Sunshine on Grass

I’ve been taking photos with my Dad’s old film camera. I know a lot of good-looking  people and some very beautiful bits of grass to sit on.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

This camera makes sure I remember the beautiful moments and I hope that when I look back in ten years I’ll have forgotten the ugly ones.

Perhaps we don’t always live in the present moment, but we do live in remembered moments. Anticipated moments. Our lives are constructed of moments which are composed into some coherent thread in retrospect and sometimes by intent.

This is an arsey rewording of a remarkable passage in The Unbearable Lightness of Being. It’s a good book.

all these things on my plate

Oh dear, I did say I would update you, didn’t I? It seems I’ve failed at that. Well, now is as good a time as any, stuck between having just finished one essay and about to start another!

Yes, it’s the last week of Hilary – that’s spring term to most of us mortals, but I can't help but use the Oxford ‘lingo’ when I’m here. It’s a little like moving to America; everything’s familiar but there are little differences which jolt you every now and then into realising that it’s not quite the same as the rest of the world. Yesterday I saw a teenage monk eating a hot dog. It’s that kind of a place.

And I’ve got a lot going on. So in true Fiona style, instead of writing a beautiful and elegant blog post I will simply give you the horrendous list of All The Things That Are On My Mind:

• uni work
• one essay (on a medieval German text, not the most thrilling stuff)
• one translation (quite fun but difficult)
• one commentary (on Kant, no opinion on that yet)
• holiday work
• two essays
• a commentary
• revision revision revision for everything: vocab, grammar, plays, drama, poetry , German culture, translation, medieval, film and philosophy
• plays I’m working on
• find a production manager and a costume manager for one play
• find some trees (SO much harder than it sounds) for another
• get my head around production managing TWO FURTHER PLAYS
• creative endeavours
• translate a play from German to English for the fun of it
• write a gay play for the fun of it
• try to figure out what kind of play I want to put on next year and get someone to codirect it with me
• travel plans
• wait to hear back from various hostels in Iceland, Norway and Sweden
• wait to hear back from a possible volunteering job in France or Spain
• wait to hear back from friends who are coming to Iceland with me
• make everything make sense in my head
• life things
• pay for the flights to Germany
• cancel orthodontic appointment
• make new surgery appointment for teeth (I’m having my wisdom teeth out at some point)
• sort out housing deposit payment
• language things
• keep learning Spanish
• catch up on vocab and stuff I have missed
• keep learning Icelandic
• keep learning Norwegian
• keep learning Swedish (yeah, that’s new)
• DO NOT, REPEAT, DO NOT START LEARNING PORTUGUESE AND DUTCH. DO NOT DO IT.

London

Sorry blog. I know it’s been a long time. hopefully I’ll get a chance this weekend. Here is a taster:

Iceland: My Profession of Love

[All photos taken by me or people i was with, Iceland 2010, August —> December.]

Iceland changed and saved my life in more ways than I can go into detail here. I could never quite explain what she means to me, but here I shall try. By quoting myself. 

“A symbol and theme throughout my life has been that the highest form of joy and achievement is to be myself all of the time, and I have often said that the further north I go, the more I can do exactly that.”

“In the overwhelming love I felt for a number of people I met in Iceland, it’s easy to look over the love I feel for Iceland itself. It’s so honest. I would like to go back and discover its power. Escape the cities and just run and swim and roll and laugh and lie and chew the cud in the fervent mountains and rivers, lakes and shores, caves and grassy banks and soaring arches and watertumbles, fjords and faults and cliffs and endless sunshine.”

“I’m so full of inspiration and energy and just… joy! I can’t remember the last time I felt like this… Coming back from Iceland, I am so inspired and uplifted as if I feel like I’ve just taken a deep breath, like the air in my chest is fresh as mountain air and my speech is all in sheer italics. I feel like the grey film from my life has been shifted and lifted and wiped away and now I can see the cloud forests in Madagascar and the sweet dew in the morning breeze and like I’m walking on clouds and silver linings are all around and all other saccharine thoughts and clichés are cushioning my step.”

“Apart from anything else, I think I love this country because I sometimes feel like Iceland: remote, unlike anything else, sometimes overseen yet unexpectedly explosive and troubled, beautifully complex, ruled by nature, creative and full of impossible dreams, always changing (literally), full of oddities and fucking awesome.”

Eugh. Splurge.

What is my life.

