Short-Skirt Slutty Intellectual

Facing the Ocean, the Warmth of Spring Will Blossom


From tomorrow, I will be a lucky person
Feed horses, chop wood, travel the world,
From tomorrow, I will think of my health and eat
more vegetables
I will have a house facing the ocean;
The warmth of spring will blossom.
From tomorrow, I will write to my family
Tell them I am settled, I am calm
A warmth will radiate through my life
It will radiate to everyone in this world.
From tomorrow, each river and mountain
Will be given a new and tender name.

Name each river, name each mountain
Name them warmly
Stranger, take my warmest blessings
May your future road be clear and bright
May you be reunited with your true love
May you find real happiness in this dusty world
I will face the ocean, waiting for spring to warm the air
      and flowers to blossom.



                                                                          Hai Zi (Zha Haisheng) 
 

Note: This journal is now almost entirely friends-only locked.

but do not fear, just comment and i'll add you, and we could be friends or something.

much love,

hazel shea

this seems like an ideal moment to diffuse things a bit by emptying the pictures out of my phone.

( more )

when he was sixteen he was thrust into the word of illicit and commercial sex when he lost his virginity to a prostitute.
afterwards he sat at the end of the bed and cried.

he had thriteen children with his wife sofia. before they married he showed her his batchelor diaries, a disasterous act which he replicated as a warning to bachelors everywhere in Levins pre-marital confession to kitty.

many of his characters were based on real people that he knew;
which makes when you know that he frequently rejected his literary projetcs, saying with disdain that they repulsed him, and that he'd rather put his efforts into nurturing real people,
not imaginary ones.

his birthday- 28-8-1828
strangely neat and tidy? mathematically sublime?

he was always doubtful as a writer. he wasn't sure it was what he should be doing.
there is hope for us all.

so much to say, so little time. i am going to be very short of time until mid-january.
my dissertation presentation is on thrusday.

my supervisor has just published a new book!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0199283338/qid%3D1133801131/203-3357598-0860718

that will have to do for now. oh, sweet voices.

There are many things i need to say, but at the same time, i need to get to 430 anna k by 2.30 for two glorious hours with mark rawlinson.

i went to see the doctor today and he said i have a chest and throat infection, maybe tonsilitis. i knew i wasn't being wussy. he then gave me a long lecture on the benifits of nicotine patches and i wondered how many people lie to doctors. most people, i think. i should have just said i didn't smoke, it would have been easier than trying to explain bill hicks' smoking philiosphy to him, or to say that i just don't want to stop smoking, or to ask if he drinks? i mean, isn't that harming him? that's what i say to people in pubs. instead i just nodded obediently.

i didn't like him until he said this:

"oh, so you're reading anna karenina? i think russian literature is so wondeful. anna is so intense! the characters just draw you in and you're lost in another world! it's not just that they are stories, they are LIFE. i think literature is the most important thing you can study, more people should study it. i mean, people are always going on about a career, and qualifications. screw medicine, i think what your doing is valuable! i mean, you can study business, or medicine, or law- but they won't TEACH you anything about living, about being alive. people who read have something else, they KNOW something. it's not just A VIEW, it's more that that, it's reality. they have something, you can see it in their eyes..."

i was beaming and astonsished. this is grand, is it not?

lately i've been listening to patrick wolf, the vessels, the bluetones, rachmaninov and the ben folds five song 'philosophy'.

my tutor just told me 'now, laura, you are not a philosopher. you are a writer.'
last night i spent two hours reading and writing about how

a thirst for knowledge is a thirst for sex

(it is unclear to me why i have been putting off working on my dissertation when really it's just part of me; a part that would exist with or without greg walker.)

the first thing adam and eve do after eating fruit from the tree of knowledge is have sex. the tree of knowledge. not the tree of desire, the tree of lust, the tree of sex.

the tree of knowledge.

to be knowledgeable is really just to appreciate yourself as a physical entity. hightened senses and sparked curiosity. i always knew that sex and thought were connected, but i never realised that it said so in the bible. i don't even believe in the bible, it's just another text, you know?

new awareness and knowledge brings not the power to give in, but the power to realise that it's not giving in at all. it is embracing. it is bracing. it is

