Cissy M <3s
I love:
Ceri, my family, my friends, reading, writing, Scrabble, Virginia Woolf, shopping, Alanis Morissette, Harry Potter, comfortable clothes, pretty underwear, lie-ins, eating at resturants, drinking wine, cuddles, Regina Spektor, 90s cheesey pop bands, hummous, Bellatrix Lestrange, The Hours, Shakespeare, board games, the Muppets, Eddie Izzard, Tori Amos, Bad Girls, drinking until I enjoy R’n'B, Amnesty International, Crunchie Nut Clusters, Postsecret, Tipping the Velvet, Malibu and lemonade, gummy bears, not living at home, bright colours, talking, random singing, laughing, being inside when it’s raining, picnics, glitter, quiz shows, pink.
Remembrance
I’ve failed at Remembrance Day this year. I’ve been really busy and tired and stuff so I haven’t been able to get to a silence. I can already see the Daily Mail headline: Lesbian pacifist student layabout ‘too tired’ to honour dead soliders!’. No. I’ve been too busy/forgetful for sit still and quiet for two minutes, but I have thought.
For me, the most poigniant descriptions of the First World War come from the poetry. No one except those that were there can even begin to imagine what it was like, but the poetry gives us just a slice of how it felt to be those soliders.
And I do enjoy a bit of Wilfred Owen.
“Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!–An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime…
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,–
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.”
- Dulce Et Decorum Est- Wilfred Owen
NaNoWriMo
NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month, which is in November every year. The idea is that you sign up on the website and then attempt to write an entire novel of at least 50,000 words in November. If you manage it you can submit it to be validated and then you get a Winner’s Certificate from the website, but mainly you get to know that you wrote a novel in a month!
I’ve known about it for a couple of years now, but this year I’ve decided to do it. I’m not very prepared- I only have 3 A4 pages of handwritten notes- but I think it’s going to be fun just to see how it goes!
Flinch
I’d be paralysed if I ran into you
My tongue would seize up if we were to meet again.
- Flinch- Alanis Morissette
If I kiss you where it’s sore
Will you feel better, better, better?
Will you feel anything at all?
- Better- Regina Spektor
I love you. <3
A million and one
That’s the amount of things I had to do today. I only managed a million. I haven’t got any work to send to my creative writing teacher, because the short piece I was supposed to be writing has turned into a much longer piece, which is good in the long run but now I have nothing to send, which is annoying.
And I feel gagged. And, ironically, I can’t even say here why.
The work I was doing today was autobiographical, and I think it’s freaked me out a bit. It’s very odd to see some things written down like that, not hiding behind characters and the 3rd person.
I’m living with an Italian
Required reading
Everyone should have a look at www.fmylife.com .
This is my favourite story that I’ve seen so far today:
Today, I got an email from the company that manages my Cat’s microchip informing me that I had to update my information that had been entered by the local Humane Society. Apparently, they listed my cat “Coral” as the owner, and me as the pet. To change it, they needed the cat’s signature. FML.
Obviously!
Lee: Why did the person on the bike fall off it?
Cissy: I don’t know. Why?
Lee: Because someone threw a fridge at them.