yeah, I'm pretty morbid

"We're ruled by the inventors, and human nature." - Galsworthy, A Modern Comedy (5)

Last night I had a vivid dream that I was sitting first class in an airplane that, upon take-off, was having such difficulties that the plane could not stop climbing into the sky so that the plane became perpendicular. My only thought was to keep the child next to me, a girl who apparently was the daughter of one of my friends, from falling out of her seat. I kept my hand on her arm for the some 5 minutes -- so it seemed -- that the plane stayed upright in the sky, until finally I thought to myself, why haven't we crashed yet, and just then we did, and I woke.

After waking up, I discovered that there was a plane that, today or yesterday, had crashed into the ocean with 150 or so people on board, highly reminiscent of a similar occurrence with the flight from Brazil a few weeks ago. One girl was pulled out of the wreckage, a teenager. A boat had been nearby. Everyone else is lost.

This really affects me. Bad. The plane company (another French one) have admitted that the plane was not in good condition, that it was soon to be looked into being replaced. Furthermore:

"We were expecting this crash to happen," said a spokesman for the France-Comores association in France. "There have been times when people have turned up at the airports and seen the conditions of the planes and refused to get on," he said. (timesonline)

Ridiculous! No one else seems to care much. Haven't heard much about it here in America. There were no Americans on board. This is just wrong. Maybe I'm a bit hyper about it because of the dream I had just hours before.

The stupidity of human nature combined with the unknowable occurrences created by Fate or whatever is just too much for me.

I will spend days morbidly wondering what their last minutes were like.

In which Helen has a dilemma

I have such a dilemma.

I really really really REALLY want to subscribe to the literary/political magazine The Spectator which I was OBSESSED with when I lived in London, but it costs SOOOOOO much money. It is 116.00 pounds for 52 issues! That's like 140 dollars. I don't know what to do. It would seem such a waste of money, but I really wants it, precious.

Yes, this is what occupies my time. Not the fact that I don't have a job. Not the fact that my parents are old and feeble. Not the fact that I just remembered that it is my mother's birthday tomorrow and I don't have anything to give her.

But I can't help it. I'm a woman who has needs. And one of these needs is to buy a magazine that costs way too much money but that has articles and stuff that I (for some unaccountable reason) find really cool.

a scary dream

I may be watching a little too much of Buffy, The Vampire Slayer. Never watched it when it was on television (surprised that there are no re-runs now, especially with the Twilight craze) but decided to look at the first season. This was only fueled by a friend of mine who I found out really loves the series and decided to let me know that "really cool things are going to happen in the second season."

Having just finished the second season, I went to bed last night. I won't get into detail about what happens but it was pretty scary/brutal and necessarily it filled my dreams. I dreamed that I was Buffy, that I was being possessed by a demon, that I was powerless to stop it. However, the moment I was possessed, I would wake up -- but only to fall asleep again and have the same exact dream! I did this some five or six times. There was a little variance. One time it was set in a library, the next on snow topped hills. Every time the guy who plays The Watcher was there, powerless as well to stop my transformation.

The approximate fifth time of having this dream I woke to my cat meowing in that weird loud way he does when he wants someone to play with him at 3:00 in the morning, and that freaked me out a bit. And then just as I was about to fall back asleep there is a great crash and the house shakes. Now I'm wide awake, and thoroughly freaked out. There isn't any light in my room. I don't have the window open so the street light isn't shining in. I had been asleep enough so that this sudden awakening confuses me, and I don't know where I am, but expect to be pounced on by some demon. It was half a minute later that I realized that I was in my bedroom, that my father had fallen asleep on the edge of his bed, sitting up, as he often does, and fell (again), and I went downstairs to make sure he was all right.

Walked back upstairs after ascertaining he was all right and made sure to open my blind shielding the street light before climbing back into bed, where Tigger, my cat, promptly curled up next to me.

Reality

Humankind cannot bear very much reality -- T. S. Eliot

Are our aspirations for our life, ourselves, something which we should try to accomplish -- or are they mostly illusions that have no basis in reality?

We are told it is a good thing to have goals. But then so many of these goals seem unattainable and unreal. So often these goals become illusions. We realize how wrong we are to want them. We have to face up to reality.

Iran. That is a reality that is perhaps as harsh as one would have to face. The people in Iran have no time for illusions. They are steeped in reality. Bloody, awful, deathly -- brutal, reality. It does seem that reality is only that, brutal. Reality isn't often pretty.

That may be why Eliot surmises that we cannot deal with so much reality, because often that reality is so harsh that it saps us of our energy, our will to live, our desire to live, really. Much better to hope for something better, than endure present reality.

----

Of course when I watch beautiful performances like this, my perspective of reality seems not quite so harsh.

people and fate

I don't know if my aversion to people is due to my low tolerance for people's actions or their own stupidity. I think it may be both.

I expect too much of people. But I'm so unhappy faced with people who make me upset.

I have had two parents who find it difficult to do the littlest thing. So many people are so dramatic about things that don't matter. I can't stand this! I literally can't. I get up, I volunteer, I try to find a job, I get on with my day. It isn't easy. Sometimes it seems impossible. But I do it.

I guess I want someone to look up to. Who will make me better. But it seems that I am always the one that needs to help people. And I resent that.

But I don't think I'll find better.

----

I hate ranting.

I'm listening to U2. "One." Wait, it's finished.

What will be next....

Ah, U2 again. And, ironically enough -- "Sometimes You Can't Make it On Your Own." Nice. -- Like I said before, I always set my music on random, so that it picks from all of my albums.

I believe in signs. Kinda. Actually, if someone were to ask me if I did, I would say I do not. Realistically, I don't think they exist. But there's a part of me that wants to believe that they do. Certainly, it sometimes seem as though there is some mystical figure that is paving the path for our life. Coincidence, more than nought, or our own need to provide an explanation for a seemly intentional instance.

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My money transferred into my American account. The loan money I had in my British account. So today I made an expensive hair appointment. I'll have my hair dyed and cut.

Getting my hair done is, for me, a means of reinventing myself. Becoming something than what I am.

I am always trying to make myself different. I have a bit of self-hatred. I wish I were prettier, smarter, less nervous. Although, sometimes, I find the good in these qualities.

I wish I looked like her:



I kinda envy Sophia Myles her natural beauty, but I certainly don't hate her for it. I think it is wonderful that such beautiful people exist. I'm quite a fan of beauty, in all forms. But sometimes I wish I had that. Because I feel that beautiful inside.

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"Rose's Theme" from Doctor Who Soundtrack ending. Next track is (will it be telling?): Chanson D'Enfance from Sarah Brightman. Had to translate it's meaning -- although I can sing it entirely in French having listened to it enough. "Song of Childhood."

Non important.

grey clouds

"put the light on." My father tells my mother as she attempts to come up the stairs to her bedroom.

I miss the perpetually low-hanging grey clouds in England.



Matthew Horne took this photo. Hope he won't mind me borrowing it. He posted it on his twitter page. It's in Barry, Wales, connected to England, and very like it weather wise, where "Gavin and Stacey", the T.V. show he is in, resides. Seeing the picture -- the clouds -- made me realize that feeling I must have always felt when walking outside in England, seeing in the distance the clouds, a staple of the English environment. It is of a sort of choking feeling. Only aided by the crisp air that tends to accompany the view. How grey clouds can be so beautiful may be a mystery. They don't bring with them the idea of loveliness. Perhaps because it is the first thing you witness -- that hits you -- when you arrive in England. They must have me.

