your crazy heart

crusoeing @ 2007-12-08T14:51:00

2007-12-08T14:55:43Z

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NOOOOOOoooo.

crusoeing @ 2007-11-09T19:17:00

2007-11-09T19:25:46Z

Sometimes really annoying people say really annoying things.
But then I nod calmly and remember that I have a bushman's guitar at home, and no one can take that from me.

Sometimes I will even sagely think over those immortal words: "Quid Cicero fecisset?"
But this rarely does much good, because I'm rarely in the mood for orating spectacularly over the little things that niggle at me.

P.S. Do you think that even T. S. Eliot knew what on earth he was talking about? I mean, why do people come and go, and why do they talk about Michaelangelo? How does the world end, and what does Guy Fawkes have to do with it anyway? Sometimes, I think he was just making up sentences that sound enigmatic.

crusoeing @ 2007-02-27T20:38:00

2007-02-27T20:48:39Z

"'Very sorry to knock you up, Watson,' said he, 'but it's the common lot this morning. Mrs. Hudson has been knocked up, she retorted upon me, and I on you.'"
--The Speckled Band

It's going to be hell in Baker Street in nine months' time...

Haha. When all else fails in life, there's still Holmes/Watson love.

Back from France. C'était bonne. As they say.

crusoeing @ 2007-01-07T20:46:00

2007-01-07T20:54:05Z

Ever since the Saddam Hussein thing, I keep dreaming about people getting hanged. It's horrible.

Capital punishment I find really disturbing. Imagine knowing you were going to die. Then again, if anyone deserved it, he did.

On the bright side, Julius Caesar is awesome and I have finished my English coursework.

crusoeing @ 2006-12-26T15:55:00

2006-12-26T16:07:20Z

Happiest of Christmases to you all. I hope you all had a wonderful day and received presents cool enough to sustain the polar icecaps. I got a laptop! I was so shocked and so pleased. And not just any old laptop - a mac! :) I also got the entire set of books by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Actually, in total, I received eighteen books. Crazy. That's my reading sorted out for a while.

I know this is a bit late, but the musical was incredible. I enjoyed it so much. I especially enjoyed sitting in the front row and having Freya, Treen and Rhi apparently trying not to laugh. They all did such a good job.

Well, I'm off to la France tomorrow to go skiing. Back on the 6th. Err, Nikita, I missed the last post, so your letter and present may be a little longer in coming than was originally anticipated. Sorry! I feel really bad, especially as yours was so awesome. And I think the letter is of more interest than usual, too! I filled six sides of paper. :)

crusoeing @ 2006-10-12T17:31:00

2006-10-12T16:32:34Z

"Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît pas."

--Pascal

crusoeing @ 2006-09-09T16:38:00

2006-09-09T15:39:14Z

Create your own! Originally Written By ga_woo, Hosted and ReWritten by darkman424

crusoeing @ 2006-08-07T15:59:00

2006-08-07T15:00:18Z

I'm in China! Share my excitement, everyone.

crusoeing @ 2006-08-03T15:24:00

2006-08-03T15:09:15Z

Everything is okay, and I'm alright now. I have adopted what is probably a very careless "screw you" attitude to some things, and the world seems brighter for it. I blame the books; oh, I am so hungry for them right now, now things have calmed down. I finished "The Colour Purple" this morning, which I found quite extraordinary and I can see why it won the Pulitzer. I could feel my spirit careen with the ups and downs of Celie. I also loved its philosophy that God is inside people, and that people shouldn't go to church to find God, but to coax him out and that God is everything: the leaves, the stars, the butterflies and even the bars and the alcohol. If there were a denomination that followed such beliefs, I think I could be religious. On the subject of books, I think I'm going to sign up for a twenty week course outside of school which studies all the Beats. Two hours studying "Howl" on a Monday night ... it's like Nirvana on Barry Island! These writers are all I need to make me feel alive in a more-than-breathing way. Alive where generosity counts.

