Dying to know.

"We shall never know what happened to Matilda when Mr. Ellin took her from Miss Wilcox [Matilda, Ellin and Wilcox are characters in a fragment of a novel by Charlotte Brontë, left unfinished at her death]. We shall never know what happened to Mr. Ellin; but I confess that I am dying to know, and that I find it hard to forgive Mr. Nicholls for having killed them, so certain am I that they would have lived triumphantly if Charlotte Brontë had not married him."

May Sinclair, The Three Brontës. Okay, that's it; I'm doing my Ph.D on Brontë and Sinclair. This is too interesting.

fuzzy

(Flickr image source.)

Paris during Fashion Week in 1962. What I love about these pictures is that they're at once very photo-bloggy and very 1960s.

Brontëana

I'm making a research poster, which today has mostly entailed google-image-searching "Brontë".

From Dame Darcy's Illustrated Jane Eyre; Rochester looking at Jane's drawings.

Not exactly useful for my purposes, but I'm sentimental enough that this makes me a little sad: an envelope with a Haworth postmark, addressed to Constantin Heger.

Lucy locked in the attic in Villette.

Jane Eyre being less conventionally attractive than Blanche Ingram.

The Lowood girls in Jane Eyre.

Unromantic as Monday morning

This Friday I had amazing pho soup at the Eat on South Bank, drank tea in Becky's new apartment, bought overpriced throat lozenges at the Organic Pharmacy, met T at Charing Cross, behaved ridiculously in several locations around Soho, was complimented on my dress and fringe, took a rickshaw to Victoria Station at one in the morning out of a combination of sheer necessity (we needed to get the last train to Brighton) and awesomeness, and read Mad, Bad and Sad on the train while T slept on my shoulder. And Saturday and Sunday were pretty good too.

And now I'm in King's Manor with a mango smoothie and a lot of work to do, which is also, in its own way, pretty good.

Kringlan är för rolig.

one more good thing

Today, this is the best Wikipedia article.

(My favourite is the palmar grasp reflex, obvs.)

list form vincit omnia

It's been an odd sort of week - at the start of it I was practically Caroline Helstone-like in my emo brooding and pining - but now it's FRIDAY and the weekend is going to be GOOD, though T-less. I'm going to finish reading Shirley and buy presents at the Vintage Fair and go out every night. In the meantime, a list of things that are good right now:

- Pret ginger beer

- plane tickets home: I will be back exactly a month from now, at 19:30 on December 20th

- we finally finally got our council tax sorted out, yay not having to pay like £400

- Bruges Bruges Bruges Bruges

- the ice-skating rink by Clifford's Tower

- Vicky coming to York sometime in the next couple of weeks

- on Wednesday night I was described as looking "just like Zooey Deschanel"

- my new teacup necklace

- the provisional programme for the conference is up; it all looks ridiculously professional

- Bruges Bruges Bruges. And Brighton. And then Trondheim.

seasonal

This afternoon Sarah and I watched High School Musical (the first one again; neither of us are emotionally up to a rewatch of the second one) as it slowly got dark outside, and now we are curled up on either end of the enormous sofa, with a duvet. Sarah has Bleak House and I have the computer. And Christmas music, even though it's far too soon for that sort of thing. I want to buy everyone's presents NOW.

public service announcement

No one in my family buy anyone else in my family Superfreakonomics for Christmas, please, it looks terrible.

INGÅR SALLAD? INGÅR KAFFE?

I am too tired to move from the sofa to bed, and have thus ended up with this: Vem får inte följa med på systeeeeeemet?

(Also, I just googled "duvet" as if by doing so I could summon it, or something)

the monday whine

Things that are not appealing when you have a cold:

- inhaling cold air

- being outside

- explaining yourself ("It's like Walter Benjamin," said my supervisor. "He never explains anything; he wants all his sentences to be epigrams."

"So I shouldn't be emulating him?" I said.

"Well, he failed his Ph.D.")

- writing supervision reports

- doing course reading

- sustained thought

Things that are appealing when you have a cold:

- inhaling peppermint tea steam

- taking your cold much, much too seriously

- kicking around a balloon

- thinking back to happier times (sometimes only 48 hours ago)

I physically embody the "XD" emoticon.

friday evening

Axel with camera.

Brighton, with T and I just off-camera. (He is on his way to York RIGHT NOW.)

oh hi

Today's themes: interdisciplinarity, naps, Victorian Society.

And missing Teo.

six months minus a day

I do realise I am over-blogging a little now. But it just struck me that six months ago today I was one day away from meeting T, and had no idea.

it's not an island okay

"'Tis a childish humour to hone after home, to be discontent at that which others seek; to prefer, as base Icelanders and Norwegians do, their own ragged island before Italy or Greece, the gardens of the world." (Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, 1621)

interiors and exteriors

My bedroom seen from the bed. Sarah made the poster on the door and brought it with her to the train station when I came back from Norway in July; it's covered in High School Musical stickers.

And one more, of York in Ultimate Gothic Mode. Sarah leaning over a bridge, with the Castle museum in the background.

autumn in the photo booth

One more - the view from the window in front of me, taken with Photo Booth on my laptop.

heady heights of conformity

Of course when I say "for sure", clearly what I mean is "probably not". Instead I'm going to ease myself into this autumn blogging thing. One photo a day, for at least a week.

Today: beer for jerks, in the Rook and Gaskill.

I got in from Trondheim last night at half past ten and fell asleep after rereading a few pages of The Twisted Heart, which always makes me feel a little guilty about not doing as much work as Kit does (I don't think this is the authorial intent, though). But I am at work now, in the panopticon-esque Humanities Research Centre. And almost completely awake!

all distances in time and space are shrinking.

