ascendant

[helenic]

Two days ago I was as low as I get and now I'm going up so fast it's dizzying. Rollercoaster. How many times do I have to repeat a motif before it becomes monotonous? Tumult, control, expectations, love; external as a reflection of internal, boundaries and the Other, people as Other and relationships as boundaries. I could thematically criticise this journal but I don't think it would help me understand myself any better, because I already know what I'm preoccupied with. Today I am alive but tomorrow I might not be; I don't know any more. All I can do is enjoy this while it lasts - and try to get through the entirety of my revision in the next fourteen days.

I had my last supervision today, not counting optional revision ones during exam leave. Lucretius 1.80-106. It was in some tiny, forgotten lecture room at the top of the faculty (Fletcher is only a grad student and doesn't have an office), one wall of which was covered with a hideous, green-on-white fresco consisting almost solely of pots and ivy patterns. The faculty is almost nothing like I imagined Cambridge but I've grown inordinately fond of it - much like you and New Hall - grown to love the ubiquitous breeze blocks and concrete staircases, the strange profusion of statues in the corridors leading to the cast gallery; friezes and five-foot high staring heads, gorgons and naked boys with their noses missing. My philosophy lecture room is at the end of the long building and has floor-to-ceiling windows on three sides, exposed breeze blocks on the fourth, and in the corner, looking awkwardly out of place on the grey carpet and shoved behind an OHP, a nine-foot statue of Athena.

Today as Fletcher debated with Vanessa about Lucretius' self-consciousness as an epic poet and elementa as a thematic signpost only meaningful to the second-time reader, I phased out and stared instead at the sunlit rooftops of Ridley Hall through the window, at the sea of leaves tossing and swaying across the avenue; sudden patches emerging, luminous, as they moved into a shaft of light. I never much liked the death of the author anyway, and the sky has been too beautiful today.

I'm so vicarious I continually invalidate myself.

Comments

[beeswing.livejournal.com]

I'm glad I read this one before reading the last two, and knew in advance that you were feeling better.

Tirrah
xxxxxx

[libellum.livejournal.com]

for however long it lasts. I'm resolved to not think about it. You do look decidedly Roman in that icon, I like it. xxxx

[http://users.livejournal.com/_pip/]

You faculty (if that's what you call it?) sounds like the ULTIMATE in classics departments!

I'm glad you're on the uprise to happiness. x

[libellum.livejournal.com]

not permanently, but good days are always appreciated. I love our faculty. Especially the diet coke machine, I spend all my money on that thing.

Actually more than the faculty itself, which is a square monstrosity of brown and grey, I love Sidgewick Avenue, which leads to it; lined with enormous trees and always with a perfect, leafy quality of light. I do most of my thinking on my bike cycling up and down that avenue. I do pretty much all my thinking on bikes - they're always so liberating, make me feel alive. xxx

Diet Coke

[gushing-swine.livejournal.com]

Are you smoking too? Diet Coke and cigarettes are food groups remember.

Good to see you around again.
xx

Re: Diet Coke

[libellum.livejournal.com]

actually no - or only when very, very drunk. I've gone off cigarettes entirely. I'm beginning to question my diet coke habits as well, as they're proving increasingly expensive. But not until after exams. x

[nicolasix.livejournal.com]

i cant wait to leave academia. it is destroying me. but im glad you are feeling a little better, and that you are not being destroyed likewise!
xx.

[libellum.livejournal.com]

oh sarah don't be destroyed, come to my birthday picnic instead. when do you finish? I have always loved academia - it's my own expectations that destroy me.

please be well sweetheart. xxx

[nicolasix.livejournal.com]

by the way, i forgot to say: I'm so vicarious I continually invalidate myself. - i understand.