I can't write at the moment. It's like I've absorbed all these words and regurgitate exactly zero of them, and when I try, they are all so very pale - wet, muddy, meaningless words. I guess you can't write what you don't feel. I tried the other day, and it all comes out so flat and basic. I guess it was pretty, and that's the worst thing. I hate my pretty poems. Although at that point, I was trying to write what I actively didn't feel, and thus that was the only way I knew how to write. Yesterday, I tried to write something about which I felt neither this way or that. It was so boring. Writing is so boring at the moment when I remember the long nights I stayed up writing poems like "The Distance Between Saturn and Earth" and the iced-over walks which prompted "Angels In Passing". Oh, I have had so much fun with words in the past; now they just seem like dregs of my old poems. It is not experience anymore, it is nothing new. Sometimes I feel like a muse is kind of a religious being, a myth - not really the sort of thing I like to hold with, but it is the one spiritual fancy that I cannot help but cling to. Call it inspiration or nature or brain activity. Call it whatever you want. My muse needs a drink right now, I think, or just a pair of wheels - something to get it rolling again. I think it swims along on your brainwaves, and so maybe I need a new state of mind. I feel so carefree and passive at the moment, and there is nothing wild right now. I'm doing such a bad job of describing it, but it's like everything I'm feeling, I've felt before. I want something new (besides a house and country!). I need some kind of crazy emotion right now.

Easier to articulate, I have chosen everything for my new room. I am going for a leafy, New England style. We are ripping up the carpet and painting the floorboards white, with hopefully a huge rug, and painting the walls a pale, natural green. On the piece of wall with the fireplace, we are putting a section of wallpaper that has leaves on it, and underneath the sloping ceiling is going to be a section of tongue and groove. The furniture is all white as well, fragile and unblemished, except my bed. I'm going to have one of those metal beds that's all swirly and strong. I intend on having a Chagall on the wall, because I adore how the lovers are always flying. It will be clean and bright, and I am quite excited about it.

We went out for a meal last night, and I had a slug in my salad. The waiter looked so embarrassed when we told him, it was adorable. And as from now, the summer holidays are pretty much chock-a-block. Tomorrow I am going to China, then I have one day to get over my eight-hour jetlag before my wonderful Vicky and Emily come to stay until the 20th. Then I'm back in our glorious Bedfordshire for I don't know how long for results' day on the 24th. The on the 29th until the 1st, James, Charlotte and Emma are coming to stay. Before we know it, it will be school! Wow. So if I seem to disappear, that is why.

crusoeing @ 2006-07-03T20:56:00

2006-07-03T19:57:24Z

On The Riverbank
Loitering on the riverbank, we were snared
by the smell of saltwater and bible children’s baskets
sailing in from other continents, more vibrant and tangy
than the rustle of our beadless exposure to freedom.
The knobbled light was sliced by upturned scales
and speckled the backbones of the lizards following the flow.
Arias snagged on our backs and our tongues were
dyed with the tribal patterns of graffiti cavatinas…
There will naturally be times, the modern newspapers drilled,
when the haughty Lolitas roll hoops with overfed African babies
down the small-time actors’ end of town,
but art is really a dying proposition;
it’s time to move on to the mouth of this trend, nomads.

Waltz past the clocks and Vettriano’s white evenings, now
only stains on driftwood, and we were still there –
plastic flowers, loitering on the pavement by the trickle,
evolved so that we no longer have to change. Renovation!
The lizards were wire souvenirs, yet still it was near an outlet
that we chose to scuff our boots, until we ourselves
were beneath the streets – truculent Apollos and Parisian Juliets
realigned to particles and lipless cherubs in marble mausoleums.

We will grow old, no doubt, along this route
upon which we were doomed to coalesce,
where we were just rainsticks – effect without cause.

the world was just so blue.

2006-06-20T07:47:05Z

I am so very light on my feet this morning that I could almost be one of those bugs that skim across ponds – this is despite getting very little sleep last night. La vie, c’est éclatant. I am whizzy and happy&happy (a bit in the style of e.e. cummings there!). Also, this morning, I booked tickets for Grandma and me to go and see Les Misérables next Wednesday in London – something I’ve been meaning to do since January. I am going to phone and tell her soon, and then she will be happy too! Yay, how about we have a happiness-spreading day?