The library doesn't have the book I need today, so I'm reading someone's scanned-in copy of Heidegger's "The Thing", annotated in pencil. I like it; it's a weird sort of closeness to someone I have no idea who is.

And photos of the past couple of weeks are going up tonight, for sure.

"Blomkål är inte bara en god och vacker kålsort. Det är ett väldigt trevligt efternamn också."

This is a very lovely food blog.

And this, from niotillfem, is my current computer background.

today II

Very very slowly, I wrote a proposal for "Crossing the Line: Affinities Before and After 1900" (which is held in 2010 - THE FUTURE!). (I have a paper that is perfect for this conference, but I have no idea whether that came across in the proposal; I was so uninspired today that I'd probably have been better off just writing "I have a paper that is perfect for this conference".) I marvelled at the fact that they never empty the rubbish in the CECS study room. I went to Warehouse at lunch and bought this bag, which I'm wearing with these shoes (but in gray), my pink silk dress, and a pink headband at the wedding this weekend. I listened to this conversation:

"Do you take your coffee strong, Ruth?" (This said in an incredibly rich and dramatic voice.)

"Well, if you put a spoon in it I want it to fall over."

I had "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out" on repeat. I discovered that I'd brought my iPod cable with me, and downloaded the latest two Pang Prego podcasts. I wished the thesis was a little more finished. And I wished it was this weekend right now, now, now.

today

- breakfast: Covent Garden summer vegetable soup.

- the study room: finally open after the bank holiday.

- subtle chair-dancing to: "Mama Do" by Pixie Lott.

- thesis writing to: "Virgin State of Mind" by K's Choice.

- word count: 18,300.

- Spotify ad: "...but don't worry, lads, this definitely isn't a love story."

- texts: multiple, enthusiastic.

- decision: after the thesis is in I'm getting a digital camera and becoming a photo-blogger.

I AM POSTING IN THE BLOG

On opening the draft section to post a new entry, I noticed an abandoned draft from about two weeks ago, also entitled "I AM POSTING IN THE BLOG". This turned out not to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. But now it is!

Since the conference where I had my own cheer section, I've been to France (once), Trondheim (once), Kine's cabin in the mountains (once) and Brighton (repeatedly). I've seen "Star Trek" twice, written most of an MA thesis (yes, most of it really is done now, and I should attempt to lower my currently stress-hunched shoulders) and moved into an apartment that's mine and Sarah's very own, with no storage space but lots of wood floor, an enormous sofa, and walls decked with fairy lights, Pre-Raphaelite postcards, High School Musical paraphernalia and a 1970s tea towel reading "Brontë Country". And I've stood on a beach with T, shouting "HERE I AM IN ARCADIA" and "THALASSA, THALASSA!" in unison at the retreating sea. Best summer ever.

WHAT TEAM?

Today I presented a paper at the York Graduate Conference, which was fun and went well, I think, but unquestionably the most awesome part was that, completely unbeknownst to me, SARAH AND EMMA HAD HAD COMMEMORATIVE T-SHIRTS MADE UP. Mine said "WHAT TEAM?"; theirs said "[UNPRONOUNCEABLE-LASTNAME]!" (A High School Musical reference, obvs.: "WHAT TEAM?" / "WILDCATS!")

Yes: I gave a paper while two people in the audience were wearing t-shirts with my surname on them. I don't think my academic career can get any better.

I think we've decided what we're calling it

"Oh my God," he said. "Are you offering me a non-stipendiary fellowship?"

things I did not have this time last week

- an apartment inside the city walls (I LOVE THIS APARTMENT, WE ARE GOING TO HANG EMPTY PICTURE FRAMES ON THE DOOR LIKE IN FRIENDS), starting July 1st: this will be the first time I've lived somewhere without a porter's lodge since 2004, though Sarah will probably fulfil certain porter-like functions, like knowing where my keys are

- a - what are they called at this stage? romantic interest? let's say "male-type involvement", which was his suggested phrase - who for some reason lives four hours away

- a three-year partial-fee-waiver scholarship that, to be honest, I don't remember applying for (I applied for about four at the start of term, but as far as I know none of them were for that particular sum; still, awesome)

- absolute contractual certainty that I'm staying in York for the Ph.D

BUT NOW I HAVE THESE THINGS.

the journal of pre-raphaelite studies is hilarious

"More than three decades have passed since I invented the field of Pre-Raphaelite studies...[name of art historian] said to me when we first met in Chicago a few years ago, 'It's like meeting Moses!' Modesty precludes my accepting his analogy..."

last night

"Do you want to come back to mine and do a guest entry in my diary?" he said.

"No," I said.

(Apart from that it was an excellent evening; we decided (more accurately, I decided) that instead of going to the boring cocktail bar we always go to when the pubs close we should go to a park, and so we all ended up lying on the grass in the Minster gardens, shivering and laughing and periodically going "This is so much better than [the boring cocktail bar]". The great outdoors.)

on the road to the dissertation

"I just don't think you should confuse the reader for the sake of some catchy alliteration."

[As if I have been accused of witchcraft] "I wasn't going for alliteration."

"Yeah, sure you weren't."

[Genuinely hurt] "I WAS TRYING TO AVOID IT! THESE THINGS HAPPEN!"

In which I am unexpectedly enthusiastic

Someone just walked by under my bedroom window, shouting "I'M WALKING WITH MY ARMS CROSSED BECAUSE IT'S SOOOOO COOOOOLD". I love living above a footpath.

