last night the moon was shining through my window, it wasn't quite a full moon, but it was close. it looked like a painting, round and bright and white, with a halo of hazy light surrounding it, and wisps of grey clouds half obscuring it. it threw a shaft of cool light into my room, and across my bed, the shaft of light moved slowly as the moon slowly rode across the sky, but i fell asleep before it reached my head.

with full moons and mozart and a room with a view, i have been feeling romantic. i had a dream that prolonged this mood, the feelings concerned with the dream have invaded the whole day and my mind keeps wandering back to it. nothing much happened in the dream, it was a boy, who took all the rings off my fingers and laid his head in my lap. i put my hand on his head. it was one of the best dreams i've had for a long time, i woke up feeling peaceful, i could almost still feel the weight and warmth of his body as he lay on the sofa, resting against me. i didn't want to move for a while, after i awoke, for fear of disturbing the feeling, but i needn't have worried because it has remained all through the day.

i'm just letting these days slip by i hardly notice them perhaps i don't even want to notice them perhaps i'm letting them slip past because i want them to go perhaps i'm not letting them at all perhaps i'm actively forcing them.
emotion is interesting when your days are spent alone and with your own thoughts. there is a tendancy to become complacent about the world, if there's nothing to stimulate you, doesn't everything become flat? so when i get so angry with the cd player for telling me "no disk" when thats a blatant lie, and i hit it, and it hurts my hand and doesn't make me feel any better anyway, well thats interesting. it's like, if you feel nothing for long enough, then emotions are going to spark out of you whether you like it or not. and then i sit on my bed and look at my hand and hope i didn't break the cd player and wonder why whenever it tells me "no disk" i get so angry i can't contain it. there's the opposite aswell, an amusing thought will take hold of me, and a laugh will escape by accident, just bubble right out of my mouth. and i'll have to check myself, and hope no one was around to hear, because you know, only crazy people laugh to themselves.

i was thinking the other day about the year 2000 and how we spent that new years eve with people we didn't know, and like ever with people we don't know i couldn't help but hide away in my shell, i'm not sure i said 2 words all evening. and i remember wondering vaguely beforehand about the passing of the century and suchlike and trying to work out whether i really cared or not and whether it really meant anything or not, and i was kinda hoping it did mean something because that would make it exciting. i remember watching the clock edging towards midnight, i remember the last 10 seconds. and then i remember when it hit midnight. there was a split second, where i noticed that the clock had struck midnight but no one else had. this, as i said, was a fraction of a second, but it seemed to last forever. the first second of the new century and everyone else's reactions were too slow, and there i was, lost and floating in the first fraction of a second of the new century, wondering why no one else was reacting. i wanted to clap or laugh or shout, but i was in the company of people i didn't know, and didn't much like, so i stopped myself, and i waited for someone else to notice first. that was my very first experience of the new century: too quick for other people, but too shy to show it. hanging back waiting for someone else to take the lead. lost in uncertainty about myself and surrounded by people i didn't want to be surrounded by. i can't help feeling that the turning of the millennium was important, that it did mean something, because the very first moment of it seems to have tainted the rest of it. 

i go for walks usually to try and clear my mind. this i find, does not actually work, i'm unsure why i do it. in fact the process of walking alone allows my mind free reign to think about whatever it likes, often getting me into a worse state than i was before. however despite this and the air being so warm and the clouds so low, it was enjoyable. i like the fact that whenever you get out of the town people smile and say hello as they pass.

the sky is white again with clouds. seems as though i haven't seen a blue sky for weeks on end, the sky seems too low for summer, it's so close i can practically touch it. at least the air is cool and not muggy. the thundery days have passed and the ants have mostly stopped flying. the sparrows are bold nowadays. theres one in particular, he must be young, just born this year. he's got more intense chestnut-brown feathers than i've ever seen on a sparrow. when i'm sat out in the garden reading he'll fly down near my, hop about, perching precariously on plants that are barely strong enough to hold his weight. he doesn't seem afraid of me so long as i don't move suddenly.