Thank you to everyone who came to my party. I had the time of my life. It was so slinkster cool when we all did our appallingly unskilled dancing, hand jiving and jumping, and even a bit of Time Warping whilst we were outside! I loved the fact that we were all mixing as a big group and that everyone even included my brother – he keeps asking me now how James, Nikita and Charlotte are (and Charlotte, I think he may email you at some point because I gave him your address). It was also cool when we all sat out on the wall, even if Charlotte got a bit scared and Jack insulted me horribly by saying I was out of sync with myself. How rude!

We were the coolest kids in town, without a doubt. This is actually the photograph Amy took – it turned out to be the best!

Yesterday I went up to school to rehearse the Vivaldi with Charlotte and Nikita. That was quite fun, if only because we probably did more talking than playing. I got there about ten minutes early and James said he would be outside, but he wasn’t – but it was my fault because I was late. So I got lonely and wandered around on a James-hunt with Jamie Copperwheat, though we ended up talking to Mrs Hopkins quite a bit, where she said she couldn’t imagine me cleaning – I didn’t know quite whether to take offence at that. I also discussed with him how awkward we feel when we’re in school when we’re not meant to be, and I was glad I wasn’t the only one who felt like that! And then I found James, Charlotte and Dan, so it was all good.

I also made cupcakes and decorated them. I had to go on a special egg raid of Toddington because half way through I discovered that we had only two eggs and we needed three. But I made about twenty cakes in the end, and they are all colourful. They looked so cheerful all spread out across the sideboard.

crusoeing @ 2006-06-18T11:42:00

2006-06-18T11:16:53Z

I have officially finished my exams, and it is the best feeling in the world. I left that exam hall for the last time in a kind of trippy paroxysm of happiness, darting around the tables to hurry out the door as quickly as possible with Vicky – she’s on the same row as me, so we get dismissed at the same time, and we just ran to each other, squealing, “No more exams!” I had physics that day too, and both of those exams seemed to go well, except in the French I didn’t know what the word “quotidienne” meant, so that may have lost me a mark in the last question.

I got together with my friends that night, but was that a drama! Oh my goodness, I did the worst thing I’ve ever done that day. I am a horrible, horrible person. But anyway, there was only space in our car for five of us, and Vicky couldn’t come, so Jodie was going instead. But then, Vicky’s other friends abandoned her and so she was left with no one and nothing to do on the night after the exams had finished. And we all like Vicky more than Jodie, plus Jodie is not really part of our group anymore, since she always goes off to hang around with her chavvy friends. Therefore, we made a unanimous decision to tell Jodie that we had had to cancel the night out so that Vicky could come instead. Oh, I know that it was the worst thing we possibly could have done, but if it’s any mitigation, Jodie abandoned Vicky and I on the France/Germany trip to go with her chavvy friends again, which meant we got split up, and she didn’t go to my party last night after she said she would. Not that it’s any excuse. I felt so very guilty! But, you know, I don’t think I regretted it because it was just so much cooler that Vicky could come.

The trip itself couldn’t have been better. We went to Nando’s first, where four of us shared one of the big platters and Chloe, who is a vegetarian, had a veggie burger. Kate decided she would try the spiciest sauce available, and so we all had a dip of it – just a tiny blot on the end of chip … it practically blew my head off. Chloe wasn’t even affected. Then Kate dared Vicky to eat a chip that was drenched in it all over and then not have a drink afterwards for twenty seconds. She actually did it, and it was so funny because I was timing the seconds, but I decided to be mean and not tell her when her time was up, and she kept crying, “This is the longest twenty seconds of my life!” until I eventually told her that it had actually been forty-five seconds. I’ve never seen anyone look in so much pain or so wanting to kill me…

Then we went to the shopping centre where we did this game where we went into a shop and had to choose a really bad item of clothing for someone else to try on. I think we did it in H&M. Kate’s was possibly the funniest. It seemed like a kind of hybrid of Tudor and farmer. She tried everything, but came to the conclusion that “there is just no way to make this look good.” Worryingly, everyone decided that my bad top suited me, which was not good since it was a stripy yellow and brown halter neck. We had to leave soon because the assistant was giving us scary looks. Then we went into Monsoon and played it the other way round, where we chose pretty dresses for each other to wear, though I think Chloe and I were the only ones who managed to succeed in actually getting into them. It was quite frightening to hear the others bash around in the changing rooms – I never knew that putting on a dress could be quite so traumatic! We also went into another shop and tried on all the wild sunglasses that seemed bigger than our faces a lot of the time. They wouldn’t let me go into the bookshop, but for once I didn’t care, even though they were having a half price sale. We all invented new personas for ourselves, which are as follows:
Kate – Patch the Pony
Vicky – Ginger Beard the Pirate
Emily – Tiki-Tiki the Hawaiian
Chloe – Lasso Layla the Cowgirl
Me – White Kettle the Red Indian

