lyre

sunny cold winter days. so much to do, sitting on the chair in my room; big bay window with its view of patchwork welsh brick and slate and hill and washing line. following the sun by leaning degrees as it moves through the motions of morning, from pane to pane, trying to store up some warmth, listening to bob dylan with my head on my knees in a copper curtain of hair. this bright red guitar, & chrysanthemums once more coming up fiercely. the town empty and beautiful as it always is somewhere at the back of my mind. shifting focus between the cold pale blue of the sky & the warmth of my life. the delight i still feel in this place, in myself. even (not letting on to) two days of weeping in copious waves for a friendship i thought i had lost -through no fault of my own- but which turned up without the smallest inkling of ever having been misplaced, or mislaid. stupid impersonality of text messages & people never sounding in writing as they do in or about their person.



generous glugs of mulled wine, red, made sleepy & hearing scilly phrases in the shipping forecast to laugh at. being shored up against the cold wallpaper, in bed, by a blond head and by snores. jeff buckley, pink floyd, the last waltz, pj. what derrida has to say about death (or had) & reading against the grain of medieval wills. mold & damp & the droning chanting warming voice of dylan thomas, constant radio4, ghost stories of m.r. james and j.s. lefanu. knitting & unraveling. earl grey, sir edward tea, chamomile, ginger, green, and yorkshire. student-being & drinking too much, in good hats though & dancing, talking to middle-aged people who never managed to leave aber. the awful poetry of our lecturers & writing again & learning & forgetting german. paths among red bracken in the woods, narrow paths from our back door among bushes, with still the remnants of frost-dried blackberries; rain-wet dark welsh slate against bright bright green moss. the welsh market on baker st. the olive branch on sundays, watching the people pass in the rain & hearing all the greek tunes that i thought were turkish. the over-warm arts centre & tea after class & the hurries of essays. warm red carpets of the national library with their arrangements of lilies. making up ridiculous stories about the names in lidl, dining in style at rheidol restaurant with its overwhelming collection of household christmas decorations.



the last three months especially have been punctuated by narcissism. i've had no internet since july, so i'm sorry i haven't been able to keep up with you very much. leaving for shrew tomorrow & maybe liverpool for new year's. i hope you are all gorgeously thriving as always. xx

i'm leaving ankara in a week. no more pubs in apartment flats, where you ring the bell and someone answers the door & you sit on a balcony facing other balconies where people live & there are nibbles. and no more cheap wool either. :(
i'm going to be in freiburg for 3 weeks, then i'm going to england & then hopefully wales. a bit sad to have to give up the part of my holidays that involved lying stupidly by the aegean for days on end, but ah well.
what are you all doing? i'm not going to have regular internet access until at least october, so talk to me now!

today i woke up from a vivid dream of an electric blue electric guitar. oh, it was a darling.
emails from my little cousin make my day because not only are they ridiculously spelt, they also include little parenthetical explanations, like: “hope u get 2 gurman on time next time. soz (soz= sorry)2 here about the bus moving”. i've been reading about the Rechtschreibreform & thinking maybe one way of spelling is too few.

still shouting english profanities at cars that spatter me with mud & transport offices who casually tell me the bus is always 5-10 minutes late. and i still love the view from the classroom, of the toppermost dome & the four minarets of kocatepe rising out of boxy dwellings, pencil-like but hazy and soft in the fog. some days i sit next to an imam; he looks exceptionally like everyone else. i'm doing well in tests & homeworks, although i am not yet allowed to do fun things like give in to an impulse to use zeugma. buying rounds of tea at break, however, one can.

after class, much time spent in cosy cafés with friendly acquaintances. but there are some simple truths to consider: 1. too few people inspire or amaze, when it is perfectly within their grasp to do so; and 2. it is utterly impossible to listen to anyone when pink floyd is playing in the background.