Incidentally, how pleased am I that I decided to go to a Eurovision party the very year Norway won, apparently, the biggest landslide victory ever? (Moldova were actually my favourites just based on sheer joy, costuming and use of the phrase "HE-HEY", but even so.) Why do I suddenly care about Eurovision? Am I going to burst spontaneously into "Ja, vi elsker" in the library tomorrow, halfway through typing a derogatory sentence about Dante Gabriel Rossetti? Or get confused and burst spontaneously into "Du gamla, du fria"? Nothing's impossible!

In which everything is ruined

I AM NEVER TAKING BENADRYL AGAIN. It's eleven AM, I'm meant to be doing a highly critical reading of pre-Raphaelite death culture and instead I CAN BARELY SPELL. I SPELLED "SPELL" "SEPPL" TWICE.

I suppose I could see being accidentally high on antihistamines as a way of accessing more creative pathways of my mind.

ETA: scratch that, this is going pretty well.

In King's Manor, reading twitter feeds (I AM GOING TO START WORK NOW) in between looking out at the lovely sun-dappled trees and the blue sky and searching for train tickets to London. Considering how much of my time IRL I spend complaining about dissertation panic, it's oddly sunny in this blog at the moment.

it is the weekend

Last night I made several people happy by making them run up the Clifford's Tower hill and then slide down (we also did some yoga at the top). Can't believe I've never discovered, in all my time of Clifford's Tower-conquering, that sliding down is the way to go. Probably safer than the stairs and less conspicuous.

Then I went home and was delighted by the internet, and now we're going to get lunch at Pret (the plan on my part is whole-leaf tea and something bacon-related) and eat it in the Museum Gardens, followed by a Jane Austen for Amateurs lecture.

creeeeeeeepy

So while doing dissertation research, I came across this: the animated Sleeping Beauty in Madame Tussaud's. It's the oldest figure still on display in the museum; it's been there since the mid-nineteenth century. In 1851, one visitor said that "you instinctively move softly, lest she should be disturbed in her slumber".

after we'd handed in our essays, we went to the pub.

"...I was convinced that if I'd been allowed to go to that concert, Taylor Hanson would have seen me from across the room and fallen in love with me."

"Well, that is what happened. Seeing as how I am Taylor Hanson."

"Shut up."

"I saw you from across the room -"

"Shut UP."

Highlights of my first conference

- One of only about three critics I cite in my paper shows up outside the lecture room door like a revenant just as I'm quoting him (thank God it wasn't Harold Bloom, but rather someone I was agreeing with)

- My paper turns out to match up unusually well with the other one in my panel, and we have an excellent cross-paper discussion

- One of my fellow speakers and I invent beer-wine, which is flat lager with white wine in it, and he starts to find it curiously addictive

- We discuss whether you need to read more than three pages of Powers of Horror to be able to fake in-depth Kristeva knowledge, and then describe everything as "abject" for the rest of the night

- A script treatment for a film about Shakespeare's Catholic espionage activities, co-starring Zac Efron as the teenage vampire addressee of the sonnets, is prepared ("Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more undead")

- One of the professors tells me it's lovely to meet such young and unjaded people, and wishes me the best of luck

- Another of my fellow speakers fails in his attempt to open an unlocked pub door. "WE'RE LOCKED IN." "I thought you guys were intellectuals."

- Everyone starts to talk in American accents as if they were on The O.C.

- I successfully find my youth hostel and fall asleep on a top bunk

- When I wake up the next day, my hair looks amazing

I don't think I really did any networking, though.

you think I wanna get involved / you're not wrong

In my room in York. Have discovered that my conference presentation does not sound any more convincing when delivered over the sound of this.

Paradigm shift

My parents, Axel and I are having dinner.

"We didn't know how lucky we were in the nineties," I say. "Boybands. 'Not' used as a modifier...jean jackets with jeans."

"Jean jackets?" says Axel. "What?"

"You know. Denim jackets in a different shade from the denim trousers. It was amazing."

"Jackets made out of denim?" He is baffled and not a little suspicious. Axel is thirteen and has never seen a jean jacket in his life. He's nice about it, but it's obvious he doesn't actually believe me until I go and put on one I used to wear when I was about his age. To be fair, it looks about as unfashionable as is physically possible, right at the nadir before the trendiness cycle starts to repeat itself.

"Oh! It looks like you've...made a jacket out of trousers. Huh."

He's so cute that I have to give him a hug. "It even feels like trousers," he says. He seems quietly convinced that I have, for reasons of my own, created this prototype of a ridiculous imaginary trouser-jacket in order to mess with his mind.

Easter Sunday, in fragments

- We wandered into the cathedral to do some touristy looking around just as the Easter service was finishing. People had already started to rise from their seats and head out, slowly and casually, while still singing the last psalm, "Deg være ære, herre over dødens makt". We are not as a people enthusiastic and skilful psalm-singers, but everyone was pretty much on board with this one.

- I drained my hot chocolate, then scooped up the remnants of melted chocolate curls with a spoon.

- On the way back from Korsvika, I insisted on stopping every few minutes to photograph interesting graffiti, cats, and heaps of scrap metal floating in the harbour. The urban-exploration aesthetic is so completely ingrained in me by now that I no longer think of it as controversial; I'm surprised when other people don't immediately share it.

- Maren said, "Some places, they have variable prices for outdoor beer according to how cold it is out. You can drink incredibly cheaply if you're willing to do it outside in early March."

- I shook myself awake from a brief nap and headed back to the café to get some work done on the essay. Nothing is open during the Easter days but cafés, so that's where everyone who's still in town is, even in the twilight time between five and seven. Cheerful-looking emo kids with coffee cups, two people having what appeared to be a serious discussion while sharing a bottle of wine, people playing chess, babies with accompanying families. I wrote six hundred words and called it a night.

