It is now 11:36 and I have done absolutely nothing all day. Apart from eating, washing, dressing, and all the mundane every-day things, I have accomplished a big fat zero. In fact, I am now sitting here like Donald, except the clock doesn't say nine.

Lori's blog post today sums it all up.

Click on Donald and take a look. Those Imagineers sure know their procrastination...

Last night we went to see Cars, the new Disney/Pixar movie. My expectations for some reason weren’t as high for this one as they have been in the past. Surely this wouldn’t be as good as Finding Nemo… I’m hardly a Nascar fan, and I’d read some really terrible reviews.

The reviewers obviously have no sense of humour.

It was great!

Any movie where the bugs flying around are tiny blue VW Beetles with wings has to be a hit with me. (Trying to figure out how to attach wings to my blue bug…)

The animation details were incredible. Watching Madagascar the other day was a let-down anyway, but next to Cars it looked like something a tenth-grade class worked up. Pixar get right down to the tiniest detail: light reflections on the paintwork of the cars, the crunching sound of wheels rolling slowly over gravel, etc. Among my other favourite details are the use of the wheels as 'feet' to add expression; the glittering paintwork McQueen receives at the end of the movie; and, of course, the clips at the end in which other Pixar movies are spoofed with cars (Toy Car Story; Monstertruck Inc.) And the Tractor Tipping was hillarious.

And what’s more, I didn’t think about my dissertation once during the entire movie. I came home with Route 66 in my head, wanting to go on a nostalgic road trip from Chicago to LA, getting my kicks, before becoming a digital animator for Pixar.

The geographical references were amusing, especially this one:

Cars - the Cozy Cone Motel:


Inside, all the ornaments are little cones: the lights, the picture frames (displaying the Eiffel Tower and Stonehenge, both cone-shaped), the clocks...

Southern California's Wigwam Motel, also off Route 66:

Don't listen to the reviews. Go see the movie.

I haven’t written for days, partly because I’ve been working so much, and partly because, when it came down to typing something on a blank page, my mind went numb.  Why I should have something to write about in order to post on here, I don’t know, but I’ve felt quite inadequate these last few days.  My brain is either churning out sentences about fraternal equality or stuck in neutral.  Neither are happy states to be in.

I need a day off – to go out somewhere and smell the sea breeze or stand on top of a Tor on Dartmoor and feel the whole earth below me and all the expanse of air to breath.  The problem is that a day off would be beset with a nagging voice in the back of my head telling me I should be working.  It doesn’t help that Lori and I are both going through this and, try as we might, talking about work inevitably gets us down.  I have planned a night out for tomorrow: to see Cars at the Picturehouse.  It’s a pre-birthday day for Lori.  And we’ll get a day off on her birthday next Friday (strictly mandated by me, even if I have to drag her away kicking and screaming).  Things to look forward to.

It’s about baby carrots, I guess – things that get you through the next few hours of mind-numbing computer-screen staring.  Tonight’s carrot is the West Wing finale, about which I am both excited and mournful.  It’s like losing a friend.  We have two tubs of Haagan Daaz at the ready.

Speaking of Haagan Daaz, yesterday our carrot was (not literally of course) nipping to Blockbuster to buy one tub of Belgian Chocolate and one tub of Pralines & Cream and sitting cross-legged on the couch watching Gilmore Girls with two spoons and lots of cross-dipping.  The weather was glorious and we were at stalemate with our dissertations, so we indulged in a bit of ice-cream therapy and were significantly better off for it (apart from the slight nausea at the realisation of exactly how much we had consumed).  

I’m becoming a quasi-version of Mrs Hannigan, only my screechy voice would be singing about “little boys.”  I don’t know how parents put up with school holidays.  Invariably there are three or four outside the bay window, throwing stones at each other or shouting completely unintelligible phrases between spitting at the ground.  There are usually footballs or bicycles involved.  We caught two nasty little specimens of childhood trying to climb the six-foot fence behind our apartment a couple of hours ago, hooting and wailing at each other.  At least that’s what they seemed to be doing; I can’t follow what they are trying to say to each other at all (apart from the odd curse word).  I sound like a complete prude at 23, don’t I?  