this is for niche, with apologies for taking so long:
sitting around in nargile cafés, and high-up terrace coffee shops with friends i never thought i'd see again, the weather considerably mild, with not a “soupçon of snow” as a boy recently wrote me. they were telling me of the mounds of pasta & chocolate they had consumed last night, and sharing marshmallows out of the mug. i like girls who are honest about eating lots. früh early grey, the city full of fuck-all holes and diversions. i've signed up for 10 weeks worth of german lessons at the goethe institute, and i get to be very ungermanly late to all of them. waiting for the bus i practice counting, i made zweihundertachtundsechzig the other day. if the lights are red i can get off the bus before it turns all the way up into dikmen st. then i wend my way at a sort of skip walk jog along the front of parliament which has this stupid two-level pavement, and the guards like dolls in glass cases. then across what seems to be called 'atatürk square' although what it really is is a strip of hard stone seats flanked by road. the fountains are frozen over and the outdoor heaters are never on. down the steps of the underpass where there is often a man playing the kaval, with what i think must be a yearning for his village - i will give him money one day - up the 25 steps on the other side and then i'm rather winded and walk past the wool shop, the two kurs-books bloody heavy. skipwalkjog along bakanlıklar and then up three floors of the goethe institute, stripping off gloves and hat and coat and scarf as i go along, with a quick "morgen" to the receptionist and "kolay gelsin" to the man who's always sweeping the 34th step as i pass him. and usually very out of breath into the classroom at 9:21.
grammar has become an obsession, and constantly thinking do i know how to say this? even in english. it is fantastic, a rush. but shocking how many adults have no idea about words and will make the simplest -de/da mistake and the equally simple -ki mistake, and forget to write the question word separately and screw up their sentences; i haven't had a single email in weeks without these errors, and it's like a scratch in a record.
designing a website for a woman who asked me for “pastel southern france colours” which are apparently dead greens and flat reds and such. how could she look at eyes all day, lovely dark glassy eyes, bright blue eyes with flecks of yellow, blurry eyes and myopic eyes but eyes that look so bright and clear and ask me for such awful colours? we met in a hotel lobby and just about the second thing she asked me was how to spell “coffee” and she pushed the plunger down and ordered the receptionist to close the door because there was a draught. the first was would i keep a secret for her? and she took a drag on her cigarette. sort of knowing to be madam and that if you were kind instead of honest you would be doing oddjobs for her until she retired to the south of france, i assume.
anyway, she scrolled through endless sections of her gargantuan CV, admitting that she had not updated the list of all the meetings she had attended since 2005 when she just got fed up. i sat there in my coat not particularly giving a fuck if my fingernails were dirty or she thought i would be in my 30's and blonde (was this because her husband recommended me to her?), but that my hair colour was nice and suited my eyes, just wondering how i was going to look at beige long enough to code it. and did she, somewhere in the depths of her vaio, perhaps have a few bytes set aside for a list of fun things she had done?
doing other people's work is slow death. i'm lots of irresponsible youth and won't return phone calls and care naught about tardy emails or for professional people who may be pulling their hair out. i'm a sucker for pretty hair. the lovely haired girl i talked to at the philosophy seminar is fairly the reason i am taking german now; we had lunch at leman the other day and talked about language of course, and how she is leaving soon for berlin, reading silly comics off the wall and table and placemats. nearly talked to a schoolboy on the bus yesterday because he had the most perfect curls, almost symmetric like morris wallpaper. don't think i have seen a properly blond boy since i came to this greybrown city, but life is good when you can write pretend postcards from hamburg with sentences that work out, and end in sein.

in 2006 i...

