not dead yet

Lurching. That is the best way to describe me at present. Lurching. Possibly creaking, like my bones are made of very precariously patched together scrap metal.

This is after two weeks of university, so the thought that the first two weeks have been good fills me with a sort of British Dread, y'know the "oh dear. things are going badly well, it can only get worse" sort of feeling. Optimism does not run strongly in my family, despite my best efforts at morning affirmations, which usually go "you are alive! congratulations, special snowflake!" before I fall back to sleep and dream of giant boots chasing me while brandishing copies of the Yellow Pages.

So. Faux-Academics, the only thing we talk about here (apart from irritations vexations and agitations). I'm currently studying a course on 18th-19th Century Literature (not quite sure how Kipling's 'Kim' ended up in that one), American Literature (which, in typical American fashion, refuses to travel linearly), Women's Literature (which rants and raves) and an history course that I have renamed "Why the 20th Century is so depressing". It's all terrible fun - I have been swamped by my readings, heading to bed at 2am after writing reams on Whitman and Margaret Cavendish (who was amazing), listening to bootlegs of Ginsberg reading his poetry rushing around campus trying to be in the right place at the right time, reading the unfortunately named Northrop Frye, who name drops more than I do. It's not quite the academic dream I had in mind, because people still don't really want to talk about it, but I wear a beret on days I forget to brush my hair and think about how awesome my brain's potential is.

I spent tonight at home, ostensibly dog sitting although in reality I was reading about some guy who once met Thomas Pynchon during the 60s and has never quite recovered. I wanted to sneer at him but that would be like sneering at myself (I only do that on Tuesdays). So instead I read Tennyson, who's not even on any of my courses, but my brain was hammering out like Ginsberg the night he met Moloch and really, I have to start going out on Saturday nights.

...I went out last Saturday night. I did! My siblings took me to see Bill Bailey, who was witty and outraged and called Julia Gillard a Dalek. He's probably right, I've never seen her use a stair case (only an elevator). He played Eine Kleine Nachtmusik on clown horns. We're playing that in our quartet at the moment. His was more orderly. The best thing about Bailey's comedy, for me, was that it's a little meandering, sort of whimsical. He doesn't swear just to make people laugh. My sides hurt the next day, in a good way.

This week I have to read Pamela by Samuel Richardson, Oroonoko by Aphra Behn, Inherent Vice by Pynchon and some ghastly article about the why colonialism fell to bits. I'm seeing Inception tomorrow afternoon, and planning on eating lots of yoghurt.