Sholipshishism With Seamus

As is often the case when work and various other things start encroaching on my usually satisfactory sense of mental stability and general well-being, I’ve been feeling an ever-increasing compulsion to do anything but everything I should be doing.

Hence: tendencies towards extreme offensiveness at debating committee meetings (this would involve interrupting the President’s incessant whinging and acute martyrdom complex by shouting “Well, BOO HOO!”, and then collapsing in helpless cackles), rather too much time and money spent at the hall bar drinking dodgy £1 vodka alcopops, and a general longing to just get out of the hall, the law library, the debating chamber, the entire UCL locale altogether.

Except that most of the time my inertia and disorganization means I end up retreating to my room and music and books, which are all far cheaper forms of escapism than the alternatives that come to mind, but this tends to steep me in solipsism after a while, which I don’t like.

[Speaking of solipsism (or perhaps not, because I don’t think the poem is entirely solipsistic, but it did somehow get associatively recalled by my use of that word) please read Personal Helicon (Seamus Heaney) because I just love it.]

[You could also do with reading Anahorish and Death Of A Naturalist, and pretty much everything else he’s ever written, while you’re about it.]

[You could also buy me Opened Ground: Poems 1966-1996, if you’re feeling generous.]

[Or you could buy it for yourself, which would admittedly make me less happy than the above option, but would nevertheless make me quite happy, all the same.]

Where was I? Oh yes – solipsism. :)

Working Lunch

Epic fusion lunch with Mark on Monday involved leftover claypot rice with lap cheong (Chinese sausage; Mark popped some in his mouth and asked what was in it, I said probably dog, Mark spluttered a bit), fusilli with pesto, chicken kievs, cherry tomatoes, and mouldy bread.

Other features of lunch included surprisingly efficient planning of Tuesday’s debate workshop, managed far more successfully than all our previous attempts at planning sessions because at those we always end up wallowing in mad gossip and agonizing over respective affairs of the heart – today we were in the dining room and didn’t have the requisite privacy.

We also tried formulating a cunning plan to discourage a girl who’s after him and needs to know she’s barking up the wrong tree (so to speak). One possibility was that I call him a “fucking faggot” in front of her. The problem with this, of course, is that it calls for careful planning and judicious implementation, because otherwise I might end up just looking really, really mean. His solution to this: “Oh, just say you’re post-menopausal…pre-menstrual…oh, whatever, female bits, you know…”

Oh, Mark. I may have spent most of two hours last night shouting “All men are bastards/fuckwits/arseholes!” (with a long-suffering but highly entertained Avril), but not you, never you.

Happy Birthday Fabric

I’ve been meaning to say: Happy 2nd birthday, Fabric. I won’t be around for your third, though.

(Which depresses me slightly, even though Friday night didn’t evoke the sheer glee previous excursions have managed. I haven’t quite decided if I’m mellowing, or Fabric’s lost something, but it was, nonetheless, nice to be there with Russ and remember us there two years ago in its opening weeks, our first weeks at university, going to Fabric at 9 pm absolutely determined to get in, talking for hours before we started dancing, me clueless and flailing in my first drum’n’bass experience, him the epitome of non-camp-male-dancing coolness that he still is, walking back to Ramsay Hall in my decidedly unsensible shoes, talking, talking, talking, and two years later here we are, and this friendship has only gotten closer and better and stronger along the way.)

The Thursday Stagger

The Thursday stagger begins at 8.50, when I finally get out of bed (for a 9 am lecture) after intermittent swatting of three different alarm clocks with three different ring tones going off every three (feels like) seconds over the past hour (Flaming Lips parking lot experiments come to mind, somehow).

The rest of the day goes like this: Stagger to Conflict of Laws lecture. Stagger to Jurisprudence seminar. Stagger to lunch. Stagger to Conflict of Laws tutorial. (Every lesson intellectually exhausting.) Stagger back home to do office duty. Stagger into Benediction and play the organ.

Sir Geldof? I think I’m changing it to Thursdays. Feel free to open fire.

This week no sappy songs, charming Irishmen or pigshit balloons were available to cheer me up, but I made do with alcohol, A.H.W.O.S.G and one of those energizing ohmygod-I-never-never-knew-you-were-like-this conversations with Nav, who came over for her friend’s (my hallmate’s) birthday party and ended up getting a tour of my room where we suddenly found out we both liked Pavement and the Smashing Pumpkins and Seamus Heaney and war poetry and literature of protest and didn’t connect much with anyone else in the law faculty. This after two years of little more than pleasant but incidental conversations and much amusement at my chronic lecture-based narcolepsy. Funny how things like this happen, but I’m not too surprised. My room is a repository of a lot of me-ness that isn’t easily apparent to people who only see me outside of it.

