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How’s it going, Barbelith?

  
  

Page: 1(2)3456

 
 
*
18:58 / 25.04.06
Good going, Phex. Now you've made it a dream of mine to teach at Reed.
 
 
sibyline, beating Qalyn to a Q
18:59 / 25.04.06
Reed would have been my college of choice had I not been forced by the parental units. I've liked every single Reedie I've met.
 
 
Sekhmet
19:30 / 25.04.06
(I love this thread. I love this sort of reminder that there are actual people on the other side of those odd names on the screen, people with hands, who are typing on real keyboards, possibly with wisps of hair drooping down into their eyes that they're brushing away absentmindedly. People who breathe and stuff.)

I'm doing all right, I guess. In the aftermath of the busy season at work and the end of a prolonged drought, I'm pretty content to just watch it rain, though I could do without all the hail and things blowing over.

One of my cats has also been missing for several days, and I'm worried about her. This is offset by some excitement because we're adopting a puppy this weekend. (She wouldn't have liked a puppy anyway, but damn it, I wish she would show back up just so I know she's okay.)

I'm in the middle of reading a good book, and my boss is out of the country, so I'm feeling fairly complacent, but there's an odd vein of restlessness running underneath. Played with the I Ching for the first time today, and got some very weird and uncanny results that feed into my feeling that a shift in perspective is imminent.


Sibyline, you have remarkably elegant hands.
 
 
gingerbop
19:51 / 25.04.06
We finished our ensemble circus show for college last week. It went great, other than having such an airy-fairy director who didn't really have an opinion about anything. A couple days before we performed, I came to literally within an inch of death. I stand with my toes on my partner's shoulders and my heels in his hands, and he throws me into a somersault. Although we've done it hundreds of times, just once, I panicked and stopped rotating half way round, and fell about 10-12 feet upside down. He caught me around the waist when my head was an inch off the floor. Fucking hell- not breaking your neck is good.

But at the same time as enjoying doing the show, I'm having a small panic about whether this is actually the career I want. I get scared all the time, I'm not particuarly suited to the off-stage part of the job, I'm in love with my partner who is in a long-term relationship, which isn't easy to say the least, and I don't know if I'll ever be able to make the whole thing work financially. But at the same time, I don't know what else I'd do.

My flatmate is getting married this summer. I hate his fiance. She is the most terrible woman. She's an "I'm CRAZY, me!" type. And second-worst of all, she thinks I like her. Worst of all, she asked me to be her bridesmaid. She wants me to tumble down the isle in a gold dress. She's a fucking crackpot. She's at our house all the time, watching kid's TV all day (it's roughly her intellectual level) and she is one of the most horrendous people I've ever met. But when someone asks you to be their bridesmaid... it's not the time to tell them you can't stand them. You've got to sound thoroughly excited. If I think of it as being my flatmate's bridesmaid, it's not so bad. Just quite bad.
 
 
alas
20:05 / 25.04.06
I'm stepping down as president for the summer, but hoping to run again for fall, Gods know why.

The whole "Berkeley student" ruse was brilliant on your part, but the jig is obviously up, "id." While I think we'd all agree that your stepping down is a good idea--the last 6 years suggest to me that maybe the executive branch really isn't your metier--there are term limits, so you can't run again, and, well, the next election isn't until '08 anyway. (More broadly, how is it that you're so wise, empathetic, and reasonable here, but you led us into that whole Iraq debacle?)

Still, it's cool that you let Barbelith know first.
 
 
*
20:11 / 25.04.06
Cute. But, alas, if I were POTUS, I'd refer to myself as President, not president. I am president of some Berkeley queers, and only about 36 or so of those.
 
 
*
20:12 / 25.04.06
(also, tyvm for the compliments.)
 
 
astrojax69
20:19 / 25.04.06
good question, seth. btw what zz top tune is hunting lodge cutting?

me? still battling thru issues from the end of a near ten year relationship late last year, and trying to establish something of a future one with a new demanding lover, who was a friend as far back as thirteen years, when we nearly got together, so this is a funny sort of continuation... but lots of issues of self-worth, self-assessment and simply learning new things, coping with a moderate depression and medication therefore, a new / revised social set, gives me enough pause for thought...

that, and the novel i'm about half way done on; well, done for a first draft. gone take a lot of work, methinks, to polish the rough, but i am pleased enough except for wanting to be inspired to write when i have the space and time - admittedly, more of both now outside the old relationship.

and loving autumn! just back from a morning walk with a borrowed rotty i love in the crisp autumnal chill of a pristine canberra dawn, among the parrots back in the valley after summer in the surrounding hills, the colours in the trees glowing in the new light and i feel invigorated. damn having to get ready for work in a minute... love to stay here all day and write (& with said demanding lover, who is sick in bed with a worsening cold. must go play nurse...)

i guess life is all right; issues give it character, no? spice of life, challenges..? you have a great day, babelith!
 