- Diana's and my combined efforts were insufficient to get the DVD player to work. We watched "Atonement" on my laptop while eating blackberries.

- As I type, the first mosquito I've seen this year has just settled on the duvet in front of me. It looks dopey and slow, but I don't feel I can kill it. I do fully anticipate waking up with the first mosquito bites of the year.

McGann's little face

Set photographs from Withnail and I . The link goes to the Daily Mail website, I'm afraid, but I think it's worth it, especially if, like me, you always worry terribly about Withnail at the end of the film. IT'S OKAY, HE LOOKS HAPPY HERE.

things I am pleased with

- I finished the increasingly-possibly-misnamed "Writ on Water", my assessed essay for Poetry of Loss. It needs a polish (possibly the restructuring kind of polish), but it's not much over the word limit. And it features an admission that I'm performing "my own agonistic misprision" of Harold Bloom.

- On Tuesday morning I'm heading back to Norway. Which is good in any number of ways, including this one:



(yes, it is Teo, as photographed by my father, I think.)

- It is one of my favourite things when people unexpectedly turn out to know all the lyrics (I don't normally even link to youtube videos, but come on).

- I got home from dinner at the Charles and a wander around the creepy topiary in the Quiet Place to find an email from my Ph.D supervisor quite spontaneously describing my proposal (which is the one I'm going to use for my funding applications) as "really strong". I know supervisors are generally expected to be in your corner, but it was still exciting.

Will now stop being fluffy and Pollyannaish and get some sleep.

Ingrained

It's a Sunday evening and we are six girls and three boys playing (I promise this was not my idea) the "Titanic" drinking game (drink every time the Irish, Italian or Swedish are stereotyped, someone says "Jack" in a breathy voice, anyone describes anything as unsinkable, someone gets punched, the orchestra appears, the captain on the modern-day boat comes on to someone, or the class divide becomes apparent; down your drink if you spot W.T. Stead, which sadly I didn't). We've got to the part where Jack and Rose are making out in the car. The camera cuts to an outside shot. We all raise one hand just as Kate Winslet's hand slams against the window.

On the balance

YAY: I got "Bad Property" accepted for the York Graduate Conference (I suspect they take everyone, but still, first conference woooo. Now I just need to whittle it down to 20 minutes including jokes about...cholera, possibly. Or W.T. Stead, who is possibly more inherently hilarious).

NAY: It just took me an hour and a half to write the first 230 words of the Poetry of Loss essay. And most of those are taken up by the inscription on Keats's grave.

YAY: I will probably be the only writer ever to express sympathy towards Severn and Brown's massively-missing-the-point embellishment of Keats's intended self-authored epitaph, "Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water".

NAY: My blood sugar levels are plummeting.

YAY: I'm going to go and get some ice cream from La Cremeria and walk around in the museum gardens. And then I'm headed to the Victorian Society Quadrille Social.

NAY yet also YAY: The fact that I'm going to a quadrille social definitively proves that I am an enormous nerd.

Spring

Today the grey-brown campus is redeemed by daffodils and sun and gleaming water. I'm in the Courtyard, which at three-thirty is already full of amusingly dressed St Patrick's Day drinkers, having very milky coffee and trying to put thousands of words of essay notes into order. This is turning out to be a strange one; I've never before felt with an essay that I could just keep writing forever. (Writing notes, though, which is very different from accessible and assessable prose.) I hope this is some sort of breakthrough and that it's going to be this way with the MA dissertation as well; it's a little disquieting, but fun.

In my dream I was in a band, of the sort with lots of members (ten or fifteen or so) crowded on the stage. I was one of three singers, but when we first arrived up at the venue, a lounge in an extremely trendy seaside hotel, it was just me and singer #2. We introduced ourselves and sat down onstage to read some of our fan mail, which had been presented to us in a large crate. Most of it turned out to be from French schoolchildren who had been instructed to write to us to practice their English, which disappointed me, but nonetheless I felt cool and bathed in the adoration of the public.

Unfortunately, when the rest of the band arrived, it became apparent that singer #3 was in an extreme sulk because she thought the audience weren't paying enough attention to us. Before singer #2 and I were ready she started up the instrumental section at a weirdly low volume, and after three minutes or so shouted "That was 'Indigo' [for such was the name of one of our songs]. You missed it" into the crowd. I insisted on her starting the song again, but since I didn't really know the lyrics, I wasn't at my best.

Fortunately, singer #2 saved the day: she rushed offstage and got a portable microphone from somewhere, and then waved at all of us to join her in dancing around with the audience. I started to figure out the lyrics, and soon I was enjoying myself. In the dream my voice was only as good as it is now, but I was also able to make a very high falsetto-like sound, which was my trademark as a singer and inspired much admiration.

Having woken up, I am off to the nearest outlet mall for the day, where Sarah and Emma and I are going to pretend to be fifteen and go around drinking enormous Diet Cokes.

Spider-webs

The fire alarm went off. I abandoned the bed barely awake, turned on the lights - it was dark outside - and began a search for trousers (the final selection was jogging bottoms, on backwards). Shoes, keycard, coat. I joined the crowds headed downstairs to the courtyard. We stood blinking and shivering, looking at no smoke pouring from the windows. It was four in the morning. Within ten minutes or so official-looking fire-brigade-type people were at the scene and went up to the room where the alarm had been tripped, the one next to mine. I was half worried and resentful, half asleep on my feet. It turned out that spider-webs had grown over the alarm's smoke detectors and set it off. I accepted this as an adequate and poetic explanation and returned to bed.

(Then it went off again forty minutes later. I'd rather this happened too often than not often enough, but I am very very sleepy today all the same.)