When we were back at my house, we skipped around the streets for a while, pretending to be our characters (or, in the case of Vicky and Kate, pretending to be a couple, and spent the whole time holding hands). Chloe, Emily and I played a game where one of us would shut our eyes and the others would guide them. Then Chloe and I had a pretend gunfight, playing cowboys and Indians, and when that got old, we pretended to be Batman and Robin instead (Emily was the car).

Then they went home, and Vicky and I had to chase Kate halfway up the road in bare feet because she’d forgotten her mobile phone. Yet after all that, Vicky accidentally took my phone home with her – but I got it back today, so it was all good.

oh oh i'm sticking with you!

2006-06-15T18:25:02Z

I am so excited through drowsy eyes at the moment, and when I wipe away the sleepy dust, the future seems to be painted with purple glitter, picnics and parties. Plus, in less than a month I am moving to a town near the beach with a pier and a Rhi and a Freya and an Alice and pebbles, and a capital city just a short train ride away. And it sounds so damn cool like that, but I am worried too. Nervous. But still excited. Oh, I don’t know! I know with no ambivalent feelings that I am one hundred percent looking forward to our party on Saturday – I think that the following people are coming: Emily, Kate, Vicky, Chloe, Jodie, Jess, Harry, Anna, Nikita, Dan, Charlotte, Jonny, James, Emma, Alice, Grace and Jon-Luke. Unfortunately, Andy had some concert thing so he can’t make it, which saddens me hugely – tomorrow may even be the last time I see him. Wow. But tomorrow is also the day of my last exam, and this I cannot wait for – I am going to be bouncing off the ceilings with happiness. A group of us (Kate, Emily, Chloe, Jodie and myself) are going to Nando’s to celebrate. And we’re going to have the times of our lives. Freedom!

Today’s history paper couldn’t have been better – it was all about Edward Jenner! I breathed a sigh of relief when I read the questions; I was so pleased it wasn’t on that guy who invented the sewers (though the fact I knew nothing about him was almost worth it for Andy’s comment, which had me laughing randomly at various points throughout the day: “Apparently no one got cholera because of his well good sewers,” – I was so going to write that if it came up in the exam!). Moreover, because it was source work, most of the questions relied on English skills rather than actual historical knowledge, which pleased me.

When I was free, I sat on one of the school benches and read for a while, although Jack Carter-Hoblyn was sitting opposite me and that was mildly distracting! I kept on thinking, how Vicky will be jealous. Then Mrs Purnell passed, and we chatted for a little while – not about the exam, but about books and what we were going to read this summer. I think she’s definitely the best teacher I’ve ever had. I mean, I’m sure my history teacher next year, however good, will not give us renditions of Davy Crockett and Calamity Jane. Then I met up with Kate and we went skippety-skip down the village for a while and wandered over to Vicky’s house, where we picked her up (we told her we’d come to escort her) and rambled back to school so she could sit her business exam. The rest of the time was spent getting our clearance forms signed and laughing over the shortness of Mr Godfrey – he is so vertically challenged! He looks like a bunny rabbit or a sugar mouse.