- ruined my taste in music
- graduated (my first academic achievement... ever)
- had a great summer in aber
- got a job for the first time
- realised i will die if i have to work steadily for longer than a month
- watched the mighty boosh & two pints of lager... for the first time
- knit 3 hats, 2 shawls, oodles of phone cosies & a few scarves
- really hated the fashions. please no more footless tights/leggings + ridiculously short skirts this year!
- travelled around wales a little bit
- held a beach party
- got a macbook <3
- stayed up all night talking lots & lots of times. bestest fun
- realised it's not that difficult to talk to strangers
- kept in touch with more friends than i'd ever imagined i would

music:
arctic monkeys
the killers
berlin
the doors
janis joplin
edith piaf

some things i want to do in 2007...

- learn german well
- learn to carry out a basic conversation in 10 languages (i want some scandinavian languages in there too!)
- meet ppl from lots of different countries
- travel! for goodness sake
- do an MA in aber
- dance dance

not really into the xmas spirit.
all i know is that i haven't started knitting any new year presents yet.
instead, i have knit 2 hats... for myself.

oh, and i've fallen victim to myspace, so add me if ye please.

//

i have invites for macheist if anyone wants. it's fun & it wastes time.

i was woken by an earthquake at 4:30 today. oh joy.

( procrastinatory survey. i have so much work to doooo... )

who is your favourite alcoholic poet?

1. i am very very bored of translating school websites.
2. when will summer come?
3. i am dreadfully looking forward to a 5-hour derrida seminar this saturday.
4. does that make me very odd?
5. cardies on 3.5mm needles take a bloody long time.

lyre.vox.com < just in case everyone decides to migrate there like they did to lj. although i don't see the point. there are ads at the bottom of every blog, and frankly i'd rather wait until personal wikis become the next big thing. anyway, i have two invites if anyone wants.

i switched to a macbook a couple weeks ago. some of my favourite mac things at the moment are:
- moleskine icons! heee.
- the cocktail widget
- big bang backgammon
- front row (whoosh!)
- exposé
- the ability to multi-task! omg omg!

BUT, things that annoy me no end:
- THE KEYBOARD! no pg up or pg down keys, no delete key, and no end and home keys. there are keyboard shortcuts for them but some of them require two hands which is useless.
- and i'm still not buying the one-button mouse thing.

the sound of walls being demolished below you is not a reassuring one to wake up to.
so i went to the library and read up some deconstruction, an interview in the Winter '06 New Literary History with Derrida & Cixous, (some strange time-warp going on) here if you are subscribed.

"In all of his texts a naiveté is manifest, something native."
"One could make a poem with nothing but the titles of his books."
"In reading you we learn that the truth is always a bit further on. From the place where you arrive, you set off again, you take yourself back up, you relaunch yourself, you do not sit the truth on your knees. Truth makes you tick [La vérité te fait marcher] in all the senses of the word."

i wish i knew french beyond the oddments left from school. all i want to study at the moment are languages, and i don't care if even the most adorable boys don't understand WHY the deconstruction, WHY the words in dead english & dead turkish.

"Untranslatability is always what guides me: that the sentence is eternally indebted to idiom. The body of the word should be inseparable from the meaning to such an extent that translation can only lose it."

just sat my last ever exam as an undergrad. it ended something like, "the spider web threads between friends may grow thin but can never be broken." aww. now i suppose i just have to hope that it gets read.

set off for snowdon and ended up in barmouth (abermaw) yesterday. haha!
( barmouth )

it looks almost exactly like ( aberdovey ) actually.

( ynyslas )

( countryside )

a birch sapling tentatively seeks the sunlight...


its young leaves not yet fully unfurled into adult glory


it waits patiently on the forest floor, a promise of the tall and slender thing of later.


reading: the priory by dorothy whipple, & the persephone quarterly which arrived the other day.

weather was marvellous. went for a walk through the woods, had sandwiches on the beach and read the royal memoirs of queen victoria's granddaughter which i picked up for 5p.