'not death, but life augmented'.

another thing that milton said is

'opened eyes, new joys,
tastes so divine that what of sweet before
hath touched my sense, flat seems to this, and harsh'

new eyes with new knowledge with new sense with new knowledge with new experience.
how we can bear to be anything but optimistic is beyond me. and so naturally new hope ends that list, whatever has happened.

at the end of his dark materials the ghosts sacrifice concious thought to regain their senses and become part of the physical world. sensation sensation sensation.
which is why i'm going to walk along new walk shortly, with patsi and wet leaves and bright cold sunshine; and cold drinks and hot food and pretty wrought iron railings.

today i feel that this work is all managable, i can imagine myself achieving it. i sent a poem off to be printed. i wrote an angry note for the kitchen wall. i agreed to spend money on new shoes and i got work for christmas at mvc.

there is only grace in this moment, this time, and i perpetually find myself in states of unalterable bliss. i do not see how i will ever be happier than i am at this time; this time of beautiful balance and precision.

because the years will pass and i will not spend my wednesday mornings like this.

sitting in the library, having ideas and thoughts about Balzac, i broke away from my notes and scribbled in the back of my notepad,

"...and sense has brought me to this fragile and beautiful equilibrium;
of having learnt enough to forego bitterness and embrace thankful wisdom,
at the same time knowing that i am still young enough to be blindly optimistic
and happy as i sit here in immediacy- not even caring that this moment won't last forever.
awful things might happen.

but they haven't happened yet."

nice things are happening. i don't really understand what 'emo' is. some people feel embarrassed by the kaiser chiefs, but i don't. not everyone thinks my locked-graveyard funeral story is scary. i no longer have a problem admitting that i have a severe phobia of horror movies, and a tendancy to patrionise people younger than me, but only if they seem younger than i did at their age.
so far all of the things i layed out as HOPES in my last entry have come true. this seems impossibly fortunate and i'm trying to make the most of it before the whole little charade collapses.
all the hipster trendies like mcfly, and i really just feel like i don't fit in anywhere, except maybe here in hypersapce, because it's only a matter of moments before they realise i am niether hip nor trendy.

sam and i kissed and he asked for my number.

(written yesterday)

Today I went to visit people. My aunty, who is not related to me, she gave me a piano with early inheritance. She gave me a piano, and that piano is at least a third of who I am.
We’re no that close, actually. Last time I saw her was about a year and a half ago. She’s getting really old. She looked after me a lot when I was a toddler and a baby. I used to pick plums from the tree in her garden when we went to visit.

On the way there we stopped at Chris H—‘s house, which was strange and intimidating. She was my mum’s friend. Her son and daughter were our playmates; the kind of playmates you climb trees with, and play doctors and nurses with (indeed).
Paul was there, and he has turned into an interesting and handsome young man who I was quite comfortable with, and found myself wishing to impress. It was weird. I could almost see cupid in my mum’s eyes.

Aunty Barbara never seems to age even though she is 84, which explains why she is so politically incorrect, and thinks that the amount of lorries on the road should be high up on the government’s priorities (she could have talked me into thinking so too, I think, if she’d taken the time). She was more amiable than usual.
I argued with my mum a lot on the way there, so I decided to maintain silence and, having just discovered Barbara's age, I thought about how old she was.
She was in her twenties during the war. She was middle-aged for the sixties. My mum told me about how her husband had died when he was in his forties. He died suddenly, of a brain tumor. A few months earlier Barbara had had a miscarriage. This is grievous enough, but the loss of that baby seems even worse when you consider that she now has very few relatives, and none that live nearby.
The extent of her alone-ness scares me a lot.
At lunch she talked about her next-door neighbour, a teenager, who she has always considered a nuisance. She has become convinced that he has found a computerised way of bugging her house, and can see what is going on. She says he hears him saying stuff when she is in her house. The more I think about this, the more it makes my mind revolt with pity and fear, because she must be so afraid and paranoid most of the time. I think it came from a newspaper article she read about that guy who set up his webcam to go off when someone entered his home, and he caught a burglar this way when he went on holiday. I tried to explain to her that it would be impossible for her to project a webcam picture without having a computer. But I didn’t want to sound like I was saying she was crazy, because she is so sound of mind in every other respect. As far as I know. And which is more frightening, really?

