times like these i can even hear my footsteps

deuxmoulins @ 2005-06-11T21:45:00

2005-06-11T09:51:00Z

and sometimes you go away only to come back having forgotten why you'd ever left.

i'm the same (i've changed).

i remember now, how some of you are the best writers i've read.

deuxmoulins @ 2004-10-16T16:59:00

2004-10-16T04:05:45Z

oh, i'm done.

and it feels kind of empty and strange. as the dulled ache of exhaustion leaves my body, it takes with it the nervous energy that had kept me alive for a crazy ten near-sleepless days. i don't seem to have a place to be anymore and while i am content, i am not pleased... certainly not in the way i thought i'd be.

i miss the compulsory confinement with classmates, how much we looked after each other and cared when it all seemed so desolate.

i should have written this a few days ago. then, you'd have heard about how the excitement had taken over, how i felt alive again, how i longed to run through the hilltops above&behind our house with bottles of alcohol and like-minded free-spirits and watch the sun set&rise because too much time was wasted each 24 hours and i had decided to embrace every one like it was my last.

Muslim musician escorted off flight to Washington by FBI agents and sent back to Britain.

2004-09-23T00:27:25Z

i drop off the side of the planet for a few days to finish an essay on islamophobia in the eu and emerge from the ether to find this.

what is the world coming to?

old man lying by the side of the road, with the lorries rolling by

2004-09-11T04:16:37Z

essays are back on track and i am happy again. you, lucky livejournal, missed the middle part of the week where i was a raging mess of essay nerves, where my heart beat too fast and i didn't think i had enough hours left in each day to go to class because there just wouldn't be enough time to get the writing done. now my head has cleared and it's okay.

i don't think my self-imposed drinking ban was doing any good. last night i fell off the wagon in a mild way and felt all the tension melt away. this is why people become alcoholics i thought.

finding a middle ground between fun and focus is not easy. if i starve myself of fun (as i did during the week), then i feel like i am punishing myself. but if i indulge myself by accepting every invite that comes along then i feel rushed for time and out of control.

poor the_antichris however, had to see me at my harried worst. we went on a lovely picnic on the waterfront though. while walking there with our tasty french bakery food, i managed to unwittingly lose a citron tart so it was fortunate that the rest of the food was good enough to suffice. also fortunate was the fact that chris spotted a dead seal in the harbour before it got too grisly with crowds of on-lookers and we made ourselves scarce. it was lovely to catch up with her even if i was an essay-strung-out-mess.

deuxmoulins @ 2004-09-04T12:54:00

2004-09-04T00:56:15Z

oh essay madness. it is so slow.

but tonight, i get to escape this computer screen and lack-of-life by being an extra in bange's short film. i will be in a crowd scene in a old apartment. the scene is a 1980s flash-back of a bohemian university book launch party. as far as i know, the only arduous task i am expected to perform is to stand around the apartment holding a glass of red wine looking artsy.

deuxmoulins @ 2004-09-01T22:36:00

2004-09-01T10:39:04Z

i have nothing much to say tonight but someone made me a mix cd which i post below for your perusal:

1. the unbelievable truth, solved
2. joseph arthur, honey & the moon
3. sun kil moon, carry me ohio
4. josh rouse, flair
5. national skyline, a million circles
6. sparklehorse, maria's little elbows
7. beck, already dead
8. wilco, via chicago
9. red house painters, smokey
10. pavement, ann don't cry
11. radiohead, bulletproof... i wish i was
12. thursday, cross out the eyes
13. counting crows, speedway
14. matthew sweet, slowly

deuxmoulins @ 2004-08-22T13:00:00

2004-08-22T00:59:30Z

it is the most beautiful sunday afternoon and i sit in my green room with the front door open for the wind to blow down the hallway. one gust, and the outside is transported inside. i like that.

i can't believe the student year is starting to wrap up - say it ain't so. we had our interns annual dinner on friday night which means things must be drawing to a close and i don't want them to. i stretched out our early dinner as long as i could, until it was 4am and there was nothing left to do. i want to go to india. this idea isn't quite well-formed enough to be a plan yet, but soon. there's just a burning desire to go somewhere third world before starting work in the first world. i know i will come back and hate myself for my decadence, all my blind indulgence. but it's necessary. i have a month in late summer that's spare and waiting for me to scrawl an adventure over its face.

deuxmoulins @ 2004-08-05T13:27:00

2004-08-05T01:46:25Z

well today is another day.

i'd like to be three people right now.

I.
the first person is one i am who is going on a road trip home this weekend with two friends. there will be vintage store delights and fun down by the river.

II.
the second person is the person i am not but she would be going to an old friends farewell party this weekend to lay old ghosts to rest for once and for all.