the dashed waves and the dotted kiss pooled and pothered by the mess the old lady in the cottage cut, cut cut across the allotted paths her geraniums, bunches bosomed, thorns caught at her shawl print o' the wave pitter patter went her baby feet shortcut, a door flew open its hinges halved a small sliver of shadow and a small slice of light cut across inside outside the trellaces slept embowered in arms of rose clematis clinging petals dawn set over them ended its day in dusk, the slip shod its moorings the bricks their niche. the old lady sat now and kissed the cat, the curtain had one loose clip and sagged an arch of the night entered the room and arch of the dawned room exited and the trees took it upon their trunks. in hurried succession the dining room chairs clustered and crammed around the table eagerly awaiting tea and jammed scones and for a child or a girl or a three-year's woman cry

"you're jam, simply jam!"

the eye slipped, the horse neighed at the neighbours, the little birds took the voices of the trees and trilled in the green tresses the recesses of words that the night and the bark are too old now to pronounce without rolling r's and dashing s's, spitting skylarks and the damned nuisance of the rattling window upstairs. the old lady turns on the marconi and the living room chairs are full of themselves now their upholstery plump and firm listening squarely, a voice the same voice, the story where they cut it in the waves. last night last night, tonight has forgotten last night's happenings; she takes up her old shells and smiles at the girl in the red dress the dress in which she is more beautiful than - and the girl walks down the marble steps like - and the dress is like - and the man is - and they dance - whirl swirl sweep gig home dress. old shells old lace such a straight dance of them she has forgotten to stop the spots knots knots nods nods nods But of the red dress of the girl which the man has bought from a shop full of old things, the red is like the strawberry jam she ate at the picnic in the days when her husband thought of her hats and the time she caught a butterfly just by the turn of a phrase; the man struck her an appraising nod the field was just turning a lavender mottled with the hum of bees after honey and the - nod - even tick of the clock made him rage and fury settled on the empty dress and the redress and possess he could not against the hands empty empty was the sky mackerel dashed, he smothered and struggled the sand hid, hillocks piled up against the shore he did smite and was - in the dimple of the yellow sand sprawl the print of the wave ran along and along (ever ever?) he saw her smile like she had forgotten she could smile for do people smile who are no more severed against the sea and the sky but at peace? he had an inkling the waves stopped.

hoarse now and overbrewed the old lady dropped the shells and picked the time flicked the lights and was gone. the dining room chairs stood very very still, or sat and pondered the tall darkness the arched darkness the cat's back the kitten their own plumpness the girl who wasn't there.

finished my clapotis. it is the colour of a penguin twentieth-century classic.



( swish swish )

things you might like to listen to:
- penguin's podcast of 'a christmas carol'
- friday's afternoon play, 'Chance Acquaintances' by Colette
- the friday play, 'Marilyn and Ella Backstage at the Mocambo' by Bonnie Greer
- Sunday night at 10 with Malcolm Laycock

i wake up every morning to the windows misted over with condensation. frosts like snow.
i knit some legwarmers out of leftover wool, but look, they're missing a hint of yellow!

the sky's clear, and i listen to big band
and knit and drink tea and try to stay warm.
but in most other things i don't resemble a grandmother so very much!
.
.
.
.

i'm sorry i've been remiss in replying. i would still love photos, if you have a chance to send me any! i'm going to try to get them printed sometime next week, for christmas cards and such. just to clear up some confusion, arising from my poor description:
- i would like you to send me the image FILE only, not the actual print. i'm going to get them printed myself.
- when i referred to 'landscape', i meant the orientation of the page, not necessarily landscape pictures. :)

and finally, if you'd like prints of any of my photos in return, just let me know which. i'm going to get them printed in the smallest size, so i can probably afford to pop them in an envelope and send them to you. especially if you are one of the people i owe a letter to!

my photos are all over the place. some are in this lj, some here, and some here. i have most of them saved in high resolution, but if i don't you might have to choose another. sorry!

email: dyd3 AT aber.ac.uk

p.s. if you know what i should do for masters, please let me know too!

literary théory


look, they're related!
not that we didn't suspect it.