 
Spaniel
20:23 / 25.04.06
Ginger, that bridesmaid business is really messed up. What an absurd situation - like something out of a sitcom.
 
 
Mourne Kransky
20:26 / 25.04.06
You must put laxatives in her coffee on the morning of the wedding, Gingerbop, once she's already in the frock.
 
 
Benny the Ball
20:28 / 25.04.06
yeah, acid and laxatives.
 
 
Spyder Todd 2008
20:39 / 25.04.06
My day just got better. Do you wish to know why, Barbelith?

Because I finally hit 1000 posts, right here.

And it’s about bloody time.
 
 
Kit-Cat Club
21:04 / 25.04.06
Seth - all sounds like good stuff, I'm glad.

I'm simultaneously doing really well and feeling really panicked - anyone who knows me IRL will be prepared for what follows...

Everything is going really well for me at the moment - my thesis seems to be progressing as it should and my supervisors are pleased with me; my Dutch reading is improving; I'm picking up lots of freelance work, which not only brings in extra money but also helps improve my skills and is (sometimes) stimulating in its own right; I keep meeting good and interesting (and interested and helpful) people. Even my part-time day job isn't toooo bad.

The problem is there's just so much of this good stuff that I can't get it all done, let alone anything else! I need to produce a chapter for confirmation of status by the end of May, and I'm already running late with at least four things (bibliography, research project, book review, data entry project - the worst of the whole freelance portfolio); not to mention the other stuff that's coming up. I'm worried that I'll muck something up and make one or more of my employers/supervisors think badly of me, which I would hate.

I do relax and I enjoy relaxing and I love seeing my friends and spending time with my partner, but the effect of relaxing is that everything gets even more concertinaed up and I never finish anything properly.

And I have a host of ideas of things I want to do on the side, one of which should come to pass quite shortly, but there are so many things - I still haven't read Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, I have ideas for linocuts, textile work, sketching plans, learning to bake properly, going running, painting the flat, blah blah... and I really want a break. About a month, in the country, with a lot of books.

Birdwatching yes definitely!
 
 
Seth
21:07 / 25.04.06
Played with the I Ching for the first time today, and got some very weird and uncanny results that feed into my feeling that a shift in perspective is imminent.

I'd be very interested to read more about this. That goes for you too, Evil.

We're covering Waiting for the Bus. It starts out exactly the same as the original for the first four bars, but when it kicks in properly we transpose the twelve bar into 5/4, coming back to 4/4 for the resolve. I must add that the bassline here makes absolutely no sense with the rest of the music, it just farts along to its own twisted logic, in the same time signature but hitting all the wrong accents. On the third repeat of the twelve bar we strike out into some Liars still tribal drumming before building via full on trance rock back into the main riff (again, unresolved) in a different key, kinda sounding a bit Mugstar.

It is fabulous but deeply sick and wrong. Now we just have to rehearse it properly and record it.
 
 
Liger Null
22:22 / 25.04.06
Well I recently got a simultaneous promotion/transfer at work, which means that I've got a 75¢/hr raise. Unfourtunately, the new position is more than 75¢ worth of responsibility and headache. Hopefully I will get the hang of it all within a couple of months or so.

Add to that the fact that I'm in the middle of a bunch of bullshit family drama-between relatives that aren't even living in the same vicinity as either myself or each other. It all just makes me want to crawl into bed and hibernate for about a year.