III.
the third person is bereft of responsibility and exists only in dreamland but she would be very excited because a band she has wanted to see for a long time are playing this weekend at the planetarium [oh! music&stars!].

deuxmoulins @ 2004-07-21T18:05:00

2004-07-21T06:10:05Z

oh, film festival, how i love thee. i have seen two films so far. one i loved and one that was too abstract&pretentious to love [and that's saying something]. the first was the barbarian invasions and the second was our music.

i am at the library but have lost focus for the day so feel like slipping out to some more films [perhaps even the double banger of seeing two in a row?].

deuxmoulins @ 2004-07-21T14:34:00

2004-07-21T02:35:19Z

I got the job

deuxmoulins @ 2004-07-08T13:48:00

2004-07-08T01:55:59Z

still no news. but this morning was a new day. i meandered to the library, stopping my car at various points on its journey across the city to:

- buy a pair of oriental slippers, not a beaded velvet kind i have wanted for years, but a rough plastic imitation that will do for now. slippers for indoors and out
- grab a coffee and a muffin from olive
- buy a chopping board made of coconut for a wedding gift
- take a walk down cuba mall and soak up the morning [it looks especially lovely at the moment with red lanterns hanging from the trees]

darling i say goodbye even though i'm blue

2004-07-07T03:47:52Z

that film has always left itself as an imprint in my mind.

deuxmoulins @ 2004-07-07T11:15:00

2004-07-06T23:21:13Z

this morning, walking to the library in crisp winter air with coffee and a savoury muffin, sipping and nibbling as i went... i couldn't stop smiling. not huge smiles like the kind you have when something amazing has happened and you can't hide it, but little ones like the kind you have when you think of all manner of little things about life that delight you but that you usually overlook. those kind.

i find out about the job today. it's strange that the end is so palpably close. i almost don't want to know. almost. i mean, if i were to get it, i would become a something. all of that is frighteningly identity-shaping. i am happy as a student, a friend, a flatmate right now. i don't feel like i need to be a ___________ [a hairdresser/a writer/a politician/a dancer etc]. of course i eventually want to be something. and maybe this is just me clinging onto shreds of my youth. and of course i eventually want to be this thing. if i get it [and i could easily not], i will start next year. so perhaps that's enough in between time for farewelling student days.

[Edit: 2:50pm]
i won't find out today anymore. a delay of a few days and i am filled up on caffeine with a too-fast heart. hushed conversations in toilets with hopeful girls fill the void, this unknowing emptiness. i fucking want to know now.

deuxmoulins @ 2004-06-29T23:27:00

2004-06-29T11:31:10Z

/Old man look at my life, I'm a lot like you were./
/Old man look at my life - twenty four and there's so much more./

/It's these expressions I never give/
/That keep me searching for a heart of gold/
/And I'm getting old./

deuxmoulins @ 2004-05-07T23:50:00

2004-05-07T12:01:46Z

so drunk right now - this is my obligatory drunk post. have been whiling away the hours [drunkenly] with ideologically-matched politics honours buddies [the ones i have eyed up as potential friends from afar but have never sealed the deal by getting drunk with them]. it's so crazy how we all have similar opinions on wacko people in politics and especially the other fucking wackos in our class. i thought it was only me, it's disturbing but reassuring to know that i am not alone in my opinions. tonight has been so funny that my eyes are sore from tears of laughter... as i am now seeing double, i am looking forward to picking out the errors in this post tomorrow.

deuxmoulins @ 2004-05-06T23:54:00

2004-05-06T11:49:59Z

best things about this week:

- capital city heated political uproar, marchers on the street, anger, passion, united people in action
- chocolate+berry brownie at malo
- dipping my head forward in the shower to have the water run down the back of my neck
- getting a first interview for the job-of-my-dreams [300 hopefuls down, only 100 to go!]
- watching friends graduate and richard taylor's superbly inspiring honorary degree speech

deuxmoulins @ 2004-05-04T10:44:00

2004-05-04T10:39:43Z

Recommend to me...

1. a movie
2. a book
3. a musical artist, song, or album
4. a LiveJournal user not on my friends list
5. what I should have for dinner
6. a website

...and put it in a comment and then put this in your journal.

deuxmoulins @ 2004-05-03T09:30:00

2004-05-02T21:23:58Z

i slid while going down the path this morning and ended up landing in the slush and mud. so no 2 hours of work this morning after all - just changing out of the mud sodden clothes [it's always the freshly ironed ones too] meant i missed the bus. it's pretty much a relief really, and seeing my comic mud-splodged face in the mirror before was worth it. besides, i went to the best dinner party ever last night and today everything seems better for it.

deuxmoulins @ 2004-03-09T13:17:00

2004-03-09T00:17:59Z

being back at university is so nice. this morning has involved lots of re-familiarisation which really just meant that i wandered around the bookstores and had coffee and then tried on rings made out of coconut shell [from south america where i did not know there were great amounts of coconut] that were on sale at a market stall in the quad. the woman who was selling the rings even asked me to mind her stall while she went to the ladies room which of course i was secretly thrilled to do. no one bought anything mind, except me when she came back but it was fun nonetheless. so now i have two wooden rings for my trouble: one a stormy sky blue-purple and the other a greeny brown clam colour. both are so much more pleasing to look at than the textbooks i was supposed to buy but which were sold-out anyway.

