is so known in a totally unknown world and my surroundings feel worn out and overdone. You know what every day is going to bring, everywhere you are going to go, that you'll wake up the next day and nothing will have changed. There are no surprises, just the moment of bliss when you wake up before you think 'for fuck sake' and remember the crisis. I want change and excitement, not anything with a semblance of normality.

So I'm feeling a bit stifled and a bit trapped. My city is beautiful and the moments when I'm out running and its sunset are magical or when we drive to the country for a walk and I'm giddy at the change of scenery, but god I just want something new. I want to be away from my parents (lol) and living my own life and making my own decisions, and I just want something to be surprising. It sure is such a strange dichotomy, that in a world so wildly uncertain, where no sense of the future exists, can feel so fuckin normal and boring. 

Is anyone else feeling this !

the read and the to-read

Mondays have, blissfully, become my days off. Snatched time between panicked essay writing and opening up my reading list to start the next week of work. I do actually have a tutorial and a meeting today, but the rest of the day is for myself. The empty time spent at home is so different to that in Oxford, neither better nor worse. Here it is spent on my own, reading or watching Normal People or calling my friends or walking. At Oxford its almost always filled with the jobs I didn't have time to do (Tesco, washing, post-office) and then probably the pub. I'm trying to see this new slower pace as a chance to catch up with myself.
There's been a lot more time to read, and because my screen time on my laptop has been exponential, I've been trying to make myself do it more. I've read quite a lot of good stuff, and there are a few books I'm looking forward to buying or borrowing when I get a chance. I've also started writing in my books a lot, I think perhaps its fallout from my degree, but its nice to look back and see what I found pertinent at the time. On another note, this post from Eleanor is excellent to find non-Amazon places to buy your books in the time of Corona.

(Brideshead Revisited was sent to a friend to remind her of Oxford, the Go-Between made its way to Italy for my friends birthday, along with a list of things to 'look out for')

Read:
Atonement, Ian McEwan – okay, I didn't really like Atonement. I don't even remember it that well. To me, it felt like a diluted version of The Go-Between, with the same almost claustrophobic rising  pressure, culminating in a pivotal and destructive event that will change the whole course of the book. But, I didn't much like the characters and didn't really live up to the reviews ('smoulders with slow-burning menace', 'brilliantly explores the currents of guilt, shame and anger...utterly satisfyingly complete'). In terms of McEwan, I thought The Children's Act was far more powerful and the character development much more evocative.

Girl, Woman, Other, Bernadine Evaristo– oh, I loved this. I'd been wanting to read it ever since my tutor mentioned it and treated myself after my last essay. It follows 12 different (kind of intertwined) black women and their experience of racism and feminism in Britain. It seems to cover every kind of life experience you could imagine, and I love the way they are all subtly connected. I did find some of the characters more compelling than others, but they were all deep and powerful and wildly eye opening. Its one of those clever books that manages to tackle the heavy realities in a readable and page-turning way. Would highly recommend.

Late in the Day, Tessa Hadley - this was another post-essay treat. If I'm honest, I just liked the cover, but it turned out to be so good. Much of the plot happens in the first few pages, but its the intricacies of their relationship that are so powerful. The way she builds jealousy and contempt and complicated spiky connections between people feels so real. As with so much fiction at the moment, it doesn't use speech marks – as a concept, I am apathetic  but I think it kind of works in this? It means you focus on the characters and the sentiment of what is being said so much more than the words.
"...guileless and voluble, transparent in this moods, sometimes he sank deep into himself and needed to be alone for a few hours" 
"...for who would care about their passion in three hundred years?"
"...if I try to imagine eternity, I think it might feel like an English pub on a Saturday afternoon" 

The Veiled Woman, Anaïs Nin - this was sort of hilarious to read, and sort of amazingly transgressive. Its 4 different pieces of quasi-erotica (?). They were written in the '40s (and published in the '70s) which feels madly radical considering their content, and surely marks some kind of feminist victory. Some are weird and uncomfortable, but others are uncharacteristically liberal and free. I love it for the radicalism of a woman writing so openly about transgressive sex in the 1940s, and the language and description is beautiful. Maybe not one to recommend to your mum though lol.