 

hmmm.. i wish everyone else would stop writing such good blogs... it's making mine look terrible.

felt peaceful in the woods today, listened to the buzzards calling and was patted gently on the head by young new branches. finally got myself out of the dreadful mood i had been in for the last few days. nowadays i can mostly control my teenage moods, i can feel them coming on and steer safely out of the way. unfortunately sometimes i'm just not strong enough to resist and i get dragged down into it. and the silly thing is, it's like a whirlpool, i just start feeling worse and worse until the severity of the mood i am in is completely disproportionate to whatever it was that put me in the mood in the first place. sometimes i can't even remember what put me in the mood in the first place. i find it very difficult to crawl back out of it once i'm in it. it usually lasts all day and takes a nights sleep to make me forget about it. (thats if i can sleep - bad moods give me headaches, i assume from excessive frowning.)

i like the way that i can tell myself what time i want to wake up in the mornings and my body will do it for me. cuts out the need for an alarm clock.

you know things are getting bad when you've just sat down and watched "how clean is your house?", "honey, i ruined the house" and "supernanny" in one go... talk about bad tv. television just does me no good at all, it just annoys me. i'm sick of being advertised too. i'm sick of being told how i should be. i'm sick of 20 year olds advertising anti-ageing creams, and i'm sick of everyone on tv being young and thin and beautiful. i don't want any more stuff, so i wish they'd stop trying to sell it to me. what i think and what i say and what i do are far more important than what i look like or what i own.
my day has not been completely wasted though. i did sit down and write a (rather bad) short story on my typewriter (my typewriter makes me feel like i'm actually writing something good, even when i'm not). and i started a painting.

my lemon tree is starting to put out new leaves. after i "pruned" it (er... chopped the top off) to stop it becoming too leggy it has looked a little sorry for itself. i am too fond of my plants... i go out at least twice a day to check on them. i have now adopted a small jasmine plant to add to my collection of small/weedy/close-to-death plants. last weekend we had some visitors, they were sat out on the veranda, and one of them was sitting near my group of pots. his legs were crossed and his foot was dangerously near to the tops of my plants, it kept swingin down and nearly mangling them beyond repair. i spent the whole time we were sat there watching his foot and feeling anxious. obsessive? quite possibly. i don't even like bizzi lizzies.
 
thought of the day from jonathan richman:
"well it takes gall to reach out and try affection, on people who maybe want your touch but you can't tell. because they can laugh, and thats like rejection, and you probably won't like that very well."
(the point being of course, that you should try anyway)

finding it difficult to eat. finding it difficult to sleep. finding it difficult to concentrate. smiling a lot though.
 
got up last night at 2am, i'd been lying there awake since 1. i had to turn on my light because my lamp has broken. it's one of those dull energy saving lightbulbs, but it still blinded me for a few seconds with brightness. the darkness fled to the window panes and stayed there pressing against them. all i could hear was the church bells striking 2:30 and the ticking of my clock. at that point in the night, the only thing that counts is the passing of time. i tried to do some writing, but the sound of my pencil travelling across paper was tremendous. it seemed so loud i was afraid of waking other people with it. i had nothing much to say anyway, i was trying to tire myself.

the boxes of seaweed under the desk are making this room smell like salt again. it smells thick and heavy, but not strong. for a moment i almost mistook it for something else.
 
i was lying on the sofa a few minutes ago. i had read a bit more of birdsong, and listened again to a song by beth orten. strangely enough, i am being seduced by both, it was not a sensation i anticipated. but they both wrapped me up in something brown and mustard coloured, like a blanket, only it wasn't soft or warm, just comforting, just good to have. the sensation of having your mind stretched. i felt i could continue this feeling on my own, i felt i could sustain my own original thoughts and ideas, i lay back and expected to be a poem or a novel or a thought, i wanted my mind to carry me along, but realised too late that such things require strength that i just don't have. instead i resorted to reliving pink memories of hot summer exam days, water bottles, and awkward acquaintances.
 
i'm feeling drawn to my tpewriter. all pistachio green and ready, sitting on my tidied desk, it's an inviting sight. but with other people in the house this just isn't possible, and i believe i am too young to make any good use of it anyway. i read a section of a story about a man who lost the ability to speak. words just dropped out of his vocabulary until he had nothing left.
 
the colours of this post... pink... pistachio green... mustard yellow... i think they are reemerging from my mind from yesterdays experience. i looked at all the tiny shells and pieces of glass and china that i collected from the beach. it took me hours to collect them, i moved around the small pebbly beach in an illogical manner, sitting down on areas i had not yet searched and looking carefully among the grey stones for little pinpricks of colour glowing, little delicious fragments of shell or glass or whatever. i made them into a necklace yesterday, glueing them onto little circlets of wire twisted from paperclips, and threaded the circles onto yellow cotton. the colours... pink... green... yellow...

nighttime adventures

the one major disadvantage of being female is the immense amount of pain you have to endure. i'd like to think, perhaps, that it's just me. that most women get by quite easily without too much hardship at all, and it's just something that, unluckily, plagues me. however, i do not think this is the case. after conversations with various family and friends i have come to the conclusion that it is not uncommon to, like me, every month become reduced to a quivering mess as the so-called "dull ache" (!! i remember thats what we told about it in biology lessons... hmmm... it never felt particularly dull to me) takes over.
every month it surprises me just how bad it is. i woke up at about 5am this morning, and experiencing a very mild ache i decided it would be for the best to drag myself out of bed and take some painkillers. i find it's much better to take some early on to sort of halt the progress, rather than wait until it's unendurable (however heroic a path that may be) because once it gets to that stage the painkillers don't actually work. at least this way you can stop it before it starts. well, thats what happens usually anyway. after an hour of sitting hunched up in bed without any killing of pain happening at all, it actually started to get worse. i then went down to my parents bedroom, to get some sympathy and a hot water bottle from my mother, and to avoid disturbing the 2 girls sleeping on my bedroom floor. (we've got guests). it became apparent that the painkillers were not going to have any effect and i would simply have to tough it out. not a pleasant prospect. i rapidly descended into the quivering mess aforementioned, sitting doubled in two, rocking back and forth clutching the bottle to my stomach, my breathing heavy and irregular. what can i say? it hurt. it really hurt. it hurt so much that i experienced that queer sensation where your mind (soul? conciousness?) starts to sort of detatch itself from your body, in an attempt to make it less painful. you feel as though you're not quite in control of your body, or you're not fully occupying it, or that it's not really yours.
eventually it passed, after running to the bathroom to be sick. i guess i just wanted to rant about it. i can safely say nothing has ever caused me any more pain, and yet i know that it will happen to me every month, and even sitting here now i know i will have several more days of this.

mist

just got back from cornwall. the weather was mostly overcast and very misty, and whilst i suppose i missed the sparkling sea and the blue skies of previous holidays, there was something deliciously mysterious about the mist, the grey choppy seas and the black rocks. and anyway, to make up for it, we did get a couple of really nice balmy soft sunny late afternoon walks across the fine white sand and green seas.  
tried a couple of times (mostly unsuccessfully) to draw the cliffs and the headlands. drawing the cat was more successful. also collected a lot of very small shells, and lovely pieces of coloured glass and pottery from the beach. i'd like to make a necklace out of them but i'm not sure how as they don't have any holes to thread through. but the colours altogether are too wonderful. greens and blues and yellows and pinks - summer colours.
 

have you ever tried not to think about something? it actually requires a lot of effort. i mentioned before my overactive imagination. today i tried to reign it in a little by forbidding myself to think about the offending subject. it was very tricky. it sneaks up on you, and before you know it, it's playing around in your mind again, and you haven't even noticed. it's almost impossible to find anything distracting enough either. thoughts are sneaky, they slip into your mind when you think you are otherwise occupied. talking to someone or reading a book doesn't even keep them away. and when they do come, it's hard then to suddenly banish them, seeing as you need a thought similarly interesting to take it's place, and those are hard to come by on the spot.
i spent the morning frustrated by my attempts. it wasn't too bad, but i certainly didn't acheive the total clearance that i wanted. in the afternoon i relaxed a little, the mornings' hardwork had at least calmed my brain activity, and the thoughts i was trying to keep away now come less frequently than before. to keep up the total ban all the time would be both mentally straining and also silly. i shall settle for what i have acheived.

i'm a little worried by the fact that i think i may have a disposition towards jealousy. "beware the green-eyed monster, it doth mock the meat it feeds upon". clever guy, shakespeare. but then, i also have a dispositon towards an overactive imagination and i find it easy to become obsessive about things... it's like i can't control my own mind, or my own feelings... they just sort of snowball and suddenly get out of hand, and i get dragged down with them against my own will. and then i get jealous................................................... my thoughts in the first place are based on silly inconsequential things, and then silly small things are also the basis for jealousy. it's ridiculous. the circumstances do nothing to dictate my feelings, they're too small to possibly have invoked what they have invoked, and then of course, they being small in the first place, it only takes something small to knock the whole thing down. it's like mount everest balancing on a drawing pin.

i think i should stop here.

try and distract myself.

(though i already know nothing will work)

having my bed under the window is nice. it means when i wake up in the mornings the first thing i see is the colour of the sky (today it was pale blue). i opened it when i woke up, because i like the feel of the breeze, especially when i've just woken up. (it reminds me of the feel of the soft dark air early in the mornings, most commonly experienced on winter weekdays when i have to get up and catch a bus before the sun has even risen, the first refreshing feeling of being engulfed by cool (yet strangely warm) black air).
made soda bread for breakfast. i forgot how easy it was.

a zine sounds like a fun summer project... i wonder if i'm up to it. need to go and check out the library's photocopying facilities...

an empty house... what to do in an empty house... throw a wild party and trash all the furniture? perhaps. or perhaps i'll just sit here and write my blog.
the atmosphere in the house isn't the pleasantest in the middle of the day, hours stretching in each direction. i should have gone out but i feel tied to the task of clearing out my room. it's becoming obsessive. i just want to get rid of everything i own. all my drawers are empty. i should have gone out. old photographs made me cry, they always do. university prospectuses just made my head feel like a big ball of cotton wool, and made me clench my fists in frustration. i thought i had ruled out taking a foundation art course next year because i thought i had ruled out going to art school altogether. but i think that decision was rash and made under the wrong circumstances. so now i'm back to square one.... but i have a plan. that plan being to simply ignore the fact that i shall have to make desicions soon and pretend none of it is going to happen.
but we're going down to cornwall next week, and that should be grand. fresh air, beaches and cold water. i like the feeling of space on beaches, i like walking down across the dunes where the grass pricks your skin and the little yellow snail shells lie in the sand, and then you stand on the edge and look out over the vast sandy stretch below you and how it reaches all the way down to the sea which looks like miles away. and everything is yellow and blue and green. and you stand for a few seconds on the dune and feel the huge expanse of air, and of space, that surrounds you. and then suddenly you run down the slope of the dune to the beach and you slip and slide on the sand on your way down, leaving huge skids and footsteps behind you on the soft smooth sand and you nearly fall over from momentum as you reach the bottom. yes. i shan't stay in this stuffy house for long.

