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Where have the words gone?

Tryphena Absent

16:07 / 23.10.02

It's happened, I've lost my ability to write anything even slightly coherent. Aaarrrggghhhh and the comma splicing - look at it - it's killing me.

Anyway I was reading KKC's sad and wrong tale of her inability to read at the moment in Books and tried to respond to it and realised that I had a million and one other things to say (well, whine) that really weren't about books so I had to come in here to say it instead. So this is my response without actually really talking about reading that much at all.

I can't read when I'm at university because of the guilt. If I do read ((for readings sake) it's got to be something I have either read before or something weirdly short or enthralling. Unfortunately the lack of reading has now led to a complete inability to write anything. Thus I have no introduction to my dissertation. How do you express the idea that the word fashion isn't always related to clothes in essay form anyway. See, the simplest idea, the worst writing style in the world. Combined you don't even scrape a third.

All I seem to do is watch TV and that's fine when 'Inside Versace' is on because somewhere in that show some famous person will say something marginally quotable. However I have been watching Buffy: The Vampire Slayer non-stop for three days now. Season four and five have been completed and now I am stuck with either recent crappy episodes or the ones that I've watched a hundred and nine times already.

Also I don't have Bravo so I can't watch repeats of Babylon 5 while I'm in Welshville and the channels we do have aren't so good anyway and season 7 of Buffy doesn't start til January. The last episode of Six Feet Under was so disappointing, I've run out of money again (£4 a day until November the 1st) and that means I can't go out to relieve the angst! Ohmygodwhycantistringasentencetogetherproperlyimgoingtohaveapanicattack

eee eee eee. Darrell Rivers never felt like this.

Murray Hamhandler

16:29 / 23.10.02

I know the feeling. My brains feel like a smoker's lung. I'm just now, halfway through my first semester back at school, starting to loosen up the tar of several relatively cognitively lazy years. I reacted strongly to the negative aspects of academia by trying to lose myself in shallow entertainments. And it worked. And my mind came out the worse for it. But the gears are slooooowly starting to crank again.

But then I have the whole ADD thing to contend with beyond that, so not quite out of the woods of hazy mind-wandery-ness, as it were...

19:55 / 23.10.02

all i did when i wrote my dissertation was paste in other peoples stuff and pass it off as my own. at least it'll get you started if you have any morals.

21:14 / 23.10.02

Hmm...

My intellectual capacity's gone too. Which is irksome. I'm meant to be catching up on coursework but I don't really seem to be doing much of that. I just get up at nine eveyr morning and can't get back to sleep. Then I spend the whole day yawning.

I can't seem to read anything either, too. Or listen to music, because nothing grabs me.

I entirely see the point that only boring people are bored. I don't care. I'm boring.

I think I'll eat some more raisins.

23:35 / 23.10.02

Oh dear, I know what you mean.

How do you start papers again? Let me think...

'Queen Elizabeth came to the throne in 1558 and reigned until she died in 1603...'

I HAVE BEEN HERE BEFORE

00:42 / 24.10.02

Computer games suck me in, which having a crap computer the last 2 months has helped a little in stopping. But today in the uni library I spent an hour on Barbelith instead of researching journals....until I fell asleep at the terminal for a good 10 minutes and woke up quite refreshed...

Lots of coffee helps me. I've felt pretty dead for September but in the last 2 days I feel like I'm waking up for the first time in a while. It helped that today I started researching something I was interested in for school. After 4 years of business school, that was a first. 'Hey! I'm researching European perceptions of the Ottomans in the 16th century and enjoying it! How cool!'

But on the other side, when it's an awful assignment, like trying to write just 3 measly pages on what the Tao-te Ching is about, I was killed with writer's block for a week. I beat the writer's block the other day (and the dreaded 'how the hell do I start this paper' block) by just typing and typing and trying to sort it out later.

This inability to form complete sentences is a killer. The internal thesauraus has gone extinct. Does writing this rambling post on Barbelith help? Hope so...

14:29 / 24.10.02

My intellectual capacity's gone too. Which is irksome. I'm meant to be catching up on coursework but I don't really seem to be doing much of that. I just get up at nine eveyr morning and can't get back to sleep. Then I spend the whole day yawning.

I can't seem to read anything either, too. Or listen to music, because nothing grabs me.

God, I *HATE* it when that happens .. that's, like, my least favourite state of mind ever.. er..

Thankfully at the moment I'm reading shitloads of stuff, from Lester Bangs to William Blake, and listening to shitloads of great music and watching shitloads of good films, and still having plenty of time left over to drink beer and smoke dope and even to do a respectable amount of work (tho today's been a bit of a write-off).

14:50 / 24.10.02

I'm in the abyss too. I can't write grammatically, can't develop any ideas beyond conception, have been watching TV, playing computer games and mainlining sugary treats and espresso. And I'm planning to start a novel in a week. Hah!

19:36 / 24.10.02

agrl bargle barbel burble

That is about the limit of my ability at the moment. I'd forgotten how long these things take me. 1,250 words down (including footnotes which is cheating really, innit?) - only 3,750 to go...

23:04 / 24.10.02

Footnotes are so NOT cheating.

23:06 / 24.10.02

I reckon they are if you spell out 'Cambridge University Press' in full every time you cite something...

01:24 / 25.10.02

Nah, just wack it all up to 13 pt and print it on that expensive, heavy paper you keep for job applications and love-letters. I swear they don't count the words -- they just weigh it in their hand as they pick it up to mark.

02:06 / 25.10.02

I've been mostly staring at Word (and now Barbelith) for 2 hours now trying to compare two author's views on the intentions of the Fathers of Confederation..... the worst part being that this is only a 4-page assignment and worth 10%, but I still can't get it organised and into paragraphs.