I feel like London is (for me) like a bad lover -- one that you know you should avoid, who will only make you happy some of the time, but you really want. It seems that that happiness -- which you are afraid you will never feel without this attachment -- is enough for the times of ennui, solitariness, and emotional starvation.

interview cont. and storms

The interview went fine. I thought it would be worse. I haven't had great experiences with "superiors" lately, what with London -- a professor who doesn't tell me i've failed a paper when I go to see her when I'm having problems with my classes, even though she knows that I have. Man that school was rubbish.

I figured the interview would be quite horrid, that the interviewer would be nasty, and I would feel the need to cry in the middle of it all. I'm really emotional right now. I cry at the drop of a hat. But it was actually a pleasant experience. There were some questions that I quite loathed (name five qualities you can bring to any business). I don't know if it is out of sheer laziness or stupidity, but I can never come up with something. Probably just the fact that I am not a professional in anything yet. Just coming out of college. I can't really bring anything to these places. I can type 100 words a minute, I'm organized, I have enthusiasm, I'm loyal and dedicated-- Shit. I just answered the question. Hmmm.

People make me nervous. They all seem to have hidden agendas. Most are not want they seem (pretend) to be. (Paranoid much?).

People are weird.

It stormed a lot tonight. I enjoyed it, except the tornado warning part. Ended up not being near me, but I was still properly freaked. I've had nightmares since I was little of tornadoes, and not being able to get to the basement in time. That is one of my recurring nightmares. Another is waking up in my bed and none of my lights working. Not my light on my ceiling or the one beside my bed. Although, I'm not scared of the dark consciously, and don't remember ever being. Both dreams I think have to deal with a loss of control. Fearing not having something to depend on. A tornado that can wipe out your self and your house; a darkened room you can't see in, so that anything can attack you without you being prepared.

I'm a bit of a control freak.

But not a person control freak. As far as I can tell. If I don't like the way a person acts, I either distance myself from them or somehow deal with it if I can. I think I'm afraid if I let anyone get "too close" to me. Fear that I wouldn't like certain qualities of theirs and try to control them. I don't want to control people. I just want them to do what I want them to do.

I think it is going to storm again. I'm going to go downstairs and see if my dad is home yet. I don't like him driving at night when there aren't food warnings, let alone when there are. I'm a bit of a daddy's girl.

an interview

I am listening to the soundtrack to LITTLE WOMEN. Just happens to be on. I always set my music on random.

I have a job interview tomorrow. My first one since my second year of college when I got the library position. I don't even really know what it is for, other than I applied for it on Monster.com one night when I was suddenly freaking out because everyone is telling me to get a job. I just applied to a few dozen that seemed remotely doable. It is downtown and in the usx tower. I like that building. It is very high. I'm pretty nervous about it, although I think it is silly that I do. It is just that things like this -- job interviews -- are so silly. You have to dress nice and answer (often intentionally tricky) questions "correctly". What do you think you can bring to this institution? I mean honestly. Most times people know they can't bring anything, they just make something up that sounds good. Most of the time we just need a job, and one that pays enough to realistically live on. We can do the job. Is that not enough?

We all have to be better than any of the other contenders. Bring something unique to the table. That's why we're all neurotic. We constantly try to be unique without being too unique. We all have to fit in to our social niche but stand ever so little out so as to "get ahead."

These things just make me so moody. I really don't want a job. If I didn't want to move out of my parents place so bad, I would probably live on what I have until it runs out.

But tomorrow I won't think like this. During the interview at least. I'll be very complacent and say things that (probably on the whole) I don't really mean, or understand.

Now I'm listening to Westminster Bridge from the Doctor Who soundtrack.

Sunday at home, reading the newspaper

Sundays are usually not good days for me. Usually lethargic am I on this day, and depressed.

Today wasn't so bad. Woke at 12:00, got out of bed at 1:00, took a walk immediately after.

Sunny today, with a few clouds, not very humid. Mom came out on the porch. I went up to Rite Aid to buy a Sunday paper, ostensibly to read the classified page for a job. Ended up spending more time on the "funnies." We read the paper together, commenting on what we were reading. Did this until 5:00.

