Thankful for everything

It's weird. It's not even ironic that I'm saying this. I discussed this with my spiritual counselor (Tom Phipps, ironically) and I think my conclusions were backed up. Essentially, when you're in the throes of an emotional high or meltdown, two things occur to you.

One: creative overload. I have to thank you for all the things you've done to my writing. I haven't felt the need to post any of the good stuff I've written onto my blog, but I am submitting one long poem for the Sir Roger Newdigate's Prize and I think my Scrawl contributions this term will be superb. I am fairly happy with Darker Angels (Scrawl, HT09) and The Tyrant (Newdigate Prize Entry 09). I have been relatively successful this term on the 'scene' and in terms of boys, if you're counting them. But of course, I attempt conversation with you and am consumed with some sort of resentment. Which is fine. It's not nearly as bad as it was. It will pass. Very soon, I predict, I will be entirely indifferent to you. But thank you, thank you, you've done wonders to my writing in both your roles as a positive and later a negative force in my life.

Two: critical faculty dissolution. Here we see where Hilary Term and Michaelmas are opposites. My Michaelmas nightlife was depressing, but academically I felt I was doing well. Now I churn out terrible essays about Crow in Ted Hughes, or half-formed theories about aestheticism in James Joyce or literary techniques in the Old Englies elegies and I get bizarre looks from my tutors. My entire reading of Crow became informed by the Emily Bronte connection supposed in a later poem ("The Wind on Crow Hill was her darling," Emily Bronte by Ted Hughes). While I enjoyed that part of my essay, a comparison of Bronte and Hughes, it fell outside any usable function in Oxford terms (Victorians and Modernists don't mix!) and distracted me from the actual set question. But Emily Bronte is a poet I can deal with. My blogs come from that same voice as hers, that address of a nameless you who is not solely one person. If you're reading this, don't flatter yourself thinking you're the only "you" contained in "you". Point being, it's hard to focus on essays when you've completely rewired your mind and are sitting in your own little autistic Palace of Art half the time.

I've started drawing again. Haven't done it in years. I used to be good. I'm not anymore. I sat down, one lonely Sunday Balliol morning when everyone in college was in bed with a hangover or trapped in that neverending Sainsburys queue buying hummus and I decided I would draw the college. I stopped for my own embrassment because the world I was drawing was slightly less real, slightly idealised, slightly distorted like a vision of land seen across desert sand and swaying in the sweltering heat. I tried drawing a person, a beautiful vision of a face I imagined, but it came out a sinister gypsy stereotype staring back out of the pad at me and making me uncomfortable. I later, in the throes of my the emotional epiphany the otehr night, where I stayed up till six in the morning writing my Newdigate poem, I discovered my aptitude for drawing caricatures. There's something suitably childish about my style and the unironic annotations placed around the drawing.

I've started sticking things to the tack board in my room. Besides my unfollowed Routine (wake up, stretches, 30 crunches, etc.); there is the Homage to Assholes (a reminder to stay away from heartbreakers); there is the drawing I found in my pad that I did when I was 14 (it is in blue, pink and purple pencil and it indicates I should "Taste the Rainbow" like I am some Skittles salesman); there are two Toni & Guy business cards (the cutter, the dyer); Vacation Residence form with useful dates; post-it note listing books I'm meant to have read; two poems I wrote ("Candles" and "Church Siren") and a poster for our bop of my friend Ronan dressed as the Heath Ledger Joker with the declaration "Ronan Is Not The Only Fruit". Bizarre literary references are just one wing of my Bop campaign (Georgina and I are in charge of the Week 8 LGBT Bop, and promote accordingly. There's also a poster of Me as Uncle Sam declaring "Liam Wants YOU To Come Out (nearest recruiting station, Bop Friday 8th week)" and one of Georgina comically with cigarette-in-mouth beckoning "Treat yourself, have a fag."

I've got endless ammounts of work to do. Tomorrow I have a commentary due for the Old English poem "The Wanderer" (subject of my last dreadful essay) which I will have to do today if I want to go out tonight. I don't know if I can face PopTarts at Babylove tonight though, I still feel tired from Rainbow! at Thirst Lodge last night. I have set myself the topic of Graham Greene for my Friday 8th Week (familiar date...) essay, although I haven't really thought of a question and I still have 2 and a half books to read in the next week and a half if I am to accomplish this. Which reminds me, I'd best be finishing Brighton Rock.

"Write about me instead"

A darkling thrush says not too much,
About the rhymes of life,
Nor whitish pages on loss, and love,
Of those who liked to write.

Woman much loved, you I wonder
How did he make you feel?
Could you see his eyes, and big cracked lips
And know they make him real?

Oh bugler boy at first communion, I say
The smartest boy in Wales,
If only you were sat beside me
My heart might seem impaled...

For what was the feast followed the night
Thou hadst glory of this boy?
Libido drained yet not asleep
I played, I touched, I toyed

It little profits that an idle king
Should sit upon a throne
When sat on princely poof beside him
Is not a poof to call his own?

Alas! for this grey shadow, once a man-
The unsightly son of souls
Could do a deed with you in hand
And do it till grown old

When you are old and grey and full of sleep
Your voice will be the same
I will kiss each and every bit
Be you blind or deaf or lame

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
So let's not talk of age
Let's talk of bright and happy things
So we might set the stage

The night is darkening round me
But at least your lamp is on
Toucha-toucha-touch me
Before the night is gone

I know not how it falls on me
This feeling of transcendent grace
But when it falls away from me
I long to see your face

Fra Pandolf's hands would work busily a day
Should you they have to paint
I'm running out of quotes to bring
My manner losing quaint

I hunt the house through,
And here I find, this final, final rhyme
So let's not delay, let's just smile
I'm seeing you in nine days time