With a humming in our ears, we play endlessly.

It's Sunday.
Sundays are generally thought more depressing than other days. Possibly because it's the end of another week, and you look back on what you did, and are underwhelmed. Possibly because most of your friends are unavailable, either asleep because they've been out partying on Saturday night, or they're somewhere doing things with their family or their boy- and girlfriends. You are surrounded by a vacuum of activity, and you don't have anybody to drink tea and light the candle on the Adventkranz with.* You don't even have an Adventkranz. Tomorrow is Monday and you don't quite feel up to it. If Sunday's weren't so awful you'd like another one between today and tomorrow. But in fact that would solve the problem, because it would turn today into a Saturday, and that would be fantastic.

To be honest, I don't feel like that now, and I haven't felt that way for a long time. Recently, I've found Saturdays more distressing that Sundays.
But then again, most of my distress seems to happen in a faraway country which I observe with the attentive but detached eye of a scientist.
Is this good?

I've been listening to this:
And I want to own it.

*HAHAHA ambiguity.

How can someone so young sing words so sad?

Today, on my way to university, I saw a woman with a knitted hat resembling a tomato. Now, I'm sure, some people can pull that sort of thing off, but it was infuriating on her. The rest of her outfit was really normal and dignified, and the tomato hat was a sort of what-the-fuck-element, in the negative sense.

Examination about Runes yesterday: A!
I'm finally getting some things done, it feels so fabulous.

I had actually planned to go to the shopping centre (mostly IKEA) today, to enrich my life with purchasable beauty, but Julia, who wanted to come with me, didn't have time.

Nevertheless I ended up having a sort of fabulous Thursday. So far I've only done things that felt worthwhile and that is ALWAYS a good thing.
Later today I will learn whether Kevin got the topshop dress in my size or whether I'll have to go on a diet. Meanwhile I'll either finish Madame Bovary or watch Nightwatching by Peter Greenaway, which is a film about this painting:



And I'm really curious about the story the film will make up for this painting, because it mentiones that title, which is completely misleading and not original. The painting actually didn't have anything to do with night. It was set in broad daylight (the members of this compagnie stepping out into the rays out of the shadow of some architecture). Over time the veneer darkened so much that it now looks like it is indeed a "nightwatch". (Isn't that exciting?)


Unrelatedly: The Smiths! !!!

Well, God, it's like this:

1. All of its short life it gives of itself ... giving and giving, and slowly diminishing.

2.

God, let me tell you one thing: this Topshop Beauty must be mine. It must never be hers!

3. I have one request, concerning my own death. Let it not be in winter, and let it come unexpectedly.

Love or a stomach disorder?

"Snow" by Emmy the Great


I created a language today
To describe how bored I am
It's been zega and dogging
For mena, wish, shan

As the pleasure grows I understand
I won't see the ground again
I thought that respite was at hand
Winter chokes the daffodils

I ate the neighbour's cat last night
But I had to, darling
If I leave this room, my bones will shatter
Do you want to see me starving?

I made a macaroni necklace
I played with my toolbox
I found a firework in the basement
I set it off.

If you had a heart, you'd call me
And let me know the time
As I would try and sleep if only
I knew that night was nigh.

Will you come and read to me soon?
I can't see a thing
Sometimes a breeze will shift the blinds
Wretched light creeps in

But mostly I am alone with the shadows
And I think my great dead aunt as well
I've been talking to a pencil
I think I love him, please don't tell him.

I created a language today
But it's not for you to know
I used it to write you
This letter, which I buried in the snow

And when you find it all
The daffodils will be free
Say hello to them for me
As I won't see the ground again

Fuzzy around the edges.

There, there is no one.





Badhead always was the one that made me cry.

The Snow

Well, you should have said something.

Friends. The people you pay in cake to disappoint you.

I don't actually feel this.
I am just sad. And absolutely nobody is here.

Happy face is allowed.

Whilst Coldplay are retiring ...




Something stirs in my midriff, seeing that. Is my soul, perhaps, not quite dead yet?

Catch fire, toaster!

"satisfired", the state of being happy and content even though your work situation has just been terminated without your consent




Wa-fucking-hey! About time you smelled the stew. This is not an idiom but it should be.

The Smiths!

Oh, how could I forget?!





I decree today that life is simply taking and not giving
England is mine and it owes me a living
Ask me why and I'll spit in your eye
Ask me why and I'll spit in your eye
But we cannot cling to the old dreams any more
No we cannot clings to those dreams
Does the body rule the mind
or does the mind rule the body
I don't know
Under the iron bridge we kissed
And although I ended up with sore lips
It just wasn't like the old days any more
No it wasn't like those days
Am I still ill?
Am I still ill?
Does the body rule the mind
or does the mind rule the body?
I don't know.
Ask me why and I'll die
Ask me why and I'll die
And if you must go to work tomorrow
Well if I were you I wouldn't bother
There are brighter sides to life
And I should know because I've seen them
But not often
Under the iron bridge we kissed
And although I ended up with sore lips
It just wasn't like the old days any more
No it wasn't like those days
Am I still ill?
Am I still ill?

Largely unrelated.

I am most anxious to enlist everyone who can speak or write to join in checking this mad, wicked folly of "Women's Rights," with all its attendant horrors... Were women to "unsex" themselves by claiming equality with men, they would become the most hateful, heathen, and disgusting of beings and would surely perish without male protection.
Queen Victoria, 1870

Haha!

