Whenever I get restless, or overanxious, I flit my time away on inane things, while secretly desiring to do something wild or impulsive. Like now, for instance. What I should be doing: reading Seamus Heaney before I have to start getting dressed up for the Dean's dinner tonight. Especially since this week's topic is going to be a bitch. Something about how every poem is actually a metaphor for what's going on in Ireland. But my Irish history is rather sorely lacking. At least I think that's what I'm supposed to write about this week. For some reason, I can't quite remember what Ballam said.

I have all this nervous energy & I don't know what to do with myself. Falling into daydreams about the future, about whether or not I'll end up back here. I think the only way I'll be able to leave is if I tell myself that maybe I will. And I'm going to apply to the English MST just to see what happens. Just to keep all my options open.

I'm not sure what I want right now. Drunken exuberant conversations on empty Oxford streets as night finally falls. A sweaty club. To make stupid decisions & not be hurt by them later. I get attached to people quickly. It's always been a virtue & a fault. One I don't know how to go about changing. That's why I can't do random hookups. Most of the time, anyway. I think I have control, but I hardly ever do. Maybe I just like the image. It's enticing, that act. Even if it is just an act. I fall hard. That's why it's been a month & I still care.

I have been listening to Kate Voegele's cover of Hallelujah on repeat. I think I like it better than the Rufus Wainright version, surprisingly. Tomorrow--read all day, go out for Luke's birthday at night. Saturday--watch Wadham in Summer Eights. Sunday--question mark. Work. Yes. Monday--Che's birthday. Tuesday--another birthday/club outing. Etc, etc.

Who wants to give me a crash course in Irish politics? Le sigh.

It's really kind of awful the way the Professor of Poetry elections have degenerated into such a total shitshow. And that Ruth Padel was forced to resign because of blatant sexism as much as the unfortunate fact that she had to open her mouth about the allegations against Walcott instead of just waiting and riding out the tide. It's frustrating too, (though not really surprising) the way so many of the British academics & literati have swarmed to Walcott's defense, and yet they're ready to crucify Padel over a much lesser offense. If she really did organize the smear campaign, that's one thing, and there should be consequences for that. But talking to two newspapers about allegations that were, as she herself pointed out, 'already in the public domain' hardly seems severe enough a crime to warrant a forced resignation. And it really pisses me off that the defense most commonly used in this whole debacle, at least as far as Walcott goes, is that 'it would be almost impossible to find a professor of his generation who hadn't done the same thing.' That, or--Lord Byron was a womanizer, Eliot was a racist, Coleridge was a smackhead, and so on and so forth, and so Walcott should be excused for his behavior since so many of the greats before him also had raging character flaws. And that that shouldn't be enough to deny someone the post. But, I'm sorry--it's not the seventeen hundreds, or even the nineteen hundreds. If you're being put up for the second most prestigious poetry post in the entire country--a position that intrinsically entails working with students--and you have two cases of sexual harrassment under your belt, yeah, I think that should sufficiently knock you out of the running. And yet Oxford, for all that I adore about it, is still in so many ways that 'good ole boys club.' Of course Padel got reamed. She knocked England's big boy out of the way--many in this community weren't going to take that lightly.

It is too bad, all around. For women, for women artists, for the work Padel was planning on doing in British schools, taking poetry back to the classroom in interesting, concrete ways. And it's too bad for the position itself, which is going to be colored by scandal, whoever eventually takes the post.

On to other things.

I still have no desire to write, and I really don't know why. It's like pulling teeth banging out a page. And I procrastinate like all hell. Hah. Like now, writing this.

How many people still read this? I was a bad little blogger for quite some time, so for all I know I may have lost quite a bit of my happy little readership.

I still want to go up to him & say, I'm only here for a month more, and I'm worth it. This doesn't have to be anything--I know you don't want it to be anything--but I'm worth it. Except, you know, people don't actually say those things. And it probably wouldn't matter, even if I did. It's just frustrating. I don't want to leave with regrets.

I don't want to leave I don't want to leave I don't want to leave. I don't even want to think about leaving, but at night--especially now, in these early hours before dawn, when I'm wired and restless, though shouldn't be--it's all I can think about. I don't know when that shift happened--when Oxford stopped being just a beautiful place and worked its way into my blood. When the thought of having to leave turns my stomach into knots, makes me distant and moody. Knowing it's going to break my heart. Reminding me of Rebecca's entries from last year, Dublin, asking "do you know what leaving does?"

I want more time. For the friends I made here, and the relationships that were over before they could even properly begin. For the libraries and the parks and walks at dusk and every street I can trace blindfolded, and for everything I still haven't seen. For feeling calm, and level, and content (except for now, these past few weeks, when I am all nerves). I don't know what route is the best to take. Ashley, and bask in denial, maybe. Amy, who will carry on her connections. Alex, who's already looking ahead. A lot can happen in a month, I know. But I want more time. Desperately. I want more chances. I want to be here, in this life. I'm terrified it won't ever be like this again.

Oh, procrastination.

I am completely lacking in creative inspiration. Which, ok, is problematic when you have ten pages of fiction due imminently, and the last thing you want to do is write. I can bullshit a literature essay--and apparently my tutor prefers those then the ones I have poured hours into, so who knows what that means for this year--but I can't exactly bullshit creative work.

I think I'm just tired of doing work in general. We all are. I don't even want to think about leaving Oxford, but then again I am. Looking ahead, not so much to this fall & senior year, but the more immediate summer.

I am on antibiotics for the next month. The NHS & their incompetence can bite me.

Ruth Padel just won Professor of Poetry of Oxford, and Carol Ann Duffy was named Britain's new Poet Laureate last week. The first time in the history of either position that a woman was ever named. Exciting or infuriating? Both, maybe. Still, England redeems itself somewhat.

I need a good story idea.

"the writer must not destroy by human reasonings the faith that art requires of us"

I am hopeless at updating when I say I will. I know this, you know this, it is what it is. So with that in mind, in the past three weeks since term began (three weeks already, fuck) I have...gone to the Exeter Ball, seen Martin Sheen speak at the Oxford Union, gone to the Keble Ball, celebrated Minnie's 20th birthday in style, taken a trip to the fabulous John Radcliffe emergency room, gone to Dublin, submitted my senior thesis proposal, figured out my summer plans, celebrated Mayday, attended Wadstock....there's always something.

Reading Borges while hopped up on multiple antihistamines is a strange experience. I hate that I feel like I lost so much of this week, because I already feel like the days are flying by. But what can you do. At least my tutors were sympathetic. I always manage to get shit done. But yes. Borges. Bizarre dreams of waking and not waking--or not being able to wake up, and freaking out about that. I wish I had been able to absorb more of what I read; as it is, I feel like I just got a cursory idea. He likes mind games, paradoxes, cowards and heroes. The idea of what happens when the last person to witness anything dies. What you lose. Labyrinths, the idea of it all being a fiction, one choice determining another--or us already being other's predetermined choices. The idea of what if none of it is real, or if it all is. Very metaphysical, and hard to discuss when you don't feel all that lucid.

It's so weird that back in the States, everyone is almost done.

I wanted to say, "take a chance on me. I'm worth it."

But life isn't like that, is it? No.