On an impromptu walk on Monday night we found a small playground in one of the housing estates on the hill with swings and a bench.  Beside the bench sat a bug-bin: a red trash can with eyes and antennae.  It even had little feet.  It was like finding a tiny drop of Imagineering right here in Exwick.  

The theme of today...


And when I wasn't staring out of windows I was 'exercising my imagination' in other ways. Lori and I spent about thirty minutes today tossing a squishy yellow light-bulb--one of those stress toys--across the living room to each other. I have no idea what has possessed us this weekend. In our defense, the lightbulb toy has "Exercise Your Imagination" written on one side and "Disney's Imagination Institute" on the other. It's one of those wonderful-but-expensive items you can pick up in the store after the Journey Into the Imagination with Figment ride at Disney's EPCOT, along with Figment the purple dragon ("horns of a steer, but a loveable fellow") who is hanging from his magnetic feet above the bay window. Whether this half hour of madness improved our imaginations in any way is debatable, but I did learn that a bulb is significantly more tricky than a ball to catch (either that or yet more proof that I should never have been forced to play any type of sport in school).

I am telling myself that reading Time Magazine from cover to cover was a form of catharsis rather than procrastination. Besides, it was dark. I may have to prolong work into the evening hours when the sun is still shining, but by 10 p.m. it is getting dark, and only a very dedicated individual would continue ruminating on the fraternal social contract and the implications of Levi-Strauss’s and Derrida’s concepts of incest and fraternity for the early nineteenth century novel when it’s dark outside.

It’s really quite incredible how much I have learned about foreign relations and international politics since I started working on this dissertation. Perhaps I have grounded myself in something that seems to really matter in the grand scheme of things in order to convince myself that the time my brain spends ticking over eighteenth and nineteenth century literature is worthwhile, or at least not a waste.

Speaking of things that really matter--I’ve gone from Time Magazine to Disney music, certainly appropriate to wind down the evening.

For the last two weeks I have been sitting at this round table in the living room with the bay windows open, listening to children riding bikes on the road outside and the cry of the odd seagull, and I’ve been staring up at the bookshelves in front of me.

I moved in here to let Lori have full range on the study desk, and so that I could spread out my folders and books and notepads and stick-it notes all over our dining room table, They get ungraciously shoved aside at lunchtimes. I like working in here, in this big cream room with the poinsettia (Fred the Second - he’s been alive for eight months now) for company. From here I can see Venice, Lacoste in the Luberon Valley, and the steps of Montmartre: memories in frames. And I can see our books.

They oscillate between inspiration and distraction; it all depends where my eyes land. There’s the travel section, which makes my feet itch to leave the room, and the country. The lit-crit section sometimes refocuses me, reminds me what I should be doing instead of staring at spines.

The novels overwhelm me in their penguin classic uniforms. The poetry section is tempting: just a short poem wouldn’t take too much time. My undergraduate dissertation is hiding in a corner nudging the wood, impatient for its neighbour, which is in the process of conception in bits and pieces under my fingertips.

Then there are the types of books that could get me out of my seat.

There’s Christopher Meyer’s D.C. Confidential, our “read aloud” book of the moment. We perch on opposite ends of the tired white sofa and pass the book over our knees, a chapter at a time.

There’s a book called A World of Ideas that pops out in gold on black. A great title. (It sits beside A History of Knowledge, which is surprisingly slim for such an ambitious combination of words).

The first book is the Bible. The last is the Viking Portable Victorian Reader in the Anthologies section.

Nestled amongst them all are the thin spines of my very favourites. Anne Fadiman’s Ex Libris is bright green and tiny. The Imagineering Way and its Workout friend announce themselves in vibrant colour. They are perhaps the most “plucked” of the books, shuffled out for inspiration during moments of dullness. Billy Collins looks inconsequentially small, especially compared with the Collins English dictionary and Richardson’s Clarissa. Just to show good things often come with small spines.

There are some just aching to be read. New York City Secrets is top of that list at the moment. Its red cardboard sleeve suggest travel guide – the likes of Baedeker (a 1908 Central Italy edition sits beside it) or Murray - but it slips off to reveal a blue cloth cover, suitably subtle.