I haven’t even mentioned the elves or Retro Stefson or the yellow lighthouses or the weird obsession with liquorice or the alcohol which tastes like dust or piss or cough syrup or the wind chill factor or the smell of whale or the volcanoes or the hitchhiking or the opera singers and Viking cowboys and prison guards or the mountains of waffles or the green smiley faces or Babalu or the waterfalls or the moon or the hot tubs.

this post is totally metameta

This blew my mind.

So my favourite words are usually prefixes: quasi-, ante-, meta- (I'm an Oxford student, ok, allow me to fulfil at least SOME of the stereotypes of being a pretensious ass).

BUT.

GUESS WHAT.

The use of 'meta' in metaphysics, metafiction, metaemotion as meaning "about", or "an abstraction of" or let's put it simply, the physics of physics (philosophy) fiction about fiction, emotion about emotion etc is BASED ON A MISINTERPRETATION of the original use of 'metaphysics'! 

BRB MIND BLOWN.

In Ancient Greek, "meta" links to "change" or "after, higher, beyond" (all of which come from the Proto-Indo European root "*me-" which has to do with "in the midst of", like, in the midst of something suggests being interchangeable suggests change i dunno PIE is a hot mess) ANYWAY originally "metaphysics" refered to that which was after the Physics, i.e. after Aristotle's writings on physics. It did not mean "scientific thought beyond actual scientific thought" i.e. philosophy.

I'm so heartbroken! No longer can I say "that's so meta"! :(

... or can I?

Listen, this is my favourite things about languages. Words can change meaning and the new meaning is just as legitimate as the old one. Even more so, in this case. Think of all the words which have changed meaning and whose older meanings are now defunct and coutnerintuitive: punk (whore), awful (awe-inspiring), prove (test). 

Languages change, evolve, grow, breathe, shape history and are shaped by it. This is why I get so irritated about people who are pernickety about 'correct' usage and 'original' meaning not changing. No, meta did not originally mean what it means today. That doesn't make its current users ignorant or wrong. It makes them progressive without knowing it.

Languages are wonderful.

O HI THAR I'M A LINGUISTICS GEEK

Career Change, Age 19

Guess what? I'm 19.

Guess what else? That means I have huge changes of heart every five minutes at the drop of a hat.

And guess what else? I don't want to work for charities any more. At least not long term - definitely for a few years after Uni. But it's hard work and you need a a strong will and psyche. The reason I was into the charities idea is the travelling and the doing stuff while travelling rather than just gazing out of a hotel window. And that's definitely the WRONG reason to go into charity work.

So forget that.

My newest career aspiration: I want to work in TV.

No wait come back I'm not kidding.

I used to want to be a writer but that's dead and I'm happy with that. I don't want to be a writer, or an actor, or a composer. None of that creative stuff.

I don't want to be a produces or an executive - no petty politics, please, and no money handling. I've not got the smooth slick charm.

Director? Get it away from me. I would be the worst director in history. I haven't got that kind of vision. I haven't got that kind of natural authority.

I'm good at holding a clipboard. I'm good at juggling schedules and making sure everything happens on time. At the right place. With the right people.

I want to be - wait for it - an assistant director!

You know when you watch the behind-the-scenes, the making-of, the doctor who confidential? And you know how you watch it to see the actors being silly and mucking up their lines? I know I do. But then you know that scurrier, the one with a slightly haunted look in their eye and a desperate smile on their face because that's the only way to destress? The one with a headset and a clipboard and a pen and a parka?

Me.

That's me please.

Thanks.

Friday

I’ve spent hours eating a box of fair trade chocolates, reading stories about life and love on the internet, going through my old photos of Orkney and allowing myself to be immersed in the television show Sherlock. It’s the perfect way to spend a Friday, and I am so chilled out. Never mind the fact that my to do list reads “do vocab, Ch 12 Norwegian, 1 hr Icelandic, plan Effi Briest essay, book flights, tune guitar, read Gregorius, return form, finish translation, develop film, buy lip balm, type up lecture notes”. Never mind that, internet. I literally forgot that list, until I awoke from my stupor to the sound of my neighbour’s friends knocking on his door, giggling loudly.

Half of Oxford is out right now, drenched in alcohol and sweat and adrenaline.

Not me.

Tonight, I get my fix elsewhere.

I’ve been to India in the last hours, to the 1890s, and to the mind of a young gay man. I like my Friday evenings.

The beautiful things in life

An idea has been nagging me – the idea that you can’t complain about your life not being beautiful. You have to find the beauty, in fact, you have to fucking fight for it –  beauty, just like love, or thrills, or success, or happiness, is something you do not get for nothing.

So here it is.

a hand-decorated envelope

      

this is where I’ve taken Africa with me

film camera

the tourists on the tower and the rising smoke