We grilled out hot dogs for dinner once dad came home with the baked beans, a very necessary side dish to hot dogs.

Have just spent the last two hours on the Internet while lounging (as literally as that word is meant) doing absolutely nothing important. Watching the sun go down outside my three windows while laying on my futon. Replying to comments on myspace, people whom I don't know in real life but have met through our common interests -- mostly doing with ninteenth century literature and modern day British shows like Doctor Who and Robin Hood, the latter two of which obtain the highest ratings on British telly. Check out my page if you want. Although everyone who reads this -- the some two people who do -- are already my friends on that site.

I reserve my facebook site for people I know, mostly college/work friends. I like myspace more. Facebook is a sort of dumbing down of myspace, as twitter is of facebook. On Myspace you have to create something like a Web page.

Where am I go with this? No where. Hence the title of my blog: Ramblings

I'll leave you with some wise words, from some very wise women:

day at the theatre

Today:

Woke at 9:50.

Ate cheerios and went online: myspace, facebook, yahoo mail, twitter, The Times (London), davidtennant.com

Hurriedly dressed into usher outfit -- white collared shit got in mens department, black socks, black pants, black vest, clip-on black bow tie, black flats -- a little eye makeup and walked the some 8 blocks or so to Stanton and Negley to catch a bus into town.

It is sunny today, mildly warm. The walk is refreshing and I get to town in time to read a few pages of "I Capture the Castle" that Abby suggested I read. The sisters in the story travel to London to bring home clothes that their now dead Aunt Millicent left behind.

Walk to the theatre to usher for "Legally Blonde, the Musical." Sign in with the lady just as I walk into the only door of the six that is open to admit ushers, walk down the stairs to the usher room, take my card with my name on it out of the filing cabinet, and walk back upstairs. Wait in the lobby for the meeting to begin.

Manager goes over how long the show is, any seating holds (for this show there is one long one at the beginning -- 12 minutes): this is when we can't seat any late comers. How much of the house we have, which I can't relate here. For some reason it is a big deal for us to tell others.

I rush in the line that indicates that I want the 2nd door downstairs to usher at. I am assigned to the door by giving my downstairs boss my card which she will take down to stamp with the date so they know I was here today. You have to do 22 shows a year or (supposedly) you are fired. I have never done that many shows and haven't yet been fired.

We wait until 12:30 to see if there are any cast changes to stuff into the programs. There are. Two. Plus we have two other papers to stuff, one encouraging (upon penalty of death) for patrons to subscribe to the rest of the series and the other one to advertise a show currently playing at another theatre that is also a part of the cultural trust.

Takes a good 30 minutes to stuff all the programs. The theatre can be fined a hefty amount of money if someone (a journalist especially) does not find papers announcing a casting change in their program, as then if they were to write in their paper that a certain person was good and it was not that person, well then apparently the world would fall a part. It is over a 1,000 dollar fine and so we have to make sure every program has an announcement in it.

I was assigned Penn Avenue door, which means that before, during intermission, and after the show I have to stand in front of these doors that lead out into Penn Avenue so that people will not go out them at any time. A lot of people like to go out these doors, as the car park that many people use when going to see a show at our theatre is right outside the door. Despite the warning -- do not use this door, alarm will be sounded -- in bold letters, and me standing there (waif-like) with my hands on my hips, they still try to get past me. Today however, for one of the only times (since The Lion King some years ago) we opened these doors after the show because we had such a large house.

People are allowed into the theatre foyer at 1:00 and by 1:30 we open the doors to the inside of the theatre. At this point, I go to my door and seat people. A lot of the people who come here regularly (and are older and look like they're rich) become rather upset if you ask them if they need help finding their seat, and will brush past you, or say, sternly, "I just need a program." They are funny.

Had a lot of pre-adolescent and teenage girls in short skirts for the show today, with very high heels, both of which were mainly pink. The lead character's "signature colour" is pink.