We are having an overflow problem, so there are a handful of books lying sideways: Jack Kerouac’s Big Sur, a Times/WHSmith 99p number. Charlotte Smith’s Emmeline and Celestina. Nicole Krauss’s The History of Love, unread, and Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife, read cover-to-cover over the Atlantic in March.

There’s a wind up alarm clock – stopped at 5:34 because it ticks too loud – hiding the MLA Handbook, and a stuffed monkey reclining in front of Jane Austen’s letters.

These are the things I spend my day thinking about, between spurts of activity.

So apparently something hit the fan this week at the G8 summit.

But can we ignore for a moment the terrible fact that President Bush used a mild expletive (come on, folks! You want a sign of the guy’s humanity? Here it is. He cursed. Mildly.). Perhaps, instead, we could address the hearing difficulties of whoever translated the conversation…

First of all, there is the issue of irony.

Transcript according to CNN and CBS:

"See the irony is what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it's over"

Transcript according to the British media (The Times, etc):

You see, the thing is, what they need to do is to get Syria, to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it’s over"

Spot the difference? Okay, this may be a little pedantic, but since the media has exploded about this, and since The Times has a long diatribe about this one sentence, I think we can afford to be nitpicky here. Besides, there is a clear difference in meaning.

The second sentence implies that the “they” Bush refers to are idiots who have not grasped how simple this solution is. “The thing is, they just have to do this simple thing… duh!”

The first sentence is about the irony of the situation. Irony, meaning “the difference between how you might expect something to be and how it actually is” (Longman dictionary – see, I’m being precise here). The irony here is that there would be such a simple solution but it is not really that simple.

I’m hardly sticking up for Bush, here. But if the British media want to crucify him for something, they need to at least be accurate.

And that’s not the end of it.

How about this sentence from an opinion piece by Magnus Linklater in The Times today:

Mr Bush refers to the Syrian leader, possibly sarcastically, as “sweet,” while Mr Blair prefers “honey” — these are insider terms that required definition.

Yes… they do require definition…

This is just one example of a handful of articles I have read today ridiculing Bush and Blair’s use of the terms “sweet” and “honey” to refer to an unnamed man (who could be Kofi Annan or the Syrian leader or even Putin). The CNN & CBS and other American news sources I have found do not transcribe this part of the conversation. The Times and Sky News and pretty much every other transcript I can find from Britain transcribes it like this:

Blair: What does he think? He thinks if Lebanon turns out fine, if we get a solution in Israel and Palestine, Iraq goes in the right way...

Bush: Yeah, yeah, he is sweet.

Blair: He is honey. And that’s what the whole thing is about. It’s the same with Iraq.

I thought this was rather odd. So I listened to the video footage of the conversation (see the CNN Web site). They say no such thing. What they actually say is:

Bush: Yeah, yeah, he’s through.

Blair: He’s had it.

So for all those journalists busy writing opinion pieces about “sweet-talk” and “drips with honey” – listen to the conversation and stop reading the transcripts.

Actually, for all those journalists writing opinion pieces about the conversation, we’ve had enough. Write about something more worthwhile. It was a quick conversation. It was not meant to be overheard. It’s interesting and amusing in that it gives us an insight into these two characters, but it is not breaking world news.

Take this, for example, from the same opinion article in The Times:

"There is something shallow and simplistic about their world view. Neither gives any indication that they are pursuing a dynamic or creative approach to solving the current crisis, and policy seems to consist of a few half-formed ideas spun out at random… Is this the limit of what the President of the United States feels able to suggest?

The conversation lasts about two minutes. The President is eating (with his mouth full, which is rather unpleasant) his lunch. Don’t you think it’s rather narrow-minded to assume that this conversation indicates the “limit,” the full extent of these two men’s thoughts or responses to the crisis?

So here’s my two cents (which may be worthless if a new bill passes to discontinue the penny): if you’re going to be pedantic, at least be pedantically accurate.

It’s too hot to think. The air is thick and heavy. I find myself staring into space too often, wishing most of all that I wasn’t sitting in front of a pile of books and notes and a whirring computer. Then at other times I lose track of time and emerge from the books three hours later, wondering where all that time went. Those are the most productive days, but the heat reduces my concentration span. I stare out of the open windows at the sky and the shadows on brick. Everything is still; I miss the tac-tacking of the blinds in the breeze. I wish I could work outside, but it’s too impractical.

