news from room s10

I'm sorry to be away so long. I've been really ill for the last week and a half, and am only now coming out of it. People say they have the flu all the time, but when you get the real flu, influenza, it burns your insides up for days and days and leaves your lungs sore and chaffed.

I have one more paper to finish, and then I'm done. It should have been done this morning, but I'm still having a hard time concentrating. The other paper, well, I'm taking an incomplete, and I'll worry about it in April, after Spain.

The boy I was kissing? He came to visit a few times; he brought tea and movies and stroked my hair. I don't know quite what to do: I don't remember the last time a boy was this nice to me, this kind. I sort of like it.

Thursday, my friend Stephanie and I go to Edinburgh for a few days. I'm nervous, but excited, to go back. Then my parents are coming here to Oxford for a week. I can't wait to see them. And then, when they've left, I take off for Spain: one week in a tiny sea-side town set in the foothills, riddled with caves and covered in sunshine. There's a strong ex-pat community there, which means Irish, Aussie and Brit bars with live music to go to, after days reading at the beach.

The weather here has turned warm and beautiful. The sun shines in my bedroom and all I want to do is nap on the grass outside, by Magdalen tower. It was really hard, being so sick, and so alone, for so many days. I spent a lot of time missing Darren. There's this part, though, of Lady Oracle by Margaret Atwood, where she talks about her characters being transformed by a fever, purified by it. I'm not nearly as in love with him as I was a week ago, and that's progress.

almost famous

I stayed up all night last night kissing a boy who makes my knees weak and my stomach flutter.

it is 4:20 am

why am i not
a) asleep
or
b) smoking?
good questions.

remember when i wrote poetry?

Swimming

Far far beneath in the abysmal sea,
The Kraken sleepeth.
-Alfred, Lord Tennyson

He sails me carefully:
I swim with a many-armed,
many-mouthed,
many-tongued kraken.

I feel his voice and he tells me—
Each tongue tastes things differently.
He tells me—These Pacific waves are no land of Aquinas.
The lines of this coast
are as varied as the edges of my faith.

(I want to ask him, someday,
how he found his way here from those Nordic depths,
how he came from that dark cold into
this unfrozen salt water)

You see, he teaches me to eat of one thing,
and taste of many: to find the things I look for
in the things I see.
And because I am one, I find myself in all:
it is this talent that lurks behind his tentacles and tongues.

The skin of freedom is filled with this ocean,
His ocean.
I breathe in, to give up,
to slide into this liberation.

The lights come early;
I did not expect to see so much,
I tell the kraken.
Fearsome, yet he is my only company.
What other voice have I to hear?

I remember these things
because I leave no wake and everyone else is dreaming.
I am both sailor and swimmer:
I am partnered with the tide.

I have given myself permission to do whatever I want, whenever I want, and it's been helping. And while I love living in a house with my friends, right now it's becoming a little too much. I like my routines, my traditions. I like going to bed early, and I hate feeling guilty, not going to social events because I would rather go to sleep early and wake up early.

I've been working out a lot, and reading Dorothy Sayers novels. I'm trying to write a poem. I'm finally feeling able to dive into school work.

I think I might go to Spain for spring break, and hole up in a little sea-side town to read for two weeks.

o'neills

I went out by myself last night, and stumbled upon an Irish bar with a live band playing Lynyrd Skynyrd. A man bought me a drink and told me to have a good night, and there was this feeling, like I was glowing, like I was floating through the whole night. I met two guys, both of whom had absent girlfriends, and we danced in front of the band for hours.

And when the band was done playing, we went to a club and danced more. My feet hurt but somehow it, everything, feels a little bit better. Like I danced something out, let something go. Not everything, not by a long shot. But I'm getting work done, I feel like I'm moving up.

That being said, it still really hurts.

playlist

I had forgotten how much this hurts.