The show begins 5 minutes after it is scheduled. Regardless, we still got late seaters. We had about five. They had to wait 12 minutes until they could be taken in. We were told a particular phrase the actor would say that would indicate when we could. Took them in. Dark theatre. We have little flashlights (mine is jewel encrusted pink -- fake, of course, but pretty) to help us find the row.

Most shows I stand up in the back of the theatre, mostly because there aren't any seats. Even when there are open seats, there are rules about those you can sit in. They have to be at the back. You can't sit in front of a patron, or next to them. Result: no seats to sit in.

20 minute intermission. Back at Penn Avenue Door, next to the bartender. Ask for a diet coke just before the show starts. Ushers get free drinks. Go downstairs to eat peanut butter ritz crackers. Not allowed to eat upstairs. Go back into the theatre. Watch the end of the show.

Favourite moment of any show: when the show is over and the actors come out for applause.

Always hate the people who leave just when the show ends. They may have good reason, but I still dislike them.

Back to Penn Avenue door at end to let people know there is a step so they don't fall down and sue the theatre. They're obsessed with being sued. We're not even allowed to help people on walkers or otherwise handicapped for fear that something will go wrong and we will be sued. I still help people walk to their seats who need it.

Grab purse. Happen to catch a bus back to Negley and Stanton just in time. Walk home the 20 minutes it takes.

Home at 5:30-ish.

Madwoman in the third storey; P&P no sell

From Curiosities of Literature by John Sutherland

"In the Attic" -- a Vulgar Error

Flowers in the Attic, like the influential feminist literary-critical treatise, The Madwoman in the Attic (1979), by Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gilbert draw, in their separate ways, on the supposed incarceration of Bertha Mason (the first Mrs. Rochester) in the attic of Thornfield. The image has become emblematic of the historical oppression of woman. In fact, as Michael Mason points out in his 1996 edition of Jane Eyre, "This is, strictly speaking, an error, since Bertha Rochester is locked up on the third storey of Thornfield Hall, and there is a "garrett" or "attic" floor above.' Long live strictness.

----


A few months later, David Lassman, mischievous director of the Bath Jane Austen festival, sent out the opening chapters of P&P for eighteen leading publishers. Austen's golden prose was barely veiled under the novel's family title, 'First Impressions', as by 'Alison Laydee' (i.e., "A Lady"), with minimal name changes and the famous 'truth universally acknowledged' opening sentence resoundingly intact.

It resounded not at all. Seventeen of the recipients did not recognize the most essential book in the history of the world. One, Boomsbury (Harry Potter's publisher), wrote back with the sage consolation that the sample had been read 'with interest' but 'was not suited to our list'. They could clearly live without Pride and Prejudice, thank you very much.

Why not, if they've got Harry Potter on the Bloomsbury list?

10 June 2009

Watching "Buffy", season two, when it begins pouring, torrential rain, outside. Pause the television, rush downstairs to the porch. It is 11:00 PM and my father should be driving up any minute from work. I love heavy rain storms, I love thunder. I love things that are chaotic, from a distance.

My brother Tom passes in his white car. He too is coming home from work. He lives across the street. He parks in the back alley, although technically he's not allowed. My father is the next car to pass, some minute or so after Tom. There is a space for him in front of our apartment, but he has to park on the right side of the road because of street cleaning,so he parks a block away from our apartment in the only spot left open. I am in my silk robe. Mom is with me on the porch. I tell her I should take the huge umbrella we have to the car.

Dad is still in the car five minutes later. Still torrential rain. I walk upstairs, change into jeans, put on sneakers, and a hoody and take the big umbrella to the car, where he is inside, the car not running, so that it is dark. The rain is coming down so hard that it must in some way obscure the street lights, I can't very well see anything. I knock on the window. He comes out, with his Giant Eagle bag, he puts his arm around my shoulder, and sings "singing in the rain" while we walk, slowly -- on account of him -- to our front steps. Seeing my mother, he sings even louder, until, upon coming up the stairs -- me holding the umbrella over him as he painstakingly, and slowly, walks up them -- I see that my brother has crossed the street, without an umbrella, and is sitting soaking wet in a chair on our porch.

