Pickled_Newt

5:14pm: Exams are bloody stupid. Essays too.

This education is a con. A 20-30k con.

4:22pm: Alex of the Clockwork Orange was perhaps justified in his reverence for "Ludwig Van". Or that of Anthony Burgess, however one reads it.

Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 14, all three movements.

It is wonderful, there is no doubting this. But more, it is powerful on a level I can't quite understand.

An anonymous patient at the care home, very frail, unable to construct sentences, and often in senseless delirium, was - from a minute or two into the first movement, through to my leaving him halfway through the third - returned to a visible personality. For the first half of the first movement, he spoke clearly with me about what he called the wonderful beauty of the music, and how nice it is, and what a great improvement it makes to the weather. (Not sure how to take the last bit.) Then speaking at length through the second half and second movement about his family, his old place of work and the circumstances of his arrival at the care home. For the third, he sat n his chair looking divinely happy and tapping his fingers on the arm of the chair matching the tempo.

Most interesting. Not yet sure what to make of it.

I might buy him a CD of the Ninth Symphony.

11:43pm: 21 years of life.

1st February.

Nadir here.

5:00pm: I suspect things are now aligning for the better, in all areas of my life.

Albeit some more slowly than others.

3:59am: Ah, I see it is by Georges Delerue. I shouldn't be surprised.

The man is a master.

3:44am: Libera Me.
02:56, I set 'Libera Me' to the Nth repeat after two hours of play, and the door was thrown open, slamming into the wall, followed by a pretty anguished wail.

02:57, it is apparent that Kate is in one of the most dramatically unsettling breakdowns I've seen in four years of knowing her. Reasons shan't be touched upon, but it may be said that the reasons are wider-reaching than Kate, and shall likely change the social arrangement of a large part of the university.

Hugs and magic tea save the day, and slightly meddlesome but well-meaning friends catch up with her on the hour, getting chattily but upbeatedly in my way.

She's talking to Michael now - left maybe 20 minutes ago - and I have no idea what is happening over there. Big things, almost certainly; big explanations, one hopes. A repaired faith in humanity, truth and faith? I remain sceptical in the short term.

My, how time flies. And up at 9am for a hike at ten. O relentless Life.

To bed.

2:36pm: http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=4540134202583442015&q=Africa+addio&total=11&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0

(For future reference, and later more considered assessment.)

4:59pm: I heard...
I heard...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/friday_play.shtml

Or.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4 (Friday // 'What I Heard about Iraq' // Eliot Weinberger's long and continuing prose poem paints a terrifying picture of the war in Iraq).

Nothing I didn't know before, but collated and in sharp focus.

5:48pm:

Music can be so so beautiful.

12:47pm: Well now, this is inconvenient. My philosophic doubt was unjustified, I wasn't mistaken last time.

Some girls I want nothing to do with, because they're awful. Some girls I would choose to talk to, because they're interesting, intelligent and challenging. Other girls I would choose to have a drunken kissfest of a party with, because they're nothing to say, but are disconcertingly good looking. With one girl I knew, I was equally blessed in both situations. Now, a new dimension.

I don't care that it's a shallow summary of girls. The issue is far more complex, if ever I'm to think about anything with any clarity I'm going to have to simplify whether I like it or not. Pity, though.

I should probably try to keep philosophy out of such matters as those involving girls. It is difficult to apply, and when applied completely fails to interact with the subtlety of the situation. Philosophy is a brute instrument, it seems. Good philosophy is clear, it has to be, but if it is clear it reduces things down and loses detail. What clarity is that?

Perhaps not everything was gain, when in 500BC some Greeks decided they didn't like the obscure and heavily symbolic mythos of the day, and decided to subject it to a rigorous critique. Trading beautify for knowledge is something I've always thought should be done, as there is a sort of beauty in knowledge itself. Not worth it though, or not so clearly worth it, if by trading beauty for knowledge one institutes a system of thought which often simplifies things to a point where we lose detail. The frade becomes not beauty sold for knowledge, but beauty sold for narrowed perception. Why else would Nietzsche, who wrote passionate philosophy, be still driven to points more obscure, more open to interpretation, more subjective? I imagine his poetry must have grown from his reading of Classics, and the poor instrument philosophy is for explaining the more uniquely human things.

Damn to that.

I've met a girl, she's extraordinary. An exception to rules. That's all.

2:09am: I'm no good at arithmetic, so I asked Rachael to calculate my remaining essay words.

It transpires that if I'm to do all the required essays for the end of this term I will have to do a lot of typing.

As in, the sums were done at midnight, and assumed I would not be losing any hours to sleep, eating, Student's Union or drowning of sorrows.

The result at midnight was a necessary average of 6.5 words per second non-stop between midnight two hours ago and the end of term.

6.5 words per second - a paragraph every minute, without any food or sleep or essay planning or reading or research.

Suffice to say I've opened my 1979 Armagnac, and for the moment it is holding me together quite nicely.



BRANDY, n: A cordial composed of one part thunder and lightning, one part remorse, two parts bloody murder, one part death hell and the grave and four parts clarified Satan. Dose, a headful all the time.

Tally ho.

8:23pm: If I'm not in touch, it's because I'm working damned hard and the consequent health effects are not great.

Still, it's a win-win situation.

First, I've a choice beween working healthily hard and falling even further behind, or pulling out all the stops, working in a way detrimental to my health and making slow progress.

So, limited to this unhealthy workload, it is my only option.

Consequently, either A) The body fails first, I get sent to hospital, and I get a bit sympathy vote for having been broken by the slowness of the university to provide the necessary support. Or B) The essays fail before medical treatment becomes necessary, and I have successful caught up.

Either situation, I've learnt a lot, and don't have to re-take the year.

Time to throw myself once more into the breach, once more.

"The sand of the desert is sodden red,
Red with the wreck of a square that broke.
The Gatling's jammed and the Colonel dead,
And the regiment blind with dust and smoke.

But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks:
'Play up! play up! and play the game!'"

Tally ho, keep going, and damn to the consequenses.

11:09am: "Throughout America's adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among people and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt both at home and abroad."

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."

"We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."

- Eisenhower, 1961.



Fail.

1:11pm: It was all sortof tidy.

Then - as always - when the rational explains away the irrational emotional and manages to win-out over it, the dreams are a rather different matter.

Still, easily forgotten. I hope. Has to be.

Then once you've got it all nailed down where it should be, in good and practical order, with even a clear and inviting sky ahead of you, a song can send it all away again.

'Strange and Beautiful', oh how the tables turn.

Damn.

11:58pm: Hello select readers, if any still remain.

Life is good again, it's working.

11:07pm: Hmm..

:-/

9:40pm: Ah, communication. Thank heavens for that.

It's like breathing air again.

1:22pm: And now, I have a creeping suspicion this needn't have happened.

I've decided to hide that thought though, and hope it'll dissolve away. Until Kate's talking to me again there's no point dwelling on it at all anyway.

11:34pm:

To the future.

9:15pm: NB: Kate has read my older posts and can't see how anyone could come through it not hating her. So in amendment of this I shall point out that the whole thing was a mess and it's really not her fault. She's really very nice.

Now, also, a lighthearted but rather revealing quiz.

7:25am:

 

Goodbye everyone. Back in a few weeks.

http://www.gaiaonline.com/guilds/viewtopic.php?t=2410908&page=1

9:45pm: Alain de Botton - "Status Anxiety"

'Independently, de Botton has taken philosophy back to its simplest and most important purpose: helping us to live our lives' - The Independent


I offer dissent, this man is no philosopher. He is a sensationalist psychologist with a fetish for reference to Philosophy. His books are mediocre, and offer nothing new. There is no edge, no strength. Nothing to inspire, and you can't teach or invoke real change without inspiring.

If this is the best that British philosophy can offer the world, then we are all lost.

10:52am:

6:19pm: Victory is mine, in the end, as it always is.

Brandy glasses. Having trawled charity shops, upmarket kitchen suppliers, midmarket kitchen suppliers and yet more charity shops I have finally found a brandy glass worthy of the name.

Better than that, in fact.

Having been faced with nothing but the choice between an overpriced chunky-cut crystal glass and an overpriced stemmed goldfish bowl, neither coming to less than twenty-five pounds, I am now in possession of seven pretty good brandy glasses. For which I paid two pounds.

Church Fete, junk stall. Hurrah! Apparently the Lort-Phillipses didn't need them anymore and though I tried to pay a higher amount they didn't let me.

It'd have been rude to press the matter, so here I am. Victorious.

Seven, for two pounds. Seven good ones, two pounds. As against two bad ones, twenty-five pounds.

Oh yes, oh this is happy stuff indeed..

7:45pm: Brandy glasses.

Impossible to buy.

Been trying for weeks now. Nowhere anywhere. Well, not unless you count a clunking cut-crystal monstrocity.

All I want is one decent glass for less than thirty quid, it really shouldn't be this difficult.

Blue glasses, plastic glasses, crystal glasses, joke glasses (as if cut crystal weren't a joke already), sets of six glasses, tiny glasses and absurdly huge glasses.

Damn it, damn it all.