The good news is I got myself an I-Pod Shuffle for my birthday! WOOT!
 
 
astrojax69
22:58 / 25.04.06
so no breaking into a surreal 'jesus just left chicago' at the back of the bus, then seth? prob'ly me favourite (double) track from the bearded ones... love to hear the result, g'luck!! what's ya timeframe (and great idea for a disc, i must say... thumbs up to the lodge)
 
 
Disco is My Class War
02:58 / 26.04.06
I'm doing good, Seth, thanks for asking. This is nice, I like knowing what people are up to. Yesterday I went to the council depot and filled the boot of my tiny car with free eucalyptus mulch. I like living in a place where you can get free mulch. We're going to plant lots of shrubs and trees in our front yard, and some crazy kinds of grass, because the front yard is really bare since the landlord started chopping down the older trees. (Our landlord is a pain in the butt. He always manages to do maintenance stuff on the day before we arranged for him to come, and he comes into the house sometimes when we're not there. Grrr.) But yeah, gardening. At the moment we have this massive tree of kale sitting in a bucket in the kitchen. It's about 2 feet tall. Amazing. I made collards with it the other day. Green food. Yum.

I wish I felt more positive about the 'job' part of my life. Everything is going really well on the surface: research progressing well, fieldwork in Thailand coming up, lots of participants making themselves available, my first ever lecture coming up, an amazing supervisor who throws me paid work and every conference or publication opportunity I could want. I'm not writing enough thesis, though. I spend a lot of my PhD time filling in forms and meeting administrative deadlines. I'm having a protracted panic about the ethics of my ethnographic work, brought on by a late karmic return from something I wrote a couple of years ago, which is now being published, and I've just found out from the people it's about that the essay has factual errors. Basically, though, these people scare me (on a personal, and an intellectual level) and this is why I wrote about them. I put myself in these scary positions where I get critical of people -- hopefully in a constructive way -- and then feel guilty about being critical. I don't feel adequate to accounting for people's lives in a complex enough way. All of this makes me want to run away and forget the work. But it's important work, and I have to stare this panic down.

Relationship-wise, things have been really hard lately, and I've been an asshole, and she's been feeling crap, but the sun is poking its head out. I'm just starting to do exercise again after surgery. Exercise makes me feel a lot better. Yoga makes me feel a lot better. The sun's coming out. Surgery really fucked with my ability to do the things that keep me sane and happy, so it's nice to get back to that routine.
 
 
Baz Auckland
03:25 / 26.04.06
This thread rocks!

Life is good, and things here are odd as hell and still fun. I've been teaching English in a middle school in Busan, South Korea now for 2 months now.... and while the job is tiring and frustrating, I do have about 4 long weekends coming up, and a lot of holidays to follow, and my wife and I are making enough money that we're thinking of buying an apartment in Warsaw after another year here. Woo!
 
 
Flegetanis
19:56 / 26.04.06
I'm totally new to Barbelith... I'm looking for my "voice" here, as it were.

Right now, I'm waiting for the final, final word from Weiser Books, telling me that I've got a deal to translate a 13th century Qabalistic text. Their working title is "The Sefer Yetzirah Companion" (the text is a commentary on S.Y.), and all my conversations & emails with them in the past few days have been very positive & upbeat.

The odd thing is that I'm approaching it from BOTH a traditionalist Judaic point of view, AND an Hermetic, Magickal perspective. One thing that makes it easier on me right now is that they want the translation to be "orthodox"... Which is no problem for me -- I'm actually more comfortable with that.

The next question is whether anyone's interested in the magical applications. It involves a "restoration" of the paths to the traditional Hebrew letter attributions, which is very different from the system promulgated by the Golden Dawn & it's derivatives.

A certain friend in the magical community have strongly sugested a rewriting of the Golden Dawn rituals to conform to the original attributions. I'm just not really familiar with thos rituals in actual performance, having never bothered to get involved with any group working them due to the fact that I've always used the traditional path system (one of the benefits of having the Qabalah as an "ethnic trad" ;-).

However, amidst all the good signs, I'm anxious to know that there'll be a "happy ending"....
 
 
*
20:13 / 26.04.06
That's really exciting, Flegetanis. I'm excited about your work, and I'd love to discuss it more with you in the Temple.

Outside of your intellectual/magical pursuits, how's life treating you? I've viewed this thread as a space to kind of come out of the academic clouds a bit, and it's been really good for me to do that, so I'd like to welcome you to join me down here if you want.

The prospect of having your work well-received must feel pretty good. I often get nervous myself when faced with the prospect of sharing my work with others, because it's so much a part of me that I'm attached to how it might be judged. Sounds similar to what you're going through. But having a book published is also pretty nice for bringing in beer money (although I wouldn't count on it for paying rent) and that can't hurt your mood. Does all that sound right?
 
 
Seth
20:20 / 26.04.06
so no breaking into a surreal 'jesus just left chicago' at the back of the bus, then seth? prob'ly me favourite (double) track from the bearded ones...

We thought about it, but the tune seemed to reach a nice natural conclusion. But then there's always time...

what's ya timeframe (and great idea for a disc, i must say... thumbs up to the lodge)

I'm not sure on this. It needs to be recorded by the end of Sunday, and I'm not sure when it'll be out.

It was Dan's idea. If it had been up to me we'd be doing a Van Halen tribute.
 
 
Flegetanis
20:53 / 26.04.06
Yeah; I'm not looking to pay the rent with this; I've got a job for health benefits, etc.!

Meanwhile, personally, I've been in a abstract situation relationship-wise. I met someone at a conference in Detroit a few months ago, and it looked like we had very good chemistry (magical & sexual), but she seems to have mellowed (perhaps even to have chickened) out. Which kinda sucks, as I ended a relationship I was in back here in anticipation of her coming to visit for the Vernal Equinox... But she misse her plane, and then this, then that.... Hmmmm.

The thing is that I just moved to St. Louis from New York six months ago, and have been on my own entirely too much recently. I'm having some success in starting a small group of my own for magical work (we're doing a Beltane circle on Sunday) as well as helping to form a new OTO body in the area. Apart from those meetings, thank to the lack of a river's license, I don't get out very much to socialize....
 
 
Tryphena Absent
20:54 / 26.04.06
Everyone sounds as if they're really working on things! We're such a group of serious people, it astounds me sometimes, pleasantly astounds me though...

My life is just ticking along really. I've been working in the commercial section of a political magazine since September and the people who I sit around are really pleasant and funny. Everyone has a sense of humour and they allow you space when you work, which is important to me so I'm not depressed everyday and that's a bonus in office work. I feel like I've made some friends, which is nice because when I was short term temping I never really made friends, just shifted gears.

May is going to be a crazy month, I'm going to a wedding in a cathedral, my friend is holding a party outside London and I really have to go to it so that I can catch up with some people I rarely see but do care about. There are other things piling up. On Saturday I'm getting my hair cut for the first time in over two years, which is going to be marvellous.

Last week I hired a car and drove to St Ives. It was worth it just to walk around the Barbara Hepworth sculpture garden, which is absolutely beautiful, very peaceful and hurts just a little bit because you feel her absence. I also have hands that are the same size and shape as hers- if only I had half the talent! Cream tea is also a good reason to go to St Ives. On the way I stopped off in Wells, looked around the cathedral, which is quite progressive in some ways and has a really charitable history. Then hopped over to Glastonbury Tor because I wanted to see the view again. I came back and felt very relaxed when I went back to work.

I feel a little less grounded than usual but a bit healthier and more cheerful, a very seasonal feeling really and common to springtime. Minor hayfever is settling in but it's better than it was at this time last year. I'm really looking forward to summer.

Everything is moving in routine ways. My creativity is low in an epic way but I'm not too distressed about it. I'm trying to be careful about the way I actually live and it takes a lot of energy to derail behaviour and set it on another path. Just buying things becomes something to really focus attention on and I'm trying to do that all the time. It's mostly working and I feel like I can be probably 50% proud of the way I'm living at the moment.

I feel like I'm lacking some impulsiveness that would be best regained but it's difficult. My life has moved so quickly in the last three or four years that I sometimes have to step back and really analyse the difference between what I expected and what has emerged. I didn't really have any expectations, I just didn't predict the way it's gone, the things that I've let go, the realisations I've come to, what I've gained.

But yeah, I'm drifting a bit but in a positive way. Thanks for asking!
 
 
Flegetanis
21:02 / 26.04.06
MEanwhile, I am slowly making my way through the Temple threads.
 
 
julius has no imagination
21:06 / 26.04.06
Well, I've just come back to Exeter (Uni) from Luxembourg (parents' home) after being there for the Easter vacation.