i had one of those dreams that when you wake up make you feel quite good about things. mostly i suppose because in the first few moments of waking up the dreamworld and the realworld are still leaking into each other, and the feelings you had in your dream are carried over into the real world, though nothing has happened in the real world to make you feel like this. i shan't relate the whole dream, but it involved a nice irish man, licking typewriters and ryhming couplets. i woke up before i had a chance to tell the man that the reason both our answers were the same was because we both chose the lame answers.
it's 9:20am. i'm sitting at the computer in my pajamas, my hair looking like i've slept in a ditch for the last few months. i ate an apple for breakfast in front of clifford the big red dog. cartoons aren't what they used to be. still a nice loud blast of Bis is helping to wake me up.
i'm not sure why it is that whenever a letter from my college arrives i always feel nervous, as if i have something to be afraid of, as if i've done something wrong. yesterday a big brown envelope came through the door addressed to "the parents or guardians of.." i thought it must be something really bad. of course, it was silly to feel like this, because what was it? a newsletter! i have done nothing wrong for the college to start writing me letters about, apart from skipping all my IT key skills lessons *guilty conscience*. everyone skipped those lessons. and anyway i can use a computer can't i? look at me, i'm doing it right now, and not having any problems either. i don't need to go to lessons to show me how to do it! and that stuff about uni's wanting you to have this qualification is the biggest lie i've heard for a long time.
ah, the sun is coming out. this is good. i haven't seen it for a couple of days, the clouds have been heavy and white and low and the days have been dull and grey and muggy. perhaps in this fresh light weather i might get out on the veranda and dig up those dead cacti. there is nothing more depressing to have in your room than a dead cactus. i'll have to get rid of them today.

why it never occured to me to try carving rubber stamps out of rubbers themselves i don't know. that attempt about a year ago of carving into a cork and getting nowhere was very off putting. but this morning i dug out my scalpel and an old eraser and drew a picture of a swift on the front. it took a while to carve the picture, and then there were quite a few adjustments needed. all in all it must have taken an hour at least. and the result? well, not all that great, but perhaps it has a sort of rustic charm about it. great fun anyway! and think of the possibilities! i think i'll go down to the art shop soon and stock up on some more rubbers, and then try my hand at some other designs. i think i might stick with birds for the moment, and see how it goes. this is so much cheaper and more exciting than buying rubber stamps, and will be great for letters and things.... i am excited by the prospect.

i watched the swifts flying around in the onsetting rain. the prequel to the storm that's coming tonight. they didn't seem to care. at first i glimpsed a flash of black against the white cloudy sky, and i knew from it's shape and style that it was a swift (i've spent far too much time watching them to mistake it) and i thought that it's quivering wings and the flustered arch it flew across the sky was a sign of desperation. i thought it was fleeing from the rain, like most birds do. but then i saw it flash past my window again, so i left my bed and went to the window, and i saw that there were in fact 2 swifts. they were chasing each other across the rooftops, around and around in the same circle, out of my sight behind some buildings and then back around in front again, past my window. they looked as much as if they were enjoying it as they do when they're tiny pin-pricks flying higher than you could imagine in a blazing blue summer sky. i wished then that i had a video camera, so i could film them flying around and around in the drizzle, flashing in and out of view, with the backdrop of greys and browns of the wet town, and the doves grinding out of my cd player behind.

I can feel the length of summer holidays setting in. every day seems white and long and muffled.
i threw out all my old diaries yesterday. i found them in a shoe box under my dexk. it only took a few minutes flicking through them to realise there is nothing more painful and embarassing than old diaries. i wrote them when i was in high school, they're full of crushes and angst. it felt good to throw them away, it's probably a bad thing to run away from your past, but it felt good. at the moment, being rid of such memories is worth sacrificing a moment in the future when i'm all grown up, reading them again with a tear running down my cheek for my lost youth or whatever. what i really didn't like about them though, aside from the content, from what i actually wrote, was my handwriting. you could see in the very way i formed the letters how i was struggling between childhood and adulthood, and how i was in limbo, not in one place nor in the other. i could see the haste of an adult's writing combined with wide round letters and as much neat style as a child. i don't like the way i used to write. yes, the old handwriting distressed me.