Yoga progress

I think I'm getting better at shoulder-stands; as far as I can tell it's not my core musculature but my concern that I'm going to do something irreversible to my neck that's preventing me from flipping my legs back over my head properly. (In our class we do it in the opposite order from that video, because we are not ridiculously flexible animated people: raising the legs and hips straight up first.) I'm definitely getting better at the cobra pose; yay for arm muscles. And I regularly leave classes in a state of spacy inarticulacy, which I think must be a good thing.

I do love having a blog; these things must be shared with the ether.

In which a filmatisation is demanded

It seems bizarre that (according to an IMDB character search) no one's made a film about Mary Wollstonecraft yet. The script treatment basically writes itself; you wouldn't have to invent questionable love affairs like the Becoming Jane writers, or try to create conflict from the most stable marriage in history like the Young Victoria writers. And there are (at least) two awesome male leads. This year is the 250th anniversary of her birth and someone at the BBC needs to GET ON IT. I would also accept a miniseries.

(Incidentally, there should be slightly less Historical Facts Madness from here on out - we had our last 18th-century Ladies class today, alas.)

Vicesimus Knox, you are creeping me out

"The learned lady...rather than neglecting her domestic duties, would pursue them with more efficiency, enthusiasm, and skill. As Knox explained, ridiculing his opponents for their unenlightened outlook, 'A woman of improved understanding and real sense is more likely to submit to her condition, whatever it may be, than the uneducated or the half-learned.'" (from Arianne Chernock: "Cultivating Woman: Men's Pursuit of Intellectual Equality in the Late British Enlightenment")

And this is one of the relative good guys (we are operating with sophisticated moral categories today) of 18th-century women's educational reform; he at least doesn't think that domestic life and intellectual endeavours are incompatible. But for the very creepiest of reasons. (I think it's also that the whole thing is uncannily reminiscent of the very-much-later Feminine Mystique. Um, happy Women's Day?)

easy money

ahaha, the University's postgraduate scholarships webpage is titled "Breadcrumb". Which is honest to the point that I wonder whether they've been hacked. On the other hand they literally two minutes ago announced a £5000 continuation scholarship for overseas students going on to Ph.Ds (this was then pointed out to me by my prospective supervisor literally one minute ago), so I'm happy with them. The application process looks like it'd take less than five minutes, which is a pretty high hourly wage if I actually get it, but I can't apply until I have a conditional offer. York application this weekend, I think.

(On the third hand, much as I love my wealthy but separatist homeland, I sometimes wish I could just have been Swedish. Or that EC status carried much more weight, or that we could have another referendum. Norway, think about me for a change!)

status report

The weather in York is completely terrible: violent winds, pouring rain, the beginnings of a cold snap. Fortunately, I'm back from yoga class and almost too relaxed to move, and am in bed with tea and psychoanalytic theory.

Marginalia

Apparently this week I'm breaking with my normally forbearing and gentle persona and turning unpleasant and abrasive; I can only apologise. Now, to be fair, I shouldn't be surprised at being annoyed by "The Anxiety of Influence", in which Harold Bloom describes all poets as engaged in Oedipal death-matches with each other (and Bloom is happy to tell you who wins each one: "[Tennyson's] clear superiority over Arnold, Hopkins, and Rossetti" is one typical statement) and allows his obsession with canon-making to completely obscure the idea of poems as poems rather than ammunition, because I got it out of the library in order to be annoyed. (I was hoping to be irritated into inspiration for my Poetry of Loss essay, and it's sort of working, too.)

I was surprised, though, to see that it's apparently driven everyone else who's read it into an enraged frenzy. The margins are full of sarcastic comments on the actual text, but even better are the comments on the comments: "no contradiction at all, shut up"; "idiot", "oh, ha ha" and "since he mentions it on page 8, I'd say so, [gender-based slur elided by editor]" (those three all in response to the seemingly innocuous comment "starting point for Bate's 'The Burden of the Past'; an influence?"); "finish the book before you open your mouth"; "I HATE YOU".

My favourite comment, though, is on the passage where Bloom describes "the Primal Scene, for a poet as poet": "is this sensible?"

It definitely isn't.

Angry glossy supplement blogging

"What is Marc Jacobs selling to women at this difficult time? No less than the two essentials of life: defiance and hope. As men lose their jobs or have their salaries slashed, women who wear Vuitton (even in rip-off form) can step up and shield their economic emasculation."

Absolutely not, Colin McDowell of the Sunday Times Style supplement. I swear it's like I'm still studying for this week's 18th-century Representations of Women class (which this week is on masculinity and men's history). In fact I was TRYING TO RELAX, and it is NOT THE 18TH CENTURY.

(And incidentally. Since when is Marc Jacobs designing for Louis Vuitton, the most annoying of brands?)

truly, really and greatly

"I am going to tell you something concerning myself, which, if I have not chanced to mention it before will I believe a little surprise you - it is, that I scarse wish for anything so truly, really and greatly, as to be in love - upon my word I am serious - and very gravely and sedately, assure you it is a real and true wish...For my own part I declare that the mere pleasure of having a great affection for some one person to which I was neither guided by fear, hope of profit, gratitude, respect - or any motive but mere fancy would sufficiently satisfy me, and I should not at all wish a return...but indeed I write so much at random that it is much more a chance if I know what I am saying, than if I do not."

From Frances Burney's second diary entry, written in 1768 at the age of fifteen. OH BURNEY. Also, you have to wonder what the state of the romantic/companionate marriage was at the time (though really I should already know this); it's as if she's just discovered the concept.

chicks and ducks and geese better scurry

Oddly emotionally honest conversation outside the electro club we couldn't get into last night:

"What animal would you be, if you were an animal?"

