mindmaps are wonderful (essays are not).

I may have overdone it slightly with the mindmaps... I'm currently trying to coax all of this (and more) into an essay structure. Difficult when your mind doesn't really work in a linear fashion...

forgotten words.

Many things gave me completeness
They did not only touch me
My hand did not merely touch them
but rather
they befriended
     my existence.

~ from ‘Ode to Things’ by Pablo Neruda (cited in ‘Lost in Wonder’ by Esther de Wall)

I stumbled across these words again last week. I keep copying them out into various journals or on the back of envelopes ...and then forget about them, only to find my breath taken away a little when I reread them. In this poem, Neruda is writing about how he loves ordinary things (like cups and coins and spoons and fabric). ‘I love all things...’ he writes.

...not only the grand,
but also the infinite
-ly
small.

I’d like to try and read more poetry over the summer. Poets often have a way of saying things that I’ve always felt deeply, but have never quite known how to say. These words - ‘they befriended my existence’ - when I read them, I feel like I am filled with little bursts of light.

(picture from: Cake with Giants)

I should invest in a compact mirror.

While sorting through the pictures on my phone, I noticed that I have about four hundred and eleven* photos of the back of my head.

'But why?’ I (don’t actually but will imagine for the purposes of this post that I) hear you ask.

 

It’s not because I particularly like to look at the back of my head (although, you know, I am glad it’s there). It’s more because I’m trying to check for unruly hairs in order to flatten them. I tend to attack my hair with millions of kirbie grips to keep it up and in the process, little strands of hair tend to stick straight up ...which (to the UFO-fearing-eye) can make it look like I have antennae coming out my head.

To answer your question then (yes, I know you didn’t actually ask it, but play along with me here), I take these pictures to try and reassure the people walking behind me that I am, in fact, human. I take them to avoid having to overhear whispered conversations like this:

‘Is - is that an alien walking on front of us, Fred?’

‘I’m not sure, Mabel. It doesn't appear to be. It’s got arms and legs like us, and I can’t see any green skin.’

‘I know that Fred. But the antennae? What about the antennae, Fred? They look quite extra-terrestrial-ish to me.’

Fear not humans. I am one of you! 

(*note: possibly a slightly exaggerated number. Anyway... I should actually be writing an essay just now so cheerio!)

the sun has got his hat on.

I had my last class of third year today. Somewhat surreal. I'm not finished quite yet, there are still essays, stories, columns, exams. But no more classes. It's been a pretty exhausting week though. So, for now, here are just three things:

[one.] The past few days have been bursting with sun. A little taste of summer. It's been so warm that I've even been able to walk about without a cardigan on (a rarity indeed). I've spent a few hours each day in the sun, having tea and conversations (about writing, and the beauty of ordinary things, and poetry, and academic sobbery, and post-modernism, and Carol Shields, and bees) with the interesting lady who is my mother.

[two.] The internet in the house has been down for a few days... which has been both a pest and a bit of a relief. When the first thing you do every morning is check Facebook, you know something is wrong. I don't want to spend my life staring at screens. (And yes, I recognise the irony...)

[three.] Exciting, exciting, exciting news! One of my short stories is going to be published in the debut issue of Octavius Magazine (a new literary magazine). I got the news after a busy, sticky, warm day at work. Quite a treat to come home and find in my inbox.

(Pictures are from a trip to Bath last summer.)