Now this should be nothing more than the normal back-and-forth between term-time and Uni vacations. I'm in the third year of my degree (out of four) and have been doing it for a while, so it's nothing new... but somehow it seemed more, I don't know, emotionally charged than that. So I'm trying to work out what that means. All part of the process of 'growing up' (oh Goddess) I suppose. My housemates can't be having that problem - they both stayed here all through the vacation (except maybe the actual Easter weekend).

It should be noted that the trip Exeter-Luxembourg or vice versa takes about 12 hours. So I can't just go back for a weekend as many students do on occasion.

Still, I don't mean to say it's bad to be here again. I'm currently slightly lacking motivation regarding the degree, but it's definitely good to have the freedom of being away from mum & dad again.

So, eh, thanks for asking. I can't say I'm completely happy right now, but the outlook could be far worse.
 
 
iamus
21:48 / 26.04.06
Well Barbelith, I'm not doing so bad really. Couple of little dunts this week but on the whole, everything's peachy.

Well I've been conducting a big clearout/tidying of my room because, when you have asthma, it's a bad idea for the dustiest place you find yourself in to also be the one you sleep in.

So I'm moving my big fuck-off sub-woofer out of the way (so I can pull out the filing cabinet behind it), grasping the bastard with both hands because it's big and heavy, when my Double Bass across the room starts to tip over. Had to watch helplessly as my £800 pride and joy fell to the floor face first with a sickening crack. Scooped it up with both hands in order to check the damage and it almost slipped and fell again. Y'know, it's the first time in a long time that I've hurled expletives at the absolute top of my voice. Had to take myself for a wee breathe and a sit down.

There's now a prominent splinter in the thing, thankfully only in a relatively small area, but it's there and it's not going away any time soon. Fuck.
Still, could be worse. If the Bass had landed on its back then it would've been totally shagged to pieces. It still sounds ok, and if Willie Nelson can play a guitar that looks like driftwood and sellotape but makes a noise like a twangy angel then I'm hoping my Bass'll remain at least passable. I have to chase up the insurance to find out if it's properly covered. You never know, the situation might even work out in my favour.


Other than that, my local Chinese tea shop (apparently the only dedicated one in Britain) is coming under new management. The woman who runs it, my pusher, is going to Malaysia for a year because her husband's got a contract there. In the past year I've spent more money than I care to mention in that shop. I've gone from nothing to building up a whole tea set, learning the ceremony, and becoming incredibly, incredibly anal about the whole thing (along with another poster on this board, who introduced me to the place). Ku Ding, Long Jing, Ti Guan Yin, Pu-Ehr (all with the appropriate teapots and brewing methods of course).

MMMmmmmmmm!

She's sold the buisness to a Chinese couple who apparently know little about tea, and wish to introduce fucking coffee. I'm not a happy bunny. Still, she'll be back in a year or so with the intention of opening up a new shop and she's been selling me tea, YiXing teapots and other assorted accessories for special knockdown prices, so it's all good I suppose.
 
 
Axolotl
22:24 / 26.04.06
Shit Iamus, that's bad (both the tea-shop and the bass), still I think you're right thinking of Willy Nelson. *plaintive sigh*
Me, well, work sucks. I can't believe my 18 years of education only qualifies me for the high office of phone-monkey, but yet I can't seem to get any thing better despite all my efforts. However this is the first job I've had where management don't seem to be actively trying to crush the worker's under their heel: they bought everyone easter eggs last week.
Other than that, I guess I'm doing OK. I'm finding it hard to fit in all the stuff I want to do in to the time I have, but that's probably due to my insistence on spending at least an hour a day "decompressing" in front of the telly with a spliff rather than actually being time-poor.
 
 
The Return Of Rothkoid
04:22 / 27.04.06
Seth rules, as I have previously contended.

I'm doing pretty well, actually. Work is incredibly busy (so busy that obviously, I've loads of time to post on Barbelith) but it's enjoyable. I'm sheepdogging some client publishing as well as the mag I edit, and I recently got to get dressed up and hand out awards that we sponsor to uni students, so I feel a bit like a Respectable Member Of Society, which is a bit of a shift! So work's good.

I'm not as far on with my writing as I'd like to be, but that's because of a couple of things. The place I used to do most of my writing at has turned out to be - well, not what I'd expected. Thankfully, I own all the copyright to the stuff I've written - they only have a limited license - so I haven't just flushed it down the critical crapper. There's plans afoot for a new site up and running, though, which I'm pretty excited about - will let you know more later when it's a bit more firm. But it's exciting, even if it's a bit of a drain on my time spent on my "proper" writing: I'd like to think that the novel I've been broadly sketching will come to fruition, and I'll be known for that, rather than some record reviews or my mag work.