Studies show that people who live in darker climates – far north in Alaska, for example, where the hours of sunlight are limited – have a greater chance of suffering from depression. I can understand. Despite this mountain of work I have to tunnel my way through, the blue sky gets me motivated. Despite the big question mark at the end of September, I’m relatively light-hearted.

I love the smell of the air in the summertime.

Did I mention that The West Wing is truly the best show on television? I can’t quite believe there aren’t more cosmic consequences to it ending. Two weeks left on More4. I’ll need to buy Kleenex.

We’ve been reading a new book: Christopher Meyer’s D.C. Confidential, which is surprisingly good. Meyer was Her Majesty’s Ambassador in Washington during the 9/11 period, so offers some fascinating insights into transatlantic relations during that vital time. There are chapters that resonate with clichés (Catherine’s Story, especially), and there is some serious name dropping, but it gives a brilliant human perspective on life inside the political game. We’re only a few chapters in (reading is reserved for evenings to wind down from, well, reading and writing during the day, but on much less interesting topics). So far the picture is mainly of British politics, and it really strips the great political machine down to the bare human relationships. Very interesting. I’m looking forward to getting into the American political world and seeing what he thinks of the Bush administration and the differences between British and American government.

On another note entirely, did you know that:

• Chinese journalists can face a $12,500 fine for publicizing “sudden events” like riots, strikes, and natural disasters without permission, under a proposed law.


• The average European adult consumes 11 litres of alcohol per year, the most worldwide and 2.5 times the global average


• 27% of deaths among males aged 15 to 29 in the European Union are alcohol related.


• 30,000 cigarette lighters are confiscated each day by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration at airport checkpoints.

Those are my daily statistics from Time magazine. The book Freakonomics has made me look at statistics in a completely different way.

I want to know more about international relations.
I wonder what it would be like to work at the UN.
I wonder what the G8 leaders are doing right now.

Random thoughts.

It’s a beautiful morning and the windows are wide open. The world smells different in the morning. The air is cold and almost spicy with that promise of warmth later on. In here, in the study, the sunlight falls in bright hazy patterns on the carpet. The sky is blue and the birds are singing. Today has the potential to be a good day.

Tomorrow I get a coffee break. How pathetic is it that I look forward to a coffee break a day in advance? Actually, it’s more than that, since I looked forward to it yesterday, too.

But in my defence, it is a coffee break that involves company. And going out. To a coffee place. Exciting.

Of course, I do it every week. But it’s still fun.

So Lori and I are going to meet Dona for coffee tomorrow. Actually, that’s a lie. As Dona pointed out, we’re going out to a coffee establishment to drink drinks that aren’t coffee, since none of us drink coffee. So I suppose that would mean that we are going out for drinks. But that suggests something more formal – a soiree, with “drinks” (said with raised eyebrows, implying things like cocktails and lipstick). This is just coffee. Without the coffee. I’ll most likely be going out for tea, while Lori and Dona might go out for hot chocolate. But that suggests that I’ll be going somewhere different, and that would be lonely. So we’ll settle on that linguistic misnomer of “coffee,” which doesn’t actually mean coffee. So there.

Eleanor can’t come. I feel terrible about this. I sent her an email inviting her, and she thought the email had arrived yesterday and that I was inviting her for today (got that?), which I suppose meant that she walked all the way into town, got to Costa, waited, and we didn’t show up. Isn’t that terrible? Poor Eleanor, sitting there alone, waiting for us, probably thinking what terrible friends we were to just leave her stranded like that.

There is absolutely no point to this post, apart from the fact that I should be taking a shower before going to bed, and at about 10 p.m. a little bug kicks in that won’t let me just get things like showers over with before going to bed. So it gets late, and I ramble, and then I kick myself when I finally do get to bed and it is after midnight and I realise that I’m terrible at keeping time and at this rate I’ll never be beautiful.

Okay. Done.

I want to take this opportunity to say hello to the Gibson clan, my audience for this week!

I’m just going to pretend you’re not there.

;)

-- And don’t think that you’re learning more about me than I am about you. For instance, I now know I have a certain big brother who hangs around outside a tattoo parlour! