I hate forms.
Right, I am attempting to fill out a bus pass form... The stupid NHS has moved one of my weekly appointments from ten mins away over the hills...so it is now 60 mins away,by bus. Now, I could buy a student bus pass for £35 pounds but I am technically allowed a free one under disability grounds as I am not always wonderful at walking. However, for this I need proof that I am on high end DLA for mobility. I am on mid rate DLA because I have not contacted them in the last six months since my ability to put one foot in front of the other with out the use of silver sticks has rapidly declined......I am also eligable to apply due to my weird and wonderful learning disability but, again, I do not get the high rate DLA for my special learning needs as I instead get high rate for being mad (which I contest)
So, due to aforemention learning difficulity forms and i go not gel well. The little boxes are skittish flouncy things and I have a odd inability to ever write the information down correctly. There is no box for being a bit nuts, so I have the choice of sending it off with the incorrect DLA information but a cover letter fromn my CPN of giving up.
I only have to go to this ridiculous weekly appointment in the first place because some doctor I saw over a year ago though I was nuttier than a snickers bar and threw me headfirst into the depressing experience of group therapy. (which is a whole other matter, and I intend to discuss it at lenght some other time)
Oh. that was boring.
The two other girls have headed homewards today so it is only myself and my lovely male housemate occupying our living space. Contrary to many peoples opinion of us, we have just cleaned trhe house. We have also filled the fridge from beer and stuck crayon drawing on food on the box.
More about other things later, I am off to work.
Thursday, 3 December 2009
Wednesday, 2 December 2009
It is (so) cold in this house.
There is so much work.
I am having trouble with poetic forms. I can't get the dumdedumdedum of Iambic pentameter to translate onto a page. There is something foreboding about a blank word document.
A poem I love
How to Disappear
by Amanda Dalton
(from "How to Disappear, Bloodaxe Books, 1999)
First rehearse the easy things.
Lose your words in a high wind,
walk in the dark on an unlit road,
observe how other people mislay keys,
their diaries, new umbrellas.
See what it takes to go unnoticed
in a crowded room. Tell lies:
I love you. I'll be back in half an hour.
I'm fine.
The childish things.
Stand very still behind a tree,
become a cowboy, say you have died,
climb into wardrobes, breathe on a mirror
until there's no one there, and practice magic,
tricks with smoke and fire --
a flick of the wrist and the victim's lost
his watch, his wife, his ten pound note. Perfect it.
Hold your breath a little longer every time.
The hardest things.
Eat less, much less, and take a vow of silence.
Learn the point of vanishing, the moment
embers turn to ash, the sun falls down,
the sudden white-out comes.
And when it comes again - it will -
just walk at it. walk into it, and walk,
until your know
I remember being about 14, swamped in teen angst and preoccupied with an eating disorder and studiously copying this into a notebook. It has cropped up in a few notebooks I have owned since then and I can never tear myself away from it. I found it on the Creative Writing reading list last week and it made me smile, because I realised I felt I 'owned' it. It is like how for a girl with borwn eyes 'Brown eyed girl' is their song. I once have this notion of photographing myself attempting all the acts noted in this poem and leaving them, with a copy of the poem somewhere public - like a train station. At the time though I felt I would be creating my own melodrama... it is still an idea, now I have thought about it again, I may suggest to my friends who study preformance art.
I am sick of my own thoughts though. Often I catch myself thinking in cliches...and wishing I could just shake myself out of it. I think thinking about writing so much and attempting to write is dangerous. I feel self absorbed and petty......turn Borderline by proxy.
My housemate is sitting on my bed while I am stooped over my desk and I think we just managed to burn our poor excuse for dinner.
I am going to stare at some sonnets before meeting people at the pub later.
I am having trouble with poetic forms. I can't get the dumdedumdedum of Iambic pentameter to translate onto a page. There is something foreboding about a blank word document.
A poem I love
How to Disappear
by Amanda Dalton
(from "How to Disappear, Bloodaxe Books, 1999)
First rehearse the easy things.
Lose your words in a high wind,
walk in the dark on an unlit road,
observe how other people mislay keys,
their diaries, new umbrellas.
See what it takes to go unnoticed
in a crowded room. Tell lies:
I love you. I'll be back in half an hour.
I'm fine.
The childish things.
Stand very still behind a tree,
become a cowboy, say you have died,
climb into wardrobes, breathe on a mirror
until there's no one there, and practice magic,
tricks with smoke and fire --
a flick of the wrist and the victim's lost
his watch, his wife, his ten pound note. Perfect it.
Hold your breath a little longer every time.
The hardest things.
Eat less, much less, and take a vow of silence.
Learn the point of vanishing, the moment
embers turn to ash, the sun falls down,
the sudden white-out comes.
And when it comes again - it will -
just walk at it. walk into it, and walk,
until your know
I remember being about 14, swamped in teen angst and preoccupied with an eating disorder and studiously copying this into a notebook. It has cropped up in a few notebooks I have owned since then and I can never tear myself away from it. I found it on the Creative Writing reading list last week and it made me smile, because I realised I felt I 'owned' it. It is like how for a girl with borwn eyes 'Brown eyed girl' is their song. I once have this notion of photographing myself attempting all the acts noted in this poem and leaving them, with a copy of the poem somewhere public - like a train station. At the time though I felt I would be creating my own melodrama... it is still an idea, now I have thought about it again, I may suggest to my friends who study preformance art.
I am sick of my own thoughts though. Often I catch myself thinking in cliches...and wishing I could just shake myself out of it. I think thinking about writing so much and attempting to write is dangerous. I feel self absorbed and petty......turn Borderline by proxy.