She makes me very afraid of being old, and of being alone.

But I am not going to be like her if I get old. I’m going to be like the other person we visited, Mary, who is the same age. She goes off on coach holidays with women’s groups, and she visits people, and plans trips to Norway for next year. She makes jokes, and tells us she is living life to the full. She could be lying in order to protect us. It’s hard to tell.

All of this made me very appreciative. I felt strangely lifted by the whole day; not because I left feeling like ‘thank god I’m not them’, which I didn’t really- no, it was because I genuinely enjoyed the day and I felt like a could actually look at these women and see something different in them that I ever normally do.
Maybe it was my hormones still pumping from Paul. Maybe it was gratitude. I don’t know.

Does this mean I’m becoming a woman or something?

No, probably not. I just got a message from vikki saying we’ve been friends for ten years. Any excuse to celebrate.

Babies heads are empty?

Most of the time, when someone tells you about the things that they have done, you map out their life by inserting little clips of your own experiences. A handshake here, a crying fit there. The street in Spain where they were mugged looks just like street in Marseilles where you fell over after drinking too much red wine from the supermarket. Their bedroom smells just like the first bedroom you had sex in. The kitchen where they dumped their fiancé has the same cupboards as the kitchen where you’re little brother was born (belonging to the next-door neighbour).
You decide that their character is defined by the things they chose to TELL you, not the things themselves; so it doesn’t matter that you don’t really understand their experiences (as long as you understand the way they communicate).
You can stop listening to them now.
Sometimes you think that you’re a bit like that girl you once saw in an advert for perfume, because she had a flowing skirt and it was filmed in black and white. You think to yourself, I am a FREE SPIRIT, just like her. But actually this just means you’ve been a bit polluted by a desire to be beautiful. And monotone.

You sing along to songs on the radio. It doesn’t really matter what radio station it is, as long as there is a melody. Tepid songs about sex and cheating, as your favourite singer says. You secretly identify with every song, film, fictional character and poetic persona you have ever encountered. You think this means you’re insightful and complex (not to mention the empathy, oh GOD, the empathy). But actually it just means that you’re not like any of them, not at all.

It is not unlike you to invent experiences for yourself, and then pretend that you’ve had them, in order to see what you’d be like if you were someone else. You don’t even care that this doesn’t make sense. If you were someone else you might have some DEPTH, you think. You’d be a bit more rounded and stable, you think.
But no, you’d just be someone else.

(then again, at least you wouldn’t be insanely inventing experiences for yourself).


It never even occurred to you that the girl in the perfume advert might have SMELLED of something. She probably smelled of sweat and festivals, what with all the barefoot meadow-frolicking.

If you look at people who have achieved things that you want to achieve, you realise that you’re probably going the right way to get there. They didn’t like kate bush either. And you’d probably agree with communism, if you knew what that was. You reckon so, anyway. You could be a genius, if only you had an axe to grind, isn’t that what you sang along to? An axe to grind….and a bit more experience. Anyway, that’s not really what you’re all about. It’s all about FRREEEDOM. The freedom to squander, that’s what it’s all about.


What with all this living-in-other-people’s-invented-heads (that are in your head, really), you rarely notice your companions. They don’t UNDERSTAND me, you cry. There are so many streams of consciousness in there, it’s no surprise your head’s so big. And actually, you’re right; they don’t understand you. But why are you asking-
do YOU understand THEM?
Maybe you should buy a crazy yellow car or something. At least try to FEIGN an eccentricity. Only you know that you actually have none. Not a single one.

Sometimes you use quotes from other people’s writing and pretend that they’re yours. You take a conversation from the pub, paste it into an essay, and voila. And vice versa. Conversations in the pub wouldn’t be so weird if you hadn’t been in all those other heads (or at least THINK you had been) and seen that every one else is just as bored with the new series of big brother as you are. Ok, so it’s not always big brother. Sometimes you’re feeling intellectual, and pretend to have opinions about politics. Do you even UNDERSTAND what Marxism actually is?
No, me neither.

At least you’ve got it sussed as far as TASTE is concerned. The trick is not to buy anything new. It’s easy to just REJECT shopping, and give it up altogether. It’s a good way of constructing a rebellious eccentricity without actually having to BUY anything NEW. It’s hardly enigmatic, though, is it? You probably think it represents some kind of commercial stance. But you don’t really have any idea about what that stance might be because, actually, it just means you have no money. Or originality.

Once you were on a train and you read and digested a completed crossword on the back of someone’s discarded copy of ‘The Times’. Then, when you changed trains, you assisted the middle-aged, middle-class businessman in the seat next to you, as he struggled with 4-down, 18-down AND 6-across. You felt like this was a triumph for people like you everywhere. It was actually just bullshit. Bullshit.
There you go again, pretending you have ‘issues’ and ‘opinions’.
If you stopped and looked at things more carefully you might notice that everyone is quite a lot like you. I know you think you’re unique, but actually you’re just like everyone else, because they don’t really have much conviction either. If you press them to explain their morals you will discover they are alot like yours.
Loose, I mean.
The same goes for their eccentricities. Plagiarised, just like yours; plucked from songs and films and people they talk to in the pub. You think these are affectations, but actually they’re just personalities.
I mean, would you rather be blank?







No, I didn’t think so.

somehow i have gone from

'we know what will happen but we do it anyway'

to

'i do not jump off of bulidings'

a sad ending is not the same as a sad story.

every life ends with death. but we do not cry all the way there, in anticipation.

we know what will happen but we do it anyway.

and everyone stops crying some time. you'll get dehydrated otherwise.

i'm so much happier than i was last september.

fuck the ending. the story is the thing.

stop lying. admit that you are vulnerable. admit that the truth does nothing to justify your feelings. realise that no one really cares abouth the truth or what it is. accept that you are young and still hold some innocence, even though you don't realise it (and you can never realise it when you ARE innocent).
you are just a child.
start letting in wonder and exuberance because those things are part of you. why are you pressing and pushing and being so melodramatic with your lies? you would tell so many more, i know you would. but it won't help and it won't change and being honest doesn't necessarily mean telling everyone about all the lies you've told and all the mistakes you've made in the past. it just means not telling those lies again. it will work that way, if you walk away from them.
don't hide behind your lies push it all away into a heap of sardonic self-righteousness. you are just a child, remember. it is hard work, but we are equal to it, all of us- that's what iorek's look said, remember?

you will get no where and be endlessly unhappy until you admit that there are people who you need more than they need you. you are vulnerable, and you know so little.

i got the taxi driver to drop me off on ilminster road beacuse i thought saving a quid would be a good idea. i decided not to stay at James's houses; james's with the pretty pink spare room and his artwork all over the room. whan i first saw his artwork i thought 'if i was ever going to fall in love with james, it would be now'. but of course i didn't, he's my friend.

i walked down the alley-way cut through, the overgrown alley where we use to pick dandelion leaves for the guinea pigs. it has street lamps, which are so orange and beautiful, and they bathe sweet light in one place only, leaving the bushes and crevasses unkown and velvety black. as i walked through i thought vaguely that maybe i should be fearful, but then i got distracted by the starry sky. it was broad.

i spilt a meal in the perkin the other day,it was funny, peas all over the floor; but i can't help thinking that Jens' romantic words are imaginary. he says cryptic things but most of the time i think i understand him. i wish he woulldn't say these things when i know he doesn't mean them. what is the use of saying 'the warmth of our bodies close by', if he will ever actually let me feel the warmth of his body close by? i wish i could make him see....something. there's something glaring that he can't see, about himself, about love.

i've said enough on this, maybe. i am jealous of lizzie, right now, curled up in bed with a man i once slept with. why will i not find one to stick around?

it's the constant buzz of artificial lights that gives me a perputual humming headace. it makes me dizzy with dehydration, and i feel like a fool as a younger girl than me says 'if it's not broken, keep using it'. she can't smell it burning the way i can- i'm sure it's going to explode soon, or at least start excreting a little stream of black smoke.

one woman took my hand yesterday, and stroked it as she made a remark about Loreal; this woman, a stranger. it's easy to slip into the role of someone who failed beauty school but still reads cosmopolitan; someone who knows about hair products and cosmetics. the people asking questions know more than i do, and i'm sure they see that in my eyes (they are tired and smokey, and surely that is a giveaway). and yet i take up this mantle that they offer to me, and i being to speak with authority and clarity; with such interest and experience, that i almost begin to believe it myself. i'm just reading what's written on the box, and decorating it with repetitions and thoughtful pauses, as if there has never been a harder task than matching moisteriser to middle-aged woman. it's not real, you know. it's just surplus nothingness to take up people's time and stop them dwelling on their bad memories. that's what people do, unfortunately.

a young man of about twenty five gave me a fleetingly sympathetic glance when he saw me stop to open a bottle of Lynx Africa, and breate it in deeply. i used to do that with Badedas, it reminded me of James. but this time i was only thinking 'that's not what africa smells like, not at all'.
i got the same glance when, ten minutes before closing, i was in the babycare aisle. it was empty, i knelt down to reach something and i suddenly just caved, sitting there for a moment with my nose in the baby lotion. i felt suddenly stricken and bizarrely childlike as, for maybe thrity seconds or less, i was overcome with longing and grief for a little baby that i never really had and therefore never really lost. and i closed my eyes and sat there feeling sorry for myself before noticing the lady stood near me, watching sypathetically. when i opened my eyes she looked abashed, as if aware of her intrusion on something private and my embarrassment of this fleeting weakness.

(incidentally, i think i must have neglected to tell Jens about any of this, judging by our conversation the other day. either that or he had just forgotten my little remarks)

i won't even tell you about the look i got when i lingered over the 'Raid- Insect Killer!' spray. In Uganda they call it 'DOOOOOM!' spray. seriously.

what is it that makes me need to write these things down, instead of letting them slide? what is is that makes me so good at lying to people when i don't really need to lie, when i'm not even bluffing. and, sure, i'm good at poker but it's useless if we're not playing for money.

***

something has transpired and i'm going to see Jens.

"you're arrogant, aren't you?"
" it's not that i'm arrogant; i just like cigarettes. and women....girls like you. put your arms around me."

Message on my answerphone:

"tonight will be another night in the notorious Summer Of Fun.....call me."

we'll see..

This evening i watched Geldoff in Africa, the one where he was in Uganda.

Now, me and Ads had talked about this, speculating about where he would go and what he would say, reminding each other it was on, and she sent me a text at half seven just in case. Our speculations were strange and kind of twisted, because we both wanted to see an old friend and revel in it's wonder, but that's not really the point of Geldoff- not the whole point anyway. I wanted him to say something wonderful that would make the Ugandans proud of all the good things about their country- or at least justify the violent pride of the ones I know. As well as this I felt like I wanted the programme to have impact, to make people realise, in the way that the whole campaign is aiming to do.

I was not at all prepared for what I saw and how I felt as I watched that programme. I've watched shorts before, I've heard them talking, I've heard the rhetoric. It makes sad and angry and enthused and passionate and most of all it makes me hopeful. But this was altogether different. When you are watching something that is removed from your entire being you feel sad and moved in a certain way- a way that is outside of yourself. You can't imagine what it's like, but you imagine that it's awful. When you watch something that is part of you, the ante is upped. it's a different kind of sadness.

When I watched Uganda in turmoil; in desolation, in sickness, in utter desperation- I felt like i was watching my childhood home crumble. Every child with a story of torture ripped through me as if I was watching my own sister, my own friend. 'That could be Alvin', I'd think. 'That could be Sama, Rachel, Innocent, Betty, Frank, Ruth, Nora....that could be Dianah's child, Geoffry's child, BugomaSamuel's child..' the list went on as every child looked familiar, even though they weren't...is if every child WAS a child that I've cared a jot about.

I can't even bear to think about what is happening, even though a part of me says I should force myself. What would it achieve? What will it all achieve? Live Eight may have left people with their fists in the air and hope in their eyes; but watching Uganda bleed left me weeping uncontrolably, giving up in dispair, feeling guilty and sameful and helpless, and hopelessly, hopelessly wicked. It left me feeling that this was too big to ever change.