The Beekeeper of Aleppo, Christy Lefteri - Oh, man I loved this! My mum picked it up for me in Sainsbury's (yeh, I was immediately sceptical), but not only is it sensationally written but its also so sobering. You realise how easy this pandemic is for so many of us. How we're safe at home with our books and our furlough schemes and how endlessly destructive life is for those in Syria and other war zones. I love how it alternates between past and present. Its wonderfully easy to read but the language is beautiful and would totally recommend it, especially right now.
"...when she was sad my world was dark. I didn't have a choice about this. She was more powerful than I. She cried like a child, laughed like bells ringing, and her smile was the most beautiful I've ever seen. She could argue for hours without ever pausing. Afra loved, she hated, and she inhaled the world like it was a rose. All this was why I loved her more than life"
"But what I loved most was her laugh. She laughed like we would never die"
"...it makes my sadness feel like something palpable, like a pulse, but it makes me afraid too, afraid of fate and chance, and hurt and harm, of the randomness of pain, how life can take everything from you all at once"
"If only we had known what life would bring. But if we had known, what would we have done? We would have been too afraid too live, too afraid to be free and to make plans"

To-read:
The Flatshare, Beth O'Leary – this is another Sainsbury's buy, but I wanted something trashy – apparently its similar to Normal People. If I'm honest, any kind of page-turning romance will do, but I just want something deliciously addictive and mindless.

Sweet Sorrow, David Nicholls – ever since I heard him talking about this on the High Low last summer, this has been on my list. It's a summer love story of two 16 year olds, an exploration of first love and heartbreak. It doesn't come out in paperback until the summer, which perhaps is a good thing because I'm not sure my brain has the space of a Nicholl's young love story whilst I'm stuck inside, but either way – I love his writing and him in general, so I know it'll be good.

Why I'm no longer talking to white people about race, Renni Eddo-Lodge – i've been wanting to read this for years, but after my tutor recommended it last week in our feminism tute I know I need to get my hands on it. I think it'll be the next socially distant exchange with my friend.

And now I am left with a few empty hours on my hands, and a chai latte to drink. I might knit, my jumper halted a few weeks back when I made a catastrophic mistake, and now I'm not sure I even like the colour any more. Or maybe I'll crochet, I'm trying to teach myself to do something more useful than just make squares, but it'll never compete with Eleanor's, that's for sure.

Let me know what you've been reading, and any recommendations you have!

musings #9

I love the colours of this weeks moodboard. Its funny, I never intentionally save things with a theme in mind, but there sure is a blue-y, spring like quality to these pictures. They feel vibrant and hopeful, which is a nice contrast to the mood of my brain. I especially adore the Van Gogh. It makes me think of summer days abroad and picnics. What i'd do to have one of those on the horizon. Of course, there are also numerous pictures of Oxford taking up my insta at the moment. I still get a warmth in my stomach when I turn the corner to see those layered buildings, it sure does make me happy. I'm dreaming of the day I can stroll along the streets and sit in a creaking library. 

Its been an anxious one, y'all. I've cried and read in almost equal amounts, my days have been spent either working or worrying, both of which feel unfulfilling. My health anxiety is horrifically overwhelming, which makes sense considering the global climate, but it is uncontrollable, especially without access to my usual coping mechanisms. So i've sort of had to just sit and be with the thoughts, which is horrible and scary. But hey, who's really having a ball in this pandemic?

Other than worrying, I've written a lot of letters, painted a lot of watercolour flowers, done the same walk at 11am for 7 days in a row, started Brideshead Revisited to vicariously experience Trinity term, spent hours on Zoom, a night doing a jigsaw because it was the only thing that could put my mind at rest, and not much else. Oh, I've taken a lot of pics on PhotoBooth. I guess to remember all the hours I spent at my desk procrastinating?

This week I really am hoping to get back into hobbies, and want to fill my grey time a little more productively so my brain can't spiral so catastrophically. I'm thinking journalling, painting, puzzling, running, reading. The things I know make me feel good but get neglected in the blur of this madness. 

In other equally mundane news, I've been spending a lot of time on Seol+Gold looking at rings. I really want a thick silver band, but am undecided on design and size - they have too many ! I'm also finding myself being lured into a consumeristic trap, which is difficult when a) most of my clothes are trapped in Oxford b) my student loan came through and c) I need some incentive to work. But I am resisting, and trying to raid my sisters wardrobe instead. I also did a (socially distant) book and puzzle swap with my friend the other day and, not only will it keep me sufficiently occupied for a few weeks, but it was also so refreshing to see a new face. Eek!