Geeks bearing gifts ...

I got a B on my Muses exam. That's just about acceptable, I'd say.

I don't have many words, but I have things to look at.

Carl Spitzweg, The poor poet

(The resemblance to the way I've nested myself into my bed with my scripts and books in order to study for the exam on Monday is uncanny. I wish I had a green stove and I am tempted to hang an umbrella under my ceiling!)

Carl Spitzweg, The hypochondriac

Carl Spitzweg, The bookworm

Carl Spitzweg, The butterfly hunter

Just to bring a little cheery, cheeky atmosphere into these grey metropolitan days, and relativise our own biedermeier graveness/quaintness with satirical images of it!
It's a fact that nothing ever really changes. It's just hard to make up one's mind if that's a good or a bad thing.
It's so puzzling where music comes from. The emergence of amazing music from nigh unexpected sources has revolutionary potential.
How can I let the scales grow again?

Questionable.

Back in summer.


Back with curls.

As far as I'm concerned ...

You can either live life, or dream life. The former will feel spectacular at the moment you're experiencing it, but it will hollow you out and leave you with a stale taste, and empty hands. The latter will mean you're bored most of the time, but will leave you with a beautiful catalogue of glittering, fake memories which will be hard to refute.



A city romance for two moping expatriates -
Eyes meeting across a crowded city square.
Cigarettes hanging from mouths being flicked onto kerbsides.
Mutual, mute recognition.

Two facts I'm trying to get my head round with difficulty:

1. Just because you care about nothing but knowledge, it does not make you an intelligent person.
2. Just because you're incredibly social and likeable, it does not make you a nice person.

Again a manifestation of the axiom that things are not only not what they seem, they're also not what they are. I am not sure how.

Extended Reading on Ida Pfeiffer

For Alex:
I've found out that some of her works are available in English on Project Gutenberg:
'Ave a look!
Obviously it's very unromantic to read books online, but maybe quite handy to get a first taste. In any case, yes, there are translations! :)

Victory!

MY LAURELS! MIIIIINE!!
Muahahaha.



And I shall call it ... La Nouvelle Domesticité!

I write uneducated lovesongs.

Historical Schmistorical!
Oh why am I so underwhelmed?
Oh why am I so disenthused?

Maybe because 1 day of cleaning and 1 day of 7 machines full of laundry do your head in and kill any emergent original thought in the bud?

I found a radio amongst the debris of my flatmate's room, and spent the afternoon listening to Ö1. Radio is good for you.
So belatedly, I caught up on the latest news on the election and Mr. Obama's triumph (finding it slightly ridiculous how the entire world is behaving like an amorous teenage fangirl towards him - it's sad how extraordinary we find the fact that a halfway reasonable and sensible person gets elected for an important political office ... shouldn't that be the norm?)
Also, I learned something about Ida Pfeiffer, who seems to have been an admirable person. She was a woman from Biedermeier Vienna who travelled the world, and wrote about it. It sounds almost boring written down like this, but it was obviously an immense achievement, considering her time, her sex, her circumstances. She also was friends with Alexander von Humboldt. :)

Zeitgenossen beschrieben Ida Pfeiffer als eine kleine, schmale Person von leicht gebeugter Haltung, mit langsamen, kontrollierten Bewegungen. Sie verfügte über eine robuste Gesundheit und war ungewöhnlich ausdauernd. Sie urteilte nüchtern und fasste, wenn nötig, rasche Entschlüsse. Im persönlichen Umgang war sie so zurückhaltend, dass es schon genauerer Kenntnis bedurfte, um ihre abenteuerlichen Reisen glaubhaft zu finden. Obwohl sie viele Jahre ihres Lebens auf höchst unkonventionelle Art verbrachte, hatte sie über die eigentliche Rolle der Frau in der Gesellschaft absolut konventionelle Ansichten. Auf gelegentliche Gesprächspartner wirkte sie „wie eine tüchtige Hausfrau, die über ihre häuslichen Angelegenheiten nie hinausgekommen war“.

Whatever that means, it sounds strangely appealing. I like it when people do amazing things without making a great fuss about it.

Unrelatedly, I like the band. But it's all so relative, and nothing special is in my life or in my person compared to all you beautiful birds of paradise, who effortlessly know how to think and act and love like you were born simply to be adored.

Brilliant.

Well, I wish I was as switch-on-and-off-able as some people seem to think I am.

Flowchart for the Afterlife

Early Modern Christian Art is fun!

These dreams are made of twine.

Shite-poetry written during the Ladytron concert. My mind was elsewhere, it seems.

How do you break the rules when there are no rules?
How do you find your way when you're neither here nor there?
When nothing matters, who will mind when it breaks?
You've got no grip on me as long as I can't touch you.
Are we truly two ends of a spectrum, between us only Foucault on a power slide?
Oscillating mildly with no definite direction, no ambition to sign this with our blood?
My blood is ink
Your pulse is metre
These sheets are pages
What could be sweeter?
We're going into press tonight, with illiterate delights.
Written down means left unspoken.
Boneless spines too can be broken.

It's no good, of course. I don't mind though. Let your criticism be harsh and cruel.


Why does Michel Foucault look so much like Moby?

Bona-Party ...

I have to say, I dig this song:




And this one too:




But I'm not going to the concert.


"You know politics, I know party-chicks."

Bloomsbury.

If only ...





They lived in squares, wrote in circles and loved in triangles.