What do Ruth and Alvin- and all of the children much worse off than them- care that some English girl's heart breaks when she sees them tortured in the places she loves? What do they care that I would give my life if I thought it would fix anything?

What is the value of my life when the problems are this vast? none.

When I first came back from Uganda I remember feeling like everyone was miserable for no reason. It faded away and soon I stopped even giving my stories and opinions for fear of sounding self-righteous. It is much easier to be weary and cynical and apathetic. there is no risk there, no gap for someone to pull you down. I thought that slipping back into this lane was me returning to normal, forgetting the dreamer i was and becoming realistic and practical. it was no such thing. it was stupid, stupid, stupid. moments of clarity come and go, but that is just one person's experience, and unless it's the RIGHT person, then it will make no difference to the problems of Africa.

I guess what we are trying to do is reach the people who CAN change things, and make their moment of clarity last for years, forever, so they can keep striving and never sit back weeping as I have done. My disposition doesn't matter, hell, the disposition of Bono doesn't even matter. But we have to try- we have to try if we think it will have any affect at all on the disposition of George Bush and the like.

I can't get that feeling of grief from off my chest. It was awful, awful, so horrible.
And what should I do, what should I feel? these questions are even more pointless than my feelings and the grief itself. If, amidst tears, my reflex tells me to try and feel better- what do i do then? if i wanted to i could make myself feel better but no one gives a fuck about that, especially me. i could feel horrid or i could feel grand and the experience of children held in LRA care would be exactly the same.
I am holding myself back from feeling better, it would feel like i'm turning my back, doing an injustice (even though i know it make less than no difference to anyone but me).

I just keep going round and round and there's a hundred things i haven't even written. I am not here to use emotive adjectives and describe the scenes, the country i love, the continent i long for. I'm almost irritated by the reporters' sappy ramble and rhetoric because I know that the truth speaks for itself.I know that it is easy to push this alien experience from your mind until you have seen it. it is there, then, in your head.

(i'm not saying that just about africa, because it's the same with anything. imagine a news report from the place where you live. you would see it with extra eyes and ears, making it more real; making it different to the way the rest of the nation sees it.)

I feel angry at every cynic who says that bono and paul maccartney doing a duet together will not change the mind of a superpower's leader, even though it makes sense when you read it so plain like that. i am angry at every cynic because showing doubt alost gives them a way out. they might see it and say 'he's right! it's just a concert, why should it change anything?' it's not about the fucking concert, you morons.

it makes me angry when i see celebrities who endorse huge corporations, corporations which exploit developing countries and FUEL unfair trade, standing up and saying 'politicians- listen!'. the celebrities have a voice and that voice is commerce. if every celebrity abstained from endorsements until the companies traded fairly, then the companies would have no choice but to listen rethink the way they do business. if david beckham stood up and said 'nike is an expolitative corporation and i urge you to boycott their sales until they trade fairly', well then nike would stop selling. that is the time when action would be taken- when throats are on the line and there is no choice.

I can say all of this but all i really want is something, something, something. i hate the way this experince helps me live my life more happily, knowing how lucky i am, how HUGE every comfort and opportunity IS. there's something not quite right about that feeling of happiness being borne of desolation.

And all I am left with before I sleep is the Uganda I love, the place where i have never been happier, the place of amazing people and immense beauty and endless fun. i can't let go of that place and i never will. i wish more people could see it. they never show people laughing and washing their clothes, or riding on bicycles stacked with matooke and wicker chairs. i can't forget people sitting under mango trees, running through banana plants. i mean, look at my icon today. it's beautiful. i guess the people in war up north have never seen this Uganda either, and that breaks my heart.

Please, please, please...let this be the beginning of change.

we are in the middle of a change of destination. i am proud and ashamed and hopeful with all my heart.

but in the meantime, here are The Photos of Glastonbury 2005....

Being a aeroplane is allowed in this area. you're damn right!



Love: it's all you need.



Me and Katie (left) watching Brian Wilson



Flags by night in the Dance Village



The crowd behind me, in pyramid field watching Jools Holland (now infamously 'boogylicious')



( click here for more glastonbury magic! and thank me for saving your pages, cos i almost said what the fuck! )