'Oh, this old thing?!'

r.e. Dressing up: Twelfth night since mardi gras…

Lemon pips and cocktail sticks
Undone.

r.e. Dressing down:
No more dressing gowns at noon. [improbable]

I drew on my face: think, blink, wink.
Zip it.

Calm.

Identifying with female protagonists is for the emotionally flatulent, right?
That said, when I tried it all got a bit bleak.


‘She had an immense capacity for coolness and an appearance of calm that hid violent fits of passion’ - of Thérèse Raquin (Thérèse Raquin, Émile Zola).

‘I was in my own room as usual--just myself without obvious change: nothing had smitten me, or scathed me, or maimed me...Jane Eyre, who has been an ardent, expectant woman--almost a bride--was a cold, solitary girl again: her life was pale’ - Jane Eyre, (Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë).
How hatefully self-indulgent, of both of us.

‘you should know that about me. You should be aware of my principle characteristic which I choose to call my calmness. Other people have called it coldness, lack of commitment, over-control, a fishy disposition. I say that I’m calm, a calm person, and usually leave it at that, but I feel you should be better informed.’ - Jennifer (So I am Glad, A. L. Kennedy).

Masochistic asceticism, or sadistic ultraviolence it is, then.
I’m all amull with the possibilities.

Thisday.

Itinerary:
I sat stale, reading Bloom’s ‘Elegy for the Canon’.
I cooked with potato, onion, beetroot, cream.
I listened to music it went Words are flowing out like / endless rain into a paper cup.
I returned ‘Gays and the future of the Church’ to New College.
I funked from darkling bench on the Mound at rush hour.
I coffee.
I bibbled.
I looked at a tiny snake eating a tiny mouse.
I lied.

Inventory:
Flesh: bruised wrist, stained palms, scabbed shin.
Not-Flesh: montage as masochism? Consider.

Shtiufft.

~ Imperial echoes: Ventriloquism, polyphony and disembodied voices in the early American novel.
~ Medieval authorial anxiety and the oral tradition.
~ 19th century nannies (Jane Eyre, The Turn of the Screw, Vanity Fair).
~ Turkish Delights: sexuality and the Ottoman Other [1299-1573].
~ Puns:chords.
~ Nabakov, lesbians, myth.

If I was Scottish I would apply for a Carnegie summer research scholarship in one of these areas. It'd be magic.

Discompost.

As I lay decomposing...


I like dead things*.
I think I ought to like dying things (I don't**).
But decay is the favourite; it's a process.

* Best dead things, in order of fascination:
A dead mole in the garden.
A dead leopard on safari (me).
The dead bits at the surgeons' hall pathology museum.

** Least good dying things, in order of aversion:
Screaming rabbits.
People.

Grindhouse Romantic Irony.

Scratched reels and double-fluffed lines, I hadn’t noticed it (Romantic Irony) there (In films) before.

Draw attention to limitations of medium:
1. Bash against them [floozy facecrumple on dashboard]
2. Bash through them [mooch from motorcrush]
* (tense-shouldered brackets for apologetic metaphors - fickle disinterest in figurative bad-taste, right?)