Drink up some of the sun and the colour of the pics, soon we'll be out there enjoying it. 

(pics are:

@lesparisiennesdumonde @spiralling_oxford @vangoghmuseum @marcello_velho @charlotte.ager @mansfieldoxford (<3) @seolgold @refinery29 @seolgold @maddierothart @making.me

(un)misspent youth

I sat down to do some work, took one look at the myriad of sources I need to read, felt overwhelmed and then gave up. Luckily, this has not been too much of a trend over the past few days. I do find it difficult to know how much work to be doing. Last term was so ridiculous that it became the norm to read and write an essay in 2 days, which obviously isn't good. But now anything else feels too much? And because I have less structural commitment, less need to cram it all in, less excuse to not do it, I feel quite lost and confused. Yuck!

this is as wild as its got people !

Let's be real, quarantine got to me this week. Don't you find it comes it fits and bursts? I had one afternoon of solid tears, and some realisations of interminability. I spent most evenings on zoom, feeling both comforted and distanced. I've ran a lot which has made my head feel free and perhaps offered some purpose, which has been comforting because everything else feels sort of pointless.

I've been thinking a lot about wasted youth, which is melodramatic and so irrational but apparently also quite a common and disconcerting feeling? I was on the phone to my friend yesterday and she said "Katie, I just can't help feeling like I'm loosing my best years", and boy did this resonate.
I suppose its the realisation that these weeks/months/years(?) of freedom and excitement and hedonism are being borne out at home. And that, instead sacking off work to go to the pub, or staying out until 4 or spending all my money on chai lattes, I'm at home knitting, reading and not much else. And I see myself being freed from quarantine and being too old to do all the things I would be cramming my days with now. I am especially overwhelmed with this sentiment when I put on nice clothes and draw on some eyeliner to feel some semblance of coherence, and then look in the mirror and remember no one will even see my orange trousers.
I look at my parents and think "you're life hasn't changed much, your life won't change much, but mine has all fallen away", which is selfish but also quasi-true, in a dramatic kind of way.
I'm scared that the rest of my degree will be spent like this, that I'll never again experience the chaos and the drama and the Saturday mornings gossiping. That it'll never be new or free again, that I'll be burdened by responsibility and adult seriousness.

Now trust me, I see the melodramatic hysteria of these words. That if a vaccine isn't found for 18 months, I'll still only be 22, and even then I can make up for lost time. And there are far bigger problems going on in the world, and really I'm being ridiculous. But I am still grieving the pain of loosing the thing I love most in the world, and am recognising that we all are undergoing some degree of loss - whether its for a person or a life or a favourite place. I feel like my wings have been clipped, after having been spread so wide and feeling so free.
And the interminability of it terrifies me sometimes, thinking of the next 8 weeks, then of summer, and then of the autumn. Not knowing when it'll end.

When I get into these spirals of decadent sentimentality (and trust me it happens a lot, when I think of all the fun I could be engaged in, or hell even just the alone Tesco trips and the nights in with friends) I firstly indulge in it, as I've done here.
I let myself feel really fuckin' angry that I'll be entering the world with a humanities degree and a *fucked* economy, mourn for the nights out and the dates I could have (but absolutely wouldn't have) gone on and disgustingly expensive pubs and the self-destructive intensity of life. I probably rant to a friend about how I feel my prime is being wasted and tbh what's the point because I'm going to be old and haggard when this is over, having never found love.
And then I think rationally. Rationally about the timescale, about historical comparison (every pandemic ever has ended), scientific advancement (every pandemic ever has ended, and most without a vaccine), welfare state (every pandemic ever has ended, and most without a vaccine, and without a free health service) my complete privilege, that at 22 I can still do all the things, and that they'll still be exciting.
I remind myself that everyone has lost something, and everyone is grieving for normality. And I also tell myself that this will end. That yes, the young are going to suffer enormously economically, but we'll can also (mostly) guarantee we'll get through it. So I think of the end. The people I'm gonna hug, and the places I'm gonna go, and how intensely I'm gonna soak up every drop of life.

I know this is ridiculously dramatic, but girl has got to feel! Please tell me someone else has these moments of narcissism?!