"Oh, I don't know. Let me think."

"I was thinking you'd be a swan."

Though considering how violent, noisy and unhygienic the swans on campus are, it might not even have been a compliment.

hour to hour, note to note

If you want to spend tomorrow the way I have spent today, aurally speaking (and I'm sure you do), this is what to listen to. Good for grey very-nearly-rainy afternoons and for hanging around the linguistics section of libraries.

Oh oh, I've now watched most of "Twilight" on the interwebs. I'm about an hour and a half in, and so far there is no plot, and it's clearly been filmed illegally in a cinema so the visual quality is really bad, meaning that when Edward is meant to be sparkling threateningly in the sunlight it just looks like he's standing around with an unnecessarily horrified expression. I can, however, absolutely tell that it would've worked on me as an impressionable twelve-year-old (not the sparkling so much as the notion that fir-tree climbing at high speeds and not being allowed to actually kiss your boyfriend constitute epic romance). It all makes me sort of glad that what I had as an impressionable twelve-year-old was "Titanic". I rewatched this with Maren a few months ago and was expecting to be far less impressed with Leonardo DiCaprio's character than I was when I first saw it (to be fair, it would've been hard for me to be any more impressed), but in fact he comes off as unpatronisingly thoughtful and competent, and it's quite a good relationship up until the floating-on-driftwood-in-the-ocean part. I'm not giving my pre-teen self credit for being a very discerning judge of character, it's more that I think some generations are more fortunate with their epic romances than others.

On the other hand "Titanic" doesn't have a single scene involving vampire baseball, so it all balances out.

non-academic blogging is not really happening

Sitting in the overheated King's Manor library writing my 18th-century Representations of Women essay, which for some reason is so far 500 words on Anna Laetitia Barbauld's stupid flower poetry rather than the awesome Foucauldian treatise on Anne Lister and Jane Austen I was envisioning. (I'm hoping to get to the awesome Foucauldian bit soon.) Anyway, the point is I want to quote some Shakespeare, literally for no other reason than that it clarifies a point I'm making (the line is "an art which does mend nature, change it rather, but the art itself is nature", from A Winter's Tale. I think I've quoted that before in the blog, which I expect is why it came to mind), and it's causing me no small frustration that, no longer being an undergraduate, I can't get away with that sort of thing. Back in the days when I wrote my essays from seven to nine the morning they were due, I used to put in every anachronistic thing that came into my semi-conscious head and think nothing of it.

It's going well, though, apart from that; I'm going to lull the marker from the history department into a sense of false security with historical documents and flower poetry and then hit them with a ton of narrative theory. Whee

I knew I was going to have to be in some kind of altered state in order to write my MA dissertation proposal (250 words of genius, due next Monday, and as of this morning I literally had no idea what I was going to do with it), but I thought it would be in the form of a violent caffeine high rather than a migraine. I was sitting in King's Manor staring at Bram Dijkstra's "Idols of Perversity" when I started getting an aura, and once I got home I had to keep getting up from my bed of pain to write stuff down. When the headache started to lift I had the proposal ready, and now it's written out. I might not submit it until tomorrow in case a more sober mood reveals it to be nonsensical, though. The topic is definitely very depressing, but considering how oddly life-affirming my Ph.D is looking I'm probably allowed. And the department has at least one expert in the very depressing who can supervise me.

Will write about non-academic matters as soon as any occur; lately even my non-working life has been pretty nerdy (going to the "Dracula Experience" in Whitby, talking about books in cafés, talking about books in pubs, University Challenge tryouts). Uncerebral times ahead tonight, I think.

:D

I got "Bad Property" back - the first properly assessed, counting-toward-my-degree essay of the year - with, seriously, the kindest comments I've received on a piece of work since...high school, probably. (As an undergraduate I counted "at least this essay has a conclusion" as a kind comment.) I'm happy not least because when I reread it after handing it in, it seemed incredibly dry and I couldn't see what my own argument was supposed to be. But apparently it is in fact "elegantly written, wide-ranging and scholarly". Also "hard-hitting and eloquent". And "the final paragraph about teacups and blasphemy is a masterstroke". (It turns out, though, that you're not supposed to end a paragraph with a parenthetical statement. The things you learn in grad school.)

Though gracious in defeat I am, as ever, extremely annoying in victory, and Sarah and I shouted and cheered and punched the air in the grad study room (she was also very pleased with her mark). Then I went to get some wine for Chettam's birthday party tonight and ended up with Chardonnay, which I don't particularly like, solely because it was the only one with a screw top. All class.

And finally, dialogue from last night, after I was socked right in the eye with a snowball:
"I just want to make sure you get to your room without passing out from concussion."
"Oh God, what if I am concussed? What if you've RUINED my head?"
"Well, what we can do is save your brain by removing it and putting into something else."
"Like a robot?"
"Well, anything you like. We could put it into a lizard of some kind."
"Can we put it into a great ground sloth?"
So at least I was able to go to bed secure that there was an emergency backup plan in place.

if you were the winter i know i'd be the snow

This is a day for:

- dancing to "All I Want Is You" in the kitchen, while making tea (the kitchen has huge glass doors facing the courtyard so this is a risky move)
- slowly regaining the balance in my injured foot
- finding that a brand-new vintage store has sprung up on Fossgate and trying on quite a lot of men's tweed coats (conclusion: I wish I could wear men's tweed coats, but cannot. I did get a brooch though.)
- getting an idea for my Poetry of Loss essay (quotation in elegy, which, not incidentally, will require me to excoriate "The Anxiety of Influence")
- reading things aloud
- looking forward to the weekend.

starter for ten

I made it through to the second round in the University Challenge tryouts! This in spite of being wrong on fairly basic stuff like who the king of Troy was during the Trojan war, because my mind went blank and I kept thinking about the film rather than the book. I suspect I might get knocked out in the buzzer round, though, because buzzers frighten me.