When I got back home, I tried to revise physics, but I fell asleep instead. So I guess I should go and do that now. It’s okay though, because this is the last night in several months that I will have to concern myself with anything academic. Tomorrow is the beginning of summer! Long days with Kate and Emily and Vicky and oh, we have so much planned already! Those three are so important to me - it's dawned on me recently that, throughout the time I've known them, never once have they given me reason to doubt their friendship or let me down or anything. They've always been there for me with hugs and random sessions of collapsing in piles of cut grass and chicken-dancing around living rooms to Nirvana and stunning artwork - and now I'm going to have to leave them. But they've all invited me to stay (or, actually, to live with them permanently) and they are coming up in the summer, so I know it will be fine. I love them so much more than any of the boys I've ever liked or the sorts of people who flick so easily in and out of your life, and in the end, it's they who are important - not grades (although they are pretty important too!).

find an easier way to get out of our little heads

2006-06-14T18:49:42Z

Some days are so crazy slinkster-cool when you’re just not expecting them to be – it’s the hottest thing since Reindeer Boy. I began the day as a velocity girl, whizzing about the house in order to make it out with at least my hair and teeth brushed and doing a gawky tap-dance sprint to catch the bus – I loved the irony of how I ended up waiting about five minutes for the bus to actually arrived once I had made it! Upon arriving at school, Emily, Vicky, Kate, Jodie, Jess and I spent a last frenetic five minutes scrabbling over my notes, which I’d wisely decided to take with me, trying to memorize the equations for the haber process and precipitates and moles. And then none of it came up in the exam – it was dead easy, really.

For some reason, I was starved when I got out of the exam – absolutely ravenous. Kate and I met up for the physics revision session that Mrs Russell had kindly organized (I love that lady – she cracks me up), which was actually useful, even for making me realise just how desperately I need to cram the equations tomorrow night! We then ventured up to the history department to ask to borrow the textbooks to revise from tonight, and were lucky enough to get Miss Grimley’s account of her falling out with Mr Godfrey – he’d accidentally locked her keys in his room, and so she wasn’t talking to him. Then we wandered up to the village to buy some food, and ended up deciding to invade Vicky’s house. There, we rocked around her living room to “Livin’ on a Prayer” and ranting how they don’t play “Sugar We’re Going Down” enough – that video actually came on later that day, though, and Vicky sent me a text message ordering me to turn on my television, but sadly I was too late, so no Reindeer Boy for me.

When we got back to school, Kate and I had every intention of doing some history revision, but then we found Emily, Harry and Jess and ended up laughing at the school piano teacher’s toileting habits… Yes. My Mum then picked me up, and I have spent the afternoon debating over what to wear to the Stanwell induction day, throwing various moods and tantrums over the fact that my Mum won’t let me wear jeans, jumping on my bed to Snow Patrol songs and doing renditions of “Summer Lovin’” at the dinner table. Oh, and a little bit of history revision, maybe… I also very much enjoyed clogging up my veins with junk food at lunchtime.

Congratulations to Emma on passing her driving test! Oh, and also – no one go to the French department for a while, if you please. I discovered a hugely embarrassing photograph of my on the wall, attempting to flip a pancake. I can’t believe they put it on the wall.

Oh and you taste so bitter but you taste so sweet.

2006-06-13T19:38:29Z

Now I feel limp and insipid, soaked in the fumes from chlorine or tea for a grey morning. When it rains, I become like this, as it it’s falling into my mind and blurring out the world like a windscreen, so that even the plastic flowers seem to lose their petals. The raindrops on the glass smudge the outside and I very much hope there will be thunder tonight. I would like to see forked lightening fracture the sky and hear the clouds rumble apart like tectonic plates.

Sometimes I feel like my confidence is growing. I am becoming more open with my friends and smiling at strangers in the street. Still, I had to go into school today out of hours and felt my heart claw at my ribcage, my shoes growing to size fifteen and making me feel clumsy and awkward. I tried to look natural and hang my shoulders loosely and tell myself, no one minds that you’re here. Yet, it’s impossible to make eye contact when you feel you belong there as much as a circus lion does. I am also fascinated when I hear of people telling others that they like them in a romantic way. I can’t understand how they are not terrified that it would ruin everything, or that they will get rejected. I can’t understand it at all.

Not that this will ever matter for me. I have decided that I dislike all boys, except Jonny, because he has not once upset me in all the time I have known him. Oh, and obviously Bradley-Alex. But:

“There are no ducks, it seems.”

Tonight is the last time I have to concern myself with the transition metals. And “The Fear You Won’t Fall” by Joshua Radin is possibly the loveliest song I have ever heard; sweet, sad and beautiful. It is musical amphetamine.