(I'm still planning on buying the Hunting Lodge disc, and Sax's novel, too - don't despair, dudes... it'll happen!)

I'm still planning on getting Oxbow to tour Australia, and am pretty sure that I can pull it together, with some connections I've made down here. Suffice to say, though, that this is, increasingly, becoming less of a pipedream than it's been when I first suggested the idea to the band, and more of an Experiment In Awesomeness. Which is rockin'.

I recently got married, and it's pretty awesome, too. The same, but different, if that makes sense. I turned 30, got married, and played my first gig in front of a bunch of people at the Annandale here in Sydney, so I got three big things done in under a month! Pretty impressive, in terms of confidence-boosting, and it's pretty much galvanised me into musical action, also: I'm currently working with another couple of people on a new musical project, which seems really positive.

I dunno, it's strange - things seem to be falling into place a bit more, and I'm learning lots. Had an actual ghostly-esque encounter a couple of weeks ago, with a big dark energy ball thing at an old prison, and have since been getting more and more into my tarot, as well as the musical/writing stuff. Is it all connected? I dunno, but I feel pretty energised (work notwithstanding) at present, so I'm just going with it.

At the end of the day, I'm content with me. Which is something that I used to never be. It's a nice place to be. And there's cats there, purring away.



So how you doin'?
 
 
William Sack
10:38 / 27.04.06
Pretty decent, thanks for asking Seth and Rothkoid.

Had a week down in Devon staying at my parents' farm. Sons loved it - baby lambs and Tamworth piglets, and babysitters on demand.

Came back and found myself actually enjoying the job that I have been vaguely dissatisfied with for a few years. Also, I have played my first game of decent standard club cricket for over a decade. I used to be quite good, and it has pleased me no end to find that, despite being grossly unfit and out of practice, I have actually been selected for the 1st team of a really rather good club. Will probably drop down to the 2nd team when the serious league cricket starts, but satisfied nonetheless.
 
 
Shrug
10:50 / 27.04.06
That sounds absolutely lovely, Sack. Devon is one of my favourite places, especially around farmland, so picturesque.
 
 
Spaniel
11:05 / 27.04.06
This is one of the best threads evah. Long may it run and run.
 
 
Ganesh
11:22 / 27.04.06
Yes, this is a nice idea for a thread. Cheers, Seth.

Today, I'm feeling a bit crap, having been developing Dying Swan 'Flu over the past couple of days (I knew I should've insisted on the big Bewick's wearing a condom) and having taken my first sickie in my new(ish) job, Job B. The fact that I feel so bad about throwing a sickie is, to me, an indicator that I'm much more personally invested in (and enjoying) this job - which, followers of my sporadic bouts of career ambivalence over the years will realise, is a Good Thing. Without getting too wanky about work/life balance and all that Sunday supplement jizz, I think I'm finally reaching a point where work doesn't make me feel perpetually panicky or guilty or fraudulent or that I'm fighting to keep up. It's there and it's something I can enjoy and make my own, but it's not intruding into the rest of my time which, as a reluctant doctor in the first place, I see as important. And it pays enough to keep me in fetish gear.

There's a similar feeling with our current flat, too. After an extended period (what, five years?) of renting - which, after previously having been homeowners in Edinburgh, felt uncomfortably transient - we bought this place, last July. Despite our having done very little to the flat (other than fill it with our usual don't-even-bother-to-try-minimalism clutter), it's still giving us a lot of pleasure, especially walking around it on sunny weekend mornings. In particular, the tiny conservatory and roof terrace (I really need some new pics for that thread) are a delight, now the weather's turning warm enough to spend time out there of an evening.

Actually, the gardening thing's really surprised me. I have a host of books with titles like Great Small Gardens, Containers Through The Year and Tits Out, Titschmarsch (that last one may have been invented), and I actually find myself furtively buying Gardener's World magazine. I spent much of Good Friday potting up geranium seedlings and dead-heading winter pansies. I've impulse-bought garden furniture. We're even going to the Chelsea Flower Show this year, which seems ridiculously grown-up. Pfff.