08 June 2009, Monday

Writing to one of my professors from my undergraduate college is something that I have avoided, and now, having written them, I know why. Agonizing. I suppose because these professors believe so much in me and I feel like I have let them down somehow. Although I'm sure they do not think that. They are smart (as they should be if they are teaching impressionable minds) and know that life is unpredictable.

I cleaned my room today. Dust vanquished from the walls entirely. Usually I just ignore the dust-- where I cannot reach it. Yes -- out of side, out of mind. No more of that for me. I need to start seeing things, even if they are a bit far away.

I'm a bit of an existentialist, so I don't believe in the pre-ordained. Although I am susceptible to stories that feature "soul mates" and destiny. "Jane Eyre"'s my favourite novel. But as for my personal life -- if I do tease myself with it, it always ends with mine thinking that it is not true. This leaves me, trying to figure out what my "destiny" -- "purpose" -- of my life is, in not a great mental place. We create our own destiny, the existentialist states, but this destiny is dependent on external circumstances that create barriers.

Like ones family.

My father watched "Casino Royale' for the first time last night. It was on USA. He doesn't own a DVD player; we don't have one in the living room. The idea of either of my parents buying/renting a DVD and watching it is absurd. My brother put my DVD player in my mum's room while I was in London. She watched one film on it. / My father loves James Bond films. Every Thanksgiving as a child we watched the marathon. I came home from the store, having gone to Giant Eagle with mother, with him bounding through the hall having just watched the long chase sequence that begins the film, beaming and yelling (mostly because he's 75% deaf) that -- "Daniel Craig is the best James Bond yet. I can't believe the beginning; they're just running everywhere. I can't believe this. I can't wait to see the rest," to which I, just as emphatically, jump up and down to tell him that I am so excited he has finally been able to see it. To which he goes to the toilet to emerge 20 minutes later, and I have to explain why Daniel Craig is on a caribbean island in shorty-shorts with a lady clothed in a bikini riding bareback on a horse, while some guy with blood coming out of his left eye wants to beat him at poker.

My father has never seen the train explode in "Lawrence of Arabia"; he's watched the film a dozen times. It's his wiring that he cannot sit through a movie -- and even when there are commercials, he must get up and do something while the film is progressing. Maybe somehow connected to his never eating food while it is hot -- making it, and then leaving it to sit out -- while reading the mail in the morning for instance -- consuming it only at room temperature.

06 June 2009, Saturday

In London, during my stay there from 2008-09, I lived in the completely opposite side of town from where I lived in the three months I spent in the city in 2006. If a person wants to know where in London is the complete opposite of Regents Park, where I lived in 2006, they would say Waterloo.

In '06 I lived inside Regents Park. Yes, quite literally inside a park. My school building and residence were next to Queen Mary's Garden, a famous rose garden, and the very large lake and park mentioned often in Virginia Woolf's novels. Transportation into the park was forbidden at sun-down by very large gates that blocked the entrance, closed by park officers. All I heard at night were sounds from the water birds of the park and occasionally, if the wind were right and it was just quiet enough, the bell from the St. Marylebone Church tolling the hour a block or so away, the same church in which Elizabeth and Robert Browning were married.

In Waterloo, the church 10 feet away from my apartment tolled its bells on Sunday every 10 minutes -- from 9:00 - 12:00. My surroundings here were not black swans, but The National Theatre, an embankment to the river Thames filled with restaurants and shoppes, Big Ben and Parliament, and The Eye. In other words, a tourist trap. Here I was stopped at least once a day by some person with a map of London in their hand, asking directions. Here at 6:00 a.m. I woke to Londoners driving to work, and the many people who walked the sidewalk under my second story flat.