"Limerence" is the word of the day*

Ohhhhh. I don't want to read Sally Shuttleworth's opinions on Victorian psychology (no offense to them, but somehow I get freaked out every time I open that book; I think I'm afraid that one of the pages is going to read "HAHA YOUR RESEARCH IS IRRELEVANT" in 48-point type. It's that kind of similarity of ideas that isn't inspiring but just worrying). I don't want to come up with a 250-word MA dissertation proposal, or an idea for my 18th-Century Women procedural essay, or an idea for my Poetry of Loss essay. I don't want to walk anywhere in the snow. I don't want to not drink coffee for another two days (in a test of self-control I've cut out coffee for the week, which probably relates to why I don't want to do any of those other things).

I basically just want to dance all night and sleep all day, for about a week. And ideally I want it to be summer.

Dammit, I'm taking the night off, and then tomorrow I'll finish the proposal (for which I really don't need to read a single other book, it's just 500 words), make Fimo jewellery at CraftSoc like an oversized kindergarten child, and go to the University Challenge tryouts (Sarah is making me, even though I don't have enough general knowledge to get through a simple pub quiz). And then on Thursday I'm going to have the largest coffee known to man and everything will be shiny again.

*I'm kind of excited about this, because if it enters into general usage it's going to be so much easier to be a Norwegian-to-English translator. Now all we need is an English term for "hyggelig".

Angry literary criticism blogging

"The laurel and flute must symbolize not only Daphne and Syrinx but also the thwarted sexual impulse of the pursuers. As the texts suggest, that thwarting resembles a castration...Apollo's sign and Pan's new instrument are the pieces of their transformed loves and of their own transformed sexual powers, broken or cut, wreathed or sealed. Each is left grasping the sign of what he lacks...this castrative aspect should not be slighted, for it lies at the core of the work of mourning."

(From Peter M. Sacks's "Interpreting the Genre: The Elegy and the Work of Mourning", in "The English Elegy".)

I swear if I had a pound for every time someone mentioned castration as "the core" of a fundamental human activity I wouldn't have to apply for funding next year. YOUR ANALYSIS FAILS TO TAKE INTO ACCOUNT AN ENTIRE GENDER

(yes I know Freud has opinions on how castration is relevant to women too, that doesn't help, somehow.)

ETA: okay, Sacks then goes on to posit a counter-model for women - mostly along the lines of "I know Freud doesn't believe women have much of a superego, but I think they probably do", but he does support it with Emily Brontë, so we're cool. It's really the eliding of one gender that bothers me in theory, not the devaluing; the latter at least gives you something to argue with.

This has been your angry literary criticism blog post of the day; now I'm off through the snow to the Manor, where I will pick out the bits of "Middlemarch" that best serve my purposes. Whee!

Aaaaah. Tonight was my first yoga session in literally years and I have that slightly disturbing post-yoga feeling of being a bit more flexible than usual (you'd think this would be nice, but when you're used to not being very flexible it just makes you feel like your limbs are coming out of joint). Also that lovely post-yoga feeling of being almost too wobbly and relaxed to type. Will stop typing and lie down and eat a grapefruit or something.

the instigator of underwear / showing up here and there

I don't have such a good track record with Sundays, they're usually days of no new webcomics, running out of nice food and not being able to get any more because the shops are already closed, and not doing much work (and not being distracted from it because there are no new webcomics). But they've been considerably better since getting to York. For instance, good things this Sunday:

- Paying my college bill and discovering afterwards that the exchange rate is currently half-decent, as both our currencies are apparently plummeting apace
- Clean sheets. And floors, because I've actually vacuumed now
- Being jollied out of a petulant "I DON'T WANT TO EAT ANY OF THIS FOOD" strop at lunchtime ("why don't you have this nice scone, you can scrape off the clotted cream and just have it with jam")
- Sitting in the Courtyard bar watching music videos on the big screen and discussing the pros and cons of going out with Justin Timberlake (pros: would want to have casual break-dancing sessions in the evenings, cons: would probably be humourless about having been in *NSYNC, consistently pronounces "me" as "mayyyyy")
- Pink's new album on Spotify, especially "Bad Influence" ("sure, I'll have another one, it's early / three olives, shake it up, I like it dirty") and "Boring" ("insert rap here / onetwothreefourfivesixseveneightGO")
- It might, theoretically, be possible to get some Ph.D funding from Norway, though Forskningsrådet is being confusing even by the highly confusing standards of most scholarship programmes
- Since I started getting my soap from Lush again, the high-tech shower pod (not really high-tech) is flower-scented at all times. I use Figs and Leaves in the shower and Sexy Peel for my hands, and get compliments about smelling nice (on Friday it was prefaced by "I'm not being creepy, but", which just doesn't work as a performative utterance).
- "The Meretriciad", an epic-length 1761 poem dedicated to being a real jerk about actresses
- In fact the entirety of 18th-Century Collections Online

I do miss doing the 1800s a bit, not least because if we were doing a seminar on women in 19th- rather than 18th-century theatre I'd be able to do it off the top of my head. (More or less. I could do some scintillating bluffing, at least.) And I wish I could pay someone to trawl through scholarship websites for me. But apart from that it's all good.

State of the kitchen

I realise I might just have a very low disgust threshold but there are chicken wings thawing in a water bath in the kitchen, right next to the sink. They still have bits of FEATHERS in them. It's so obvious that they're actually dismembered body parts. Wish everyone would just live off lovely inanimate cereal like I do.