Relationshippy stuff going well too: although I take the piss out of Xoc's hobbity nature, neither of us likes sudden scary change; we both tend to thrive in periods of financial/accommodation stability. A holiday somewhere warm would be nice but isn't pressing. Looking forward, at the moment, to a summer of wine on the terrace, Morrissey (seeing him twice in the next month or so!) and mutual tutting about our gently expanding waistlines (but not doing anything very much about it). I think I'm laying the groundwork for middle-age.

So... generally chilled in a sunny, pottering-about kind of way.
 
 
Cat Chant
09:00 / 28.04.06
It's been a big year. Well, it's been a big few years (hooked up with my True Person three-and-a-half years ago, which necessitated a lot of trips to Australia plus moving someone into my previously celibate, still-curmudgeonly life), but this year has been particularly big. And this is a particularly nice bit just now, so particular thanks for asking, Seth. Lots of upheavals recently, which are sort of resolving just this week, coincidentally.

Turning point in my new job:

Earlier this week I had to be in a scary debate (two minutes in the other side called us 'reprehensible and gruesome' - it went on for three hours), which was scary also because I was way the most junior person speaking and I'm still sort of new, so I didn't know how my team was going to react to me. But enough people came up and said enough genuinely nice things to me afterwards that I think it really went well, plus my Head of Department gave me a copy of his book and a guy from the English department sent me a book chapter he'd written (this is how academics express affection). So that's the first real experience of being competent and bathed in approval that I've had since I got here in September. Yayy!

Big turning point in my life:

Had been thinking about stuff with my sister (who has the sort of prominence in my family drama that usually only parents have) for a year or so, then we had a huge fight at Christmas so I thought about it some more, with the help of a counsellor. Not with the help of a counsellor, I devised a ritual to sort some stuff out and performed it on Easter Day (her birthday), and it's worked head-spinningly, fizzingly, brilliantly well. (So far, anyway.) A couple of particularly troublesome and intractable headtapes seem to have been wiped clean, I've had ridiculous amounts of energy, and, oh, I hoped this thread would prompt me to put it into proper words, but I just stammer before the experience. And smile a lot.

Also, I've pretty much finished teaching so I can just coast down into the long summer and get all the stuff done I've been putting off: admin, research, writing, watching movies. I might even get back to the Harry Potter story I've been stalled on for two years now: I've figured some things out about it that might help me make some progress (like that Harry is deliberately using his relationship with Hermione to mask his relationship with Snape, that dreadful boy, which makes the plot make a lot more sense...)

I hope this thread keeps going, I've loved reading everyone's responses. Now I'm off to audit a two-hour Latin class on mutilation in Neronian epic, followed by huge delicious lunch with Tangent, walking up and down looking at the shops, and probably watching Eban and Charley which arrived from Amazon today (thanks for the heads-up, grant)...

Life is good.
 
 
Squirmelia
10:29 / 28.04.06
In Spring, everything seems that little bit less real. I started reading Amaryllis, Night and Day, by Russell Hoban, while standing at the bus-stop yesterday. In the book, a girl dreams she is at a bus-stop, waiting for buses that go to Finsey-Obay, so I've been looking out for those and signs of balsam.

Yesterday evening, I found a large beatle on my shoulder, making a rustling noise.

Apart from reading and appreciating spring, I've been quite busy in the past few weeks and not in Southampton much at all.

The past few weeks:
I've met cross-eyed statues in London, photographed gorgeous ramshackle huts in the shingle at Dungeness, searched for lost churches buried underneath the sand in Cornwall, wandered into caves with amazing colours, walked across dunes so large they looked like a desert, eaten lavender flavoured ice-cream, seen models of space-age houses at the Modernism exhibition at the V&A, seen text projected by Jenny Holzer scroll across buildings, won a magnifying glass, been to Polish, Japanese, Thai and Italian restaurants, seen people in dustbins in Endgame by Beckett, tried walking on stilts, cried near the end of Germinal by Zola, eaten purple sprouting broccoli and drunk almond-flavoured vodka and turkish delight shots, joined a new writing group, seen tiny new fan-shaped leaves sprouting on the ginko biloba trees, etc, etc.

I haven't updated my LiveJournal recently though. I don't know where to start.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
10:34 / 28.04.06
An online quiz, possibly? Those usually go quite well.
 
  

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