My housemate is sitting on my bed while I am stooped over my desk and I think we just managed to burn our poor excuse for dinner.
I am going to stare at some sonnets before meeting people at the pub later.
Sunday, 29 November 2009
Stickers and December...
Today I have valiantly succeeded in only spending five mins of PostSecret, only making three cups of tea and only smoking three ciggerattes..... I have managed to assemble eighty three whole words on a page which for now will be saved under 'poor excuse for essay.' I feel as Sundays go I am thus far entitled to brownie points.
'GoodBoy stickers' were introduced into our house a while ago. A trip to the pound shop resulted in grand delusions of creating a starchart... this failed but the 'boys' (being two twenty year old students) react well to them......the 'snappy work' sticker has a pleasing image of a crab. We have all wondered to the pub before and all stood outside peeling stickers from jumpers.
Oh, Wales is a cold place to be. We are lucky enough to have a decent house but being in shoulder-nudging proximity to the sea means it is always warmer on campus, a fact I try and remind myself of when I crawl out of bed in a sub-arctic house at silly-o-clock in the morning for lectures.
Essay topic...am relating Marxism, psychoanalysis and femminism to poetry... that is the boring bit - but the poem itself is good. (I don't like the word good)
Foreign
By Carol Ann Duffy
Imagine living in a strange, dark city for twenty years.
There are some dismal dwellings on the east side
and one of them is yours. On the landing, you hear
your foreign accent echo down the stairs. You think
in a language of your own and talk in theirs.
Then you are writing home. The voice in your head
recites the letter in a local dialect; behind that
is the sound of your mother singing to you,
all that time ago, and now you do not know
why your eyes are watering and what's the word for this.
You use the public transport. Work. Sleep. Imagine one night
you saw a name for yourself sprayed in red
against a brick wall. A hate name. Red like blood.
It is snowing on the streets, under the neon lights,
as if this place were coming to bits before your eyes.
And in the delicatessen, from time to time, the coins
in your palm will not translate. Inarticulate,
because this is not home, you point at fruit. Imagine
that one of you says Me not know what these people mean.
It like they only go to bed and dream. Imagine that.
I first encountered Duffy in school, when Education for leisure was included in an AQA anthology. I spent hours memorisising it and writing it up my forearms in black pen which quickly became an unreadable smudge. That poem, combined with the lyrics to Creep by Radiohead are the literary soundtrack to my GCSE years. I do like Duffy, although she does not conjour up the awe some other poets do, her poems always have a spark to them, some kind of strength behind them. I occasionally wrap myself in fantasies of meeting her (as she works at my sisters university.......) That would not work though....even in the company of lecturers I admire my speech trips over itself. All I manage is strings of made up words that sound like hysterical expletives.
I was talking with housemate today about Way Back When I lived Somewhere Else and memories of such time...there is something about the fall into December that makes me nostalgic I think. She listened and smiled though, so It was fine.
Work tommorow. I say work, I am going for a pub dinner armed with a birthday cake.Need to text BossLady and enquire about the fact I have not been paid for nearly two months now.
Cup of tea 4 i think....
Blue x
'GoodBoy stickers' were introduced into our house a while ago. A trip to the pound shop resulted in grand delusions of creating a starchart... this failed but the 'boys' (being two twenty year old students) react well to them......the 'snappy work' sticker has a pleasing image of a crab. We have all wondered to the pub before and all stood outside peeling stickers from jumpers.
Oh, Wales is a cold place to be. We are lucky enough to have a decent house but being in shoulder-nudging proximity to the sea means it is always warmer on campus, a fact I try and remind myself of when I crawl out of bed in a sub-arctic house at silly-o-clock in the morning for lectures.
Essay topic...am relating Marxism, psychoanalysis and femminism to poetry... that is the boring bit - but the poem itself is good. (I don't like the word good)
Foreign
By Carol Ann Duffy
Imagine living in a strange, dark city for twenty years.
There are some dismal dwellings on the east side
and one of them is yours. On the landing, you hear
your foreign accent echo down the stairs. You think
in a language of your own and talk in theirs.
Then you are writing home. The voice in your head
recites the letter in a local dialect; behind that
is the sound of your mother singing to you,
all that time ago, and now you do not know
why your eyes are watering and what's the word for this.
You use the public transport. Work. Sleep. Imagine one night
you saw a name for yourself sprayed in red
against a brick wall. A hate name. Red like blood.
It is snowing on the streets, under the neon lights,
as if this place were coming to bits before your eyes.
And in the delicatessen, from time to time, the coins
in your palm will not translate. Inarticulate,
because this is not home, you point at fruit. Imagine
that one of you says Me not know what these people mean.
It like they only go to bed and dream. Imagine that.
I first encountered Duffy in school, when Education for leisure was included in an AQA anthology. I spent hours memorisising it and writing it up my forearms in black pen which quickly became an unreadable smudge. That poem, combined with the lyrics to Creep by Radiohead are the literary soundtrack to my GCSE years. I do like Duffy, although she does not conjour up the awe some other poets do, her poems always have a spark to them, some kind of strength behind them. I occasionally wrap myself in fantasies of meeting her (as she works at my sisters university.......) That would not work though....even in the company of lecturers I admire my speech trips over itself. All I manage is strings of made up words that sound like hysterical expletives.
I was talking with housemate today about Way Back When I lived Somewhere Else and memories of such time...there is something about the fall into December that makes me nostalgic I think. She listened and smiled though, so It was fine.
Work tommorow. I say work, I am going for a pub dinner armed with a birthday cake.Need to text BossLady and enquire about the fact I have not been paid for nearly two months now.
Cup of tea 4 i think....
Blue x
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