Each place offered a different perspective of the same city, and similarly I experienced a different side to human life. In Regents Park, among the ideality of a park in the fall, the leaves of the trees outside my window changing into beautiful golden browns, living with a young woman whom I spent most days with, and travelled to Vienna and Paris with. We had an unseasonably warm fall in '06; even in December I wasn't wearing a heavy coat. In Waterloo, during the unseasonably cold fall and winter, I was stuck by myself in a one room flat, surrounded by flat-mates who I only saw when they were in the kitchen or either one of us were returning or leaving our rooms. At Regents College I woke at 8:00, walked to the refectory in the same building, and walked to class just the same, Williams poised at his desk, relieving the nighttime residence guard, his jubilance making anyone sour instantly glad. Waterloo Bridge -- famous for its view of the City on one side and Parliament on the other -- had to be traversed every day in order to reach Kings College for class and Tesco's for food. Once in a while I passed someone I knew from a class and said "hi." About as much as I would ever say to them. Even the picturesqueness of the river Thames below and the buildings on either side was not quite enough of an "upper" with the bitter winter wind hitting one the ten minutes it takes to walk the bridge.

In short, it was not so great in Waterloo as it was in Regents Park. But I think I gained from both an equal -- how ever opposite -- view of life. My experience at Regents Park was imbued with warmth (even literally) that Waterloo (again, literally) was not. The ideality of the one, and the -- what one may deem -- normal reality of the other, were both true. I like to think of my time in London in '06 as an experience that taught me the potentials life have to offer -- in short, a life that one is proud to live, with people you get along with (and, even, love) and one that, when you look around, is beautiful and perfect like well tended roses. My time in Waterloo was scattered with only handfuls of moments where I was happy, usually in a theatre seeing a well-known and acclaimed actor, and productions that have never been produced so well and never will quite reach that potential again. This was what my experience in London this last time was about. Seeing, for the first time, the dark side of a life that is not beautiful or well-loved, and learning -- whether when in a theatre or walking the streets of London, or visiting Cambridge University -- that although life cannot always provide the ideal, it is important to grab the moments when it does.

05 June 2009, Friday

Today I woke at 12:30, my cat Tigger curled next to me.

I ate a muffin and did things on the Internet. Myspace, Facebook, wrote some people, read about the disintegration of the labour party in Britain on timesonline.co.uk as many of its front-bench MP's have resigned as a result of the expenses row; watched David Cameron, the leader of the opposition, argue with the labour prime minister Gordon Brown on Prime Minister's Questions.



Argued on the Jane Eyre forum of which I am a member (surprising, yeah?) that Charlotte Bronte, though probably, may not have been pregnant when she died. Cited Juliet Barker's monumental (900 page) biography on the Bronte's as a source as well as Lucasta Millers revelatory "The Bronte Myth", which de-constructs many of the myths about the Bronte's and shows the probably truth, such as the false-hood to Gaskell's portrait of Charlotte in her Life of Charlotte Bronte as an innocent creature whose stories were merely a creation of her environment and not of herself. Fascinating read, and one that I hope the writers of the not-yet produced biopic of the Bronte's (called -- ingeniously -- "Bronte") decide to consider.

Bought a ticket to "What The Butler Saw", the play the Pittsburgh Irish and Classical Theatre has currently put on.

I watched one episode of "Buffy, The Vampire Slayer", then took a walk around the neighbourhood while listening to Franz Ferdinand and Ashlee Simpson.

Watched another episode of Buffy.

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from the political section of The Times Online

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I want to like certain people. I think I will like them, get along with them. But it is as though I don't know myself, so that when I get close to people whom I think I will get along fabulously with -- people who I admire and think quite fun -- I then find out that I find them quite boring, or just don't like their company. It is as though the closer I get to someone, the less I find appealing. Most of the time it is probably because what I thought they were, they were not; or I thought I would find a certain characteristic of theirs appealing, but then find out that I do not. But mostly I think I just do not know myself.