Thursday watch the walls instead - it's Friday I'm in love.

2006-06-12T15:52:33Z

Last night was delirious and swarthy, a night of tossing and turning, kicking off the duvets and lying upside down in bed. I lay in bed until gone one o’clock, a temporary insomniac, imagining the fluttering shadows of moth wings against the walls – I had tried to overcome my fear of opening windows that day, although I still had to close it when it got past seven o’clock, because I’m irrationally petrified that spiders, creepy-crawlies and murderers are going to climb into my bedroom. I tried everything to sleep – singing songs all the way through in my head, sleeping with my feet on the pillow, wandering around my room very quietly – but the only thing that finally allowed me to drop off was writing. I found myself writing a juvenile little love poem, and with the words, I could feel all the pressured wakefulness pouring out like a cool flow of steam. This is what I came up with:

Whisperings
All night, leaning on the windowpane, you whispered
you were looking for the stars; when you died
you wanted to be left with no disillusionment
about the size of the universe. I had noticed,
as you scraped your wingspan against my bed,
that in the hazy moments just before I slept,
you would always turn to me, your eyes wide open.

When you wrote to me from some bone-white heaven,
you said that your room was smaller than ours.

Today, however, has been more airy, like the porous spaces in honeycomb, and I am beyond happy because I am done with maths forever! No more numbers for me. The exam also seemed to go pleasantly – no dramas. I could answer all the questions pretty confidently with the exception of three. I went straight home after that, infinitely glad not to be Emily or Vicky, who had another two-hour geography exam this afternoon. I went out with my Mum for the afternoon to Milton Keynes, where we went to Tescos and Costco, mainly.

I am decorating my room with flowers in beer bottles. They look so very lovely. But, for now, I must go and continue in my quest to concentrate on those chemistry books! Oh, but it’s so difficult to stay focused. My mind keeps wandering to things such as the trip out this Friday to Nando’s with Emily, Chloe, Jodie and Kate, our leaving party on Saturday, the song I have had stuck in my head for several days now (though, for once, it is not "Love Is All Around"!), and, frustratingly, a particular person. But, in four exams time, my mind is let off its leash and will be quite happy to skip all about the place. Bring it on!

And I know it's easy to say but it's harder to feel this way.

2006-06-11T16:37:41Z

Today is oppressive and tropical, with clouds swarming in like smuts on the sky. The air feels like jam, heavy, as if we were on a treacle Jupiter. I woke up at ten o'clock this morning - late for me - to the sound sound of Elvis scuffing the ceiling with "Just a Closer Walk With Thee", as if to remind us that rock n roll could have a soul too. Even before I had showered, the day had the feel of something almost-exotic as Mum offered me a plate of blueberries and strawberries in yoghurt with honey, which I ate outside beneath the gazebo. Then, already beginning to feel the sunrays brand my face, I washed, applied sun lotion and, to my delight, found a t-shirt to match the gauzy mermaid skirt I bought a while ago, but hadn’t worn yet because I didn’t think anything else I owned was the right colour.

Mum and Dad went to B&Q (everything is DIY, nowadays, with the move in just over a month – furniture, paint, ideas for rooms bouncing off the walls of the rooms we’re about to leave) and I sat out on the decking for a while, always about to revise – and I really would have done some if the Sunday Times supplements hadn’t been beside me, and if chemistry weren’t so dreary to read about. Really, I do love the idea of it, with potassium turning flames lilac and magnesium flaring its razor-bright light, but reading a revision guide about covalent bonds and halogens is hardly an appealing idea. When I’d exhausted the interesting articles in the newspaper, I went on the swing in our garden, closing my eyes every time I fell, to encourage the dizzy feeling of leaving my stomach always a few millimetres behind me.

When my parents came back, we ate tapas with feta cheese, cucumber and olives, mopping up the vinegar with the leftover bread when the rest had gone. I then decided to water the bamboo shoots – oddly small protrusions from huge, brightly coloured plastic pots, not quite able to pick a culture ... American or Chinese? Mum soon guessed I was procrastinating and tested me on my chemistry, discovered the pathetic extent of my knowledge and forced me upstairs to revise. Oh, bring on Wednesday when I never have to think about the wonder that is the haber process again.