(and the freezer is completely filled with yet more chicken parts, leaving no room for my frozen peas and Ben and Jerry's Bohemian Raspberry)

In which new cities are experienced

I got back from Leeds!

I don't know if I genuinely wasn't expecting to, but last night as we were walking back from the train station at about three-thirty in the morning I kept enthusiastically saying "I'm so PROUD of us, we've got back from Leeds." The enthusiasm must have been the remnants of the Red Bull I had around 11 pm, because I was fairly exhausted. We went from John's house (the one whose birthday party it was, though his actual birthday isn't for two more days, so we refused to let him invoke birthday privileges) via Wetherspoons to the train station to the York-Leeds train, where we took up an entire carriage and most of us completed the frankly ridiculous Train-Wine challenge (I had been provided with a low-alcohol-content, extremely disgusting bottle of Liebfraumilch for the occasion, but made little headway before dropping it in a trash can when we got off the train).

We skipped and pranced into Leeds, which does look very nice and should be revisited at a later date, and immediately headed into another Wetherspoons, where tears and recriminations erupted between two of the party attendees and everyone else did their level best to ignore them. (I was helped by the Wetherspoons toilets, which in my experience are always huge, clean, full of mirrors and dramatically lit, making them the ideal place for brief caffeine-fuelled dance parties if you've brought an iPod.) Having realized that we'd essentially sat on a train for half an hour in order to get from one 'spoons to another, we went to the Cockpit, where the air was thick with fog-machine smoke and everyone was dressed like members of My Chemical Romance. We danced until about two - the most unsettling part was when, towards the end when the music was getting cheesier, "What's My Age Again" came on and I realised that I am now the very age mentioned in that song (twenty-three) - at which point John started telling me that I had to be in charge and lead the troops, and I decided we should probably get to the train. (By that time one of us had been chucked out for fighting (it was more like "confrontational dancing", but the distinction was lost on the security guard), so it was about time.)

Outside the club I changed from my high-heeled boots to a pair of flats I'd brought with me, to many impressed comments about my foresight. I regretted it when we got to the station and, with a while to wait for the train, John and Gary snagged the boots and refused to give them back until I pried their fingers off. Long story short, we all piled onto the very last train of the night and were very pleased to see York again.

Now I'm going to go for a run and then, sadly, to a graduate seminar on Theory and/as Methodology.

boudling away

Key phrases from Ph.D proposal notes, currently at an early stage:

"Possibly pushing it."
"jokily cross-gendered"
"tearing you apart, or filling you with self-realisation, or making you go mildly insane"
"THING THEORY"
"I really think this is where I got confused last time around"
"You can't just marry one of them."
"the full-on paranoid gothic"
"completely obsessed with written records, drugs, and people who look like other people"
"might make my supervisor die of boredom"
"just enough to fill a bathtub"
"boudling" [a misspelling of "doubling", apparently]
"IT ALL COMES TOGETHER."

You can't tell from this, apart from possibly the last excerpt, but I feel like it's going pretty well.

Saturday

The boy behind the counter put my mini-brownie on a fairly big plate. He disappeared behind the espresso machine for a bit, and when he returned the little brownie was festooned with whipped cream, chocolate sauce and cocoa sprinkles. "That is ridiculous," I said. "It looked lonely," he said.

Then Sarah and Emma and Jane and I settled down in the leather armchairs, and I swung my legs over the armrest of my chair and addressed myself seriously to the brownie. The others talked and I drank coffee and read Between Women by Sharon Marcus (I'd promised myself to do some reading while we were waiting to head to the cinema, so was forced to be antisocial). It was a sunny day, nearly springlike - considerably aided by me wearing the Liberty rose-print dress my mother made me - and we were in a medieval-looking little stone room in the city walls, overlooking Walmgate. From time to time I popped my head out of the book to see what the others were talking about, or to say "OHHH this is so GOOD", in reference to the Marcus. It made me begin to feel qualifiedly excited rather than terrified about the Ph.D proposal, even though I still feel as if the plan should strike me like a thunderbolt, not be worked out laboriously. (And not just because it would be a lot easier.)

Afterwards we went to see "The Reader". Wept madly into tissues, and got on the bus feeling wistful.

Tonight is a toss-up between books and beer pong, and I really think it'll have to be the former. Serious committed student etc.

always, always / goodnight and go

Contractually binding (according to the one trainee lawyer among us) agreements entered into last night:

- Jimmy pledges to allow John to sell his (Jimmy's) future children for profit.

- Rifa pledges not to ruin John's birthday on Tuesday (this contract later shredded, but it was signed and witnessed so might still count).

- Gary pledges to go swimming in the river Ouse or its tributaries if I do (verbal agreement).

I'm just glad I got through the evening without getting married.

Tonight for once I'm staying in, with historiography articles on JSTOR (I am a history student manqué this term), Amanda Foreman's biography of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (Sarah got me a copy with the Gainsborough portrait on the cover rather than Keira Knightley, and much as I like Keira Knightley I think it's preferable), and "Goodnight and Go" by Imogen Heap, which is very sweet considering it's literally about stalking. If I could just pry myself out of bed I could even add peppermint tea to the equation. whee.

uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, oh my

How annoyed must Keats, in his alternate dimension, be that the part of his work people quote most often is from some random letter he wrote to his brother? Or do I just think it is because I'm not a Romanticist, and in fact lots of people go around quoting long reams of "Hyperion" at each other?

(The part of which I speak is this: "...several things dovetailed in my mind, & at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in literature & which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason." It's going in my essay, but I feel bad about it.)