04 June 2009, Thursday

Had a good day at the library. Was a little boring/punishing (some of the people I work with are beyond neurotic, which I would explain further if I were a proper writer, but really -- I don't care to), but had a nice lunch with Tom, one of my co-workers, and finally mailed out the letter to my English bank to have my money transferred into my American one.

I am listening to Franz Ferdinand. Their newest album "Tonight" is unbelievably good. Scottish rock group. If anyone is reading this, check this out:



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I'm reading "Being Elizabeth" by Barbara Taylor Bradford.



A young woman who becomes the head of a business empire. The usual for Barbara. Her "Woman of Substance" was the first novel I read that sparked my love for literature. That novel was so well written, so long and beautifully written. Ever since then her novels have been close-clipped and rather simple, as most writers who are popular but not necessarily award winning. Seems to me as though once she became popular she just decided to take it easy, make money by producing one best-selling book a year. Whateva, I still read them, although I'm disappointed in her all the same. Disappointment; I'm good at that.

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Advantage of working at a library is all the stuff you take home. Movies/t.v. shows I currently have.

Several series of French & Saunders
Jesus Camp (an apparently horrific real life documentary)
The Love Guru
The Wedding Date
As Time Goes By (the British t.v. show with Judi Dench)
Quantum of Solace
Bob Le Flambeaur
Arrested Development, season one and two
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, season 2
The Avengers (with Diana Rigg)
Wall*e
State of Play (British mini-series)

03 June 2009, Wednesday

I've never felt so alone. I live with my parents who can't provide for me, who have no money. We will be kicked out of our apartment soon.

I need to find a job, but am so depressed, that I can't even figure out what I want to do.

I've never been so negative in my life. I literally cannot write anything on here that is positive. Every time I sit and think -- what is good in my life -- what comes out is this.

Even the good doesn't seem that great anymore.

I've always been unhappy but figured if I worked hard that someday I would be happy. Going back to London would make me happy. I would finally meet people I like. I would finally establish a fulfilling life for myself. I think this life isn't good enough for me; I think I should have never been born; I look at the people I know who I love (but who I also wish were so much better) and I hate myself for it, hate myself so greatly that I just want to run away again, somewhere where no one knows me.

I am back home. The same place I ran away from. I am working at the library again. I work at the theatre. I love my theatre. That is good. But I am reminded of the aspirations I had when I worked there, of the things I thought I would one day be doing, and the music from the orchestra, and the people dancing/singing on stage, and the beauty of the old victorian theatre somehow seems less beautiful.

02 June 2009, Tuesday

Trying to be happy is not easy. I wonder if I should see a therapist, but I don't believe in them. I think they're a bit rubbish. Was watching "The Wedding Date." Love this movie. Debra Messing hires a man, an escort, to go with her to her sister's wedding in London so that she looks like she's not single. She tells everyone that he's a therapist. One of the British blokes say's to him -- "You yankees and your need to tell everyone else your problems." I thought I would like the English because they don't express themselves as we do. And I do. But it does become boring after a while. Conversation is rather lacking. But all this needing to psychoanalyse one another becomes rather redundant after a while. Every one of us comes to the point in our lives where we say -- enough is enough! Get over yourself! Just live.

01 June 09, Monday

I worked at the library today. This is what I did:

Checked in books returned to the library.

Put up holds for people to pick up.

Went to the cafe run by the Asian guy that is a block away. Bought white popcorn and half an italian hoagie, everything on it. And of course a diet pop.

Ate at the library.

Put dvd's in sleeves, and the cases on the security guards cart so she can shelve them.

Organized books in the bins for shipping to take out tomorrow.

Sensitized a load of books and put them on the shelf in the back so they can be shelved.

Left. Took the bus home, while reading a manga book set in the late 19th century, about a servant who falls in love with a boy who is in the upper-class.