For The Record

Certain things need to be clarified with regard to what Mark writes about our Saturday night gossip session:

  • His hips were generally referred to by him as “child-bearing” rather than “holster”.
  • Apart from the above observations on his anatomy, he also apologized once for builder’s arse.
  • He didn’t seem in the least bit embarrassed about any of the above declarations.

He is, however, accurate in saying “Michelle is Michelle and it didn’t seem to bother her too much”, and Mark, after braving an ice disco with you, your room doesn’t require anywhere as much courage. :P

Hello, Gorgeous

London, you should try wearing beautiful days more often, because you’re absolutely gorgeous in them.

Friday girly lunch on warm grass in Gordon Square with Esther and Sabrina. Flowers and happy people outside Finnegan’s Wake pub as I walked down Goodge Street to the charity shops. Sun streaming through skylights in the chapel at home. Pavement benches outside the Marlborough Arms at night, cool air, lazy conversation, Smirnoff Ice(s).

Saturday lolling under the UCL dome, reading Company Law for as long as I could stand, and then Love In The Time Of Cholera the rest of the time. The Cruciform Building turrets ruddy and triumphal against the sky. Dinner with four Italians and a Scot on a street table on Charlotte Street, inhaling foccacia.

Good days.

Was Down. Am Back Up.

I was sitting in my hall’s reception area yesterday feeling unusually low (tough day in school, hacking cough, debating/organ-playing stress) and slightly resentful at the person who hadn’t turned up for reception duty, even A.H.W.O.S.G (which I’m loving, and will probably rave about in the near future) failing to rouse me out of listlessness, when Virgin Radio (not my channel, but the office radio can’t seem to receive Xfm) started Stuck In A Moment You Can’t Get Out Of.

(I think I’ve written about it before. The pop song you sneer at when you are at your most cynical becomes your Dawson’s Creek pensive moment soundtrack when you’re at your most vulnerable, and suddenly the lyrics seem to speak to you when before they were nothing more than pleasant but gooey sounds to move your mouth to and hopelessly garble from time to time, and before you know it you’re writing blog posts quoting song lyrics that aren’t hiply oblique (e.g. Can’t catch me, I’m syntax free – “The Ineffable Me”, Sonic Youth) like they’re supposed to be in order to meet the indie coolness criteria, but they really are speaking to you, they really are…)

And you are such a fool
To worry like you do
I know it’s tough
And you can never get enough
Of what you don’t really need now

During Benediction I was more distracted than I should have been, mulling over various mull-issues, thinking maybe what I needed was to get out of the house, maybe go to a movie by myself, maybe Amelie for feelgoodness. Found out after Benediction (the organ playing was relatively hitch-free, hooray) that Alec was thinking of seeing it too, tagged along with him. Liked it a lot but didn’t absolutely love it – a little too many shots of Audrey Tautou being gamine, which got mildly tiresome after the initial charm wore off, but I did enjoy many of its other little touches: the jet-setting garden gnome, the bullied artichoke-caressing veggie stall helper, the girl at the centre of Renoir’s painting but not really there at all, the jealous ex-boyfriend cataloguing perceived flirtations (time-stamped) into his tape recorder.

Talking outside the pub after the movie, I realized with relief that I hadn’t actually become recently socially dysfunctional (which I’d been wondering about), I’d just gotten rather tired of group conversations with people I’d just met and needed one-on-one conversations that went beyond the polite, chirpy “How are YOU” barrier to recharge.

There was also the matter of the pig keychain which ballooned shit out of its arse, but you really just had to be there.

It’s just a moment
This time will pass

It did. I’m glad.

Cough Mixture, Library Love, Unfortunate Wording, Coming To America

Wednesday: waking up hacking in the morning, late scrambling and gulping of cough mixture (note to self: don’t mention this to mum, she’ll think it’s anthrax), eyes glazing over in public international law seminar, thinking it was just the seminar, leaving the building and walking home with eyes that just wouldn’t unglaze, deciding, stupored, that I really should sleep this off before playing the organ for Benediction and screwing up, waking up two hours later and realizing that Benediction wasn’t till today, general amusement that I’d somehow managed to get stoned on cough mixture.

In the library, English section first as usual (another Seamus Heaney collection, selected poems of Paul Auster, The Old Man And The Sea), then the law library with its rickety desks and wheezing seats, squinting along jurisprudence shelves where all the books are old and matt-covered and endearingly musty, raised eyebrows at Austin, unexpectedly charmed at Bentham (he refers to Blackstone only as “the Author” as he rips the piss out of him).

Hot dog supper in the bar at home, awkward intermittent nibbling while listening to a pro-life counsellor talk about her work in the movement, eyes popping momentarily when my chaplain asked a question about the usefulness of advertising her network in Catholic periodicals which involved the unfortunate phrasing “What comes out the other end?”, face hurriedly straightened because no one else seemed to notice it, berating self for sick mind.