the campus itself is a lovely kind of busy - all alive and buzzing with vibrancy. last year it seemed packed to bursting point and moving between classes was like being stuck in a mosh pit of awfulness. it's quite strange to see only new faces but i suppose having been here 5 years was enough time to flush out most uni friends and it might be more productive this way to have only myself to rely on and no one to skip off to coffee with. or maybe i'll just auto-procrastinate instead which seems much more likely...

mohair cardies and spectacles; lions and monkeys; art and tea

2004-03-06T10:08:50Z

i have started back at school again. at last it seems. back in the welcome arms of my favourite department, nestled deep in some dilapidated old working men's [women's?] cottages on the hill. i dream that being postgrad must be immensely fun and so much better than before. i imagine myself wearing lots of cardies and forever reading interesting looking books. in my dream at some stage during the year i manage to strain my eyes enough to get some geek spectacles which complement the reading thing very nicely indeed. in reality i realise that if reading in the moonlight at a young age didn't achieve the desired vision impairment then another year of study won't either. many of you out there must know postgrad's not this cool, but leave me to dream a little while won't you?

a week ago i bade my creaky hilltop villa farewell and headed to the south side of the city to make a slightly healthier hilltop [and kinda seaside] villa my new home. packing two years worth of memories into boxes and farewelling wonderful flatmates and my dark red room were sad times but it's so nice to be starting again. the new flat is perilously close to the zoo so that i awake to the sound of a very hungry lion and when i was first taking some boxes there i thought i heard a strange car alarm but have now found out that it was the monkeys.

one of my flatmates is the friend i had planned to set up house with for the last year so all of this has a 'realisation of dreams' feel to it. she went to art school and has set about garnishing the walls with artworks of every shape and colour and i have realised that canvases make me happy. we sit in vintage chairs drinking cups of tea taking in the view and chatting away about contentment.

i haven't been forgetting about you. i'm sorry i have been so distracted.

merry christmas

2003-12-26T05:22:29Z

well, it was a Christmas of strangeness. new extended relatives, bad wine, a dud cracker with no centre, best-ever christmas pudding, full bellies, afternoon naps, a drunk uncle falling over an armchair, drizzle+grey sky, bad jokes, no nephews, caterpillar [excellent], festive cheer and all that.

today old town friends got together and relived our youth by positioning ourselves in the mall and partaking in some people watching - an immature habit involving the accrual of points for best spottings. shamefully funny.

deuxmoulins @ 2003-12-24T00:13:00

2003-12-23T11:14:45Z

happy birthday enfleurage!

have a fantastic day petite

deuxmoulins @ 2003-12-23T01:40:00

2003-12-22T12:49:14Z

i'm packing up things into little bags to head home for two weeks tomorrow while listening to some cds my flatmate loaned me. this creaky old house is on a skeleton crew currently with two already home for christmas. it feels strange in such a quiet house, even though it is usually this quiet it's more hollow when they're gone.

the journal was finished as much as it could have been allowing for a ten minute drive down the hill to law school to hand it in [allowing glue to dry affixing the doily to the cover a la housewife]. i could have said more but i ran out of time. how predictable. i have noticed how much more try-hard [outdated term i know] this class is than the partner class i took [and did a journal for 2 years ago]. one person actually managed to write 30,000 words and it's a journal for a 5 week paper - there's excessive and then there's excessive.

it seems strange to think that next time i will be in this room it will be next year.

deuxmoulins @ 2003-12-17T21:56:00

2003-12-16T08:55:14Z

25 hour take-home exams are not a good idea. i have one to pick up at 9am tomorrow morning and it must be back in by 10am the next day. i just know it's going to be tiresome and painful. i realise that summer school is supposed to condense things, but i really think a good old-fashioned essay would be a better way to go.

my revision approach has been an holistic one that began this afternoon with clean-up and giant overhaul of my room. two years worth of notes & textbooks [for a whopping 18 papers no less] were sorted and filed into boxes and bookshelves and miscellaneous pieces of paper were placed in appropriate piles away from my desk. there is still some cleaning to be done but i recognised my artful procrastination tactic before long and forced myself to stop. an early night is in order. after a decent night's sleep i will hopefully feel refreshed and ready for tomorrow.

hot heat

2003-12-12T03:52:57Z

These last two days have been covered in a kind of heavy heat – sticky approaching boiling. Yesterday while wandering through town I noticed an old man in a kilt playing bagpipes on the corner of the street and somehow he didn't seem out of place at all.

Calexico play sometime late tonight. I have been thinking about it all day. I'm not up to saying anything well-researched and interesting about the band other than that I love them and am so glad I got a ticket.