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?