Slouching around in the bar after that, Van Morrison on the speakers, Tay (previously mentioned as mad composer dude, now probably deserving of name) inexplicably launching into Greatest Love Of All, me wondering why but still perfectly willing to join him in belting out “They can’t take away MAH DIG-NI-TEEEEE!” (and here Matt observes that we manage that quite well on our own), me asking if anyone’s seen Coming To America, Tay going wild with “Yeah, man! Yeah, man!”s, Emma coming in to find both of us shrieking “Y’all give it up for mah band Sexual Chocolate!” and instantly making the connection, then all three of us repeating lines from the film at each other, laughing insanely, and I got an acute case of the hiccups.

Jurisprudence / Vile Magnetic Poetry / Ice Disco

The jurisprudence essay that was due on Thursday is finally finished (yes, I’m aware that today is Tuesday), which means I can finally come into the computer room with a conscience slightly less muddied than usual. I say only “slightly” because the past few days have been classic chronicles of Michellian essay avoidance mechanisms, and I’m not terribly proud of myself right now.

Friday started off normally enough with me snoozing my way through a company law seminar, wandering into Waterstones on a textbook hunt and leaving with the necessary textbooks but also with Birthday Letters (£1.99!) and A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius (£2.99!), which I then obviously spent considerably more time reading over the weekend than Hart’s The Concept Of Law.

Much of Friday night was spent crouched in front of a fridge laughing hysterically over magnetic poetry at a housewarming party. Justyn’s magnum opus was:

I dream of a goddess
with peach-like breasts
whom I can fall in love with

These somewhat romantic sentiments got unfortunately abandoned later on when the poem was modified to:

I dream of a goddess
with peach-like breasts
who can fiddle with
my boiling meat apparatus.

Our collective muse inspired this, which we’re all rather proud of:

luscious sordid butt puppy
raw finger love smear
screaming frantic chocolate lather
heaving sausage, lust juice.

After a lengthy and satisfying girl talk session with Avril, at 2.30 a.m. I was ready to either sleep or attempt some reading, but was foiled by Russ, who dropped in for quality time and sprawling conversation till the Tube started running again at 5.

* * *

Not content with setting a plastic chopping board on fire and leaving the gas on in the kitchen, Mark decided to continue his mission of chaos on Saturday night by persuading me to go ice-skating. More specifically, ice discoing.

And so it was that instead of a quiet night in with Ronald Dworkin and my laptop, I found myself attempting to get my groove on to the Wu Tang Clan amidst daredevil twelve-year-olds and strobe lighting while flailing around on badly fitting ice skates.

Stranger things have happened, but not by much.

* * *

Sunday involved dejection after an absolutely dreadful choir performance in morning mass, elation after an incredibly beautiful choir performance in evening mass, and ultimately, a very worn out and stressed me after having to play the organ for both masses and the choir practice sessions before them. Having said that, sitting at a piano flanked by a charming Gibraltan improvising jazz and a mad composer dude improvising Pavement (I kid you not) proved to be a bit too much of an antidote, and I ended up returning to my neglected textbooks far too late to do anything worthwhile.

* * *

As a result of all the weekend indiscipline, I expected Monday’s attempts to finally write the bloody essay to be excruciating, but it wasn’t as bad as I’d thought. It certainly involved prolonged mental agony and intellectual self-scourging, but somehow the pain was vaguely pleasurable. This jurisprudence thing might just work out. Fingers crossed.

Too Many Knob Gags

Sunday morning mass yielded yet another cringeworthy moment in the life and times of Michelle, where in her role as choir/organmistress, she decides she’d better switch the organ volume off just in case she drops a large, heavy hymnal on the keyboard, with cacophonous and horribly embarrassing consequences. Her hand moves to carry out said decision, and accidentally knocks said hymnal onto organ keyboard, with said cacophonous and horribly embarrassing consequences.

Most of Sunday evening also involved cringing, except that this was due to A.I., which I came out of feeling like I’d been viciously sodomized for three hours by Steven Spielberg, the ghost of Stanley Kubrick and the freaking Blue Fairy. More on this later, if I decide it’s worth my time reviewing.

The post on Monday brought All Is Dream (exquisite) and Strange Little Girls (quite intriguing so far, but more exploration needs to be done) from CD-Wow and an invitation to a reception with the Papal Nuncio, which I’d quite forgotten I was supposed to go to.

In the evening I skived the UCL Catholic Society opening party to go to the UCL Debating Society opening debate, where sudden speaker shortage meant that I got hauled up to speak about hardcore pornography on a side I neither agreed with nor found particularly intellectually edifying. It felt odd for a debating society to be spending its opening debate making bad knob gags at a time when the world really does have a bit more to worry about than people who film simulated bestiality, and I left after the debate feeling dissatisfied and mildly grouchy, although pleasant little encounters with various lovable people (Russ, Nick, John, Alec) on the way home helped to dissipate that. (It could, of course, also have been the wine and numerous Smirnoff Ices taking effect, but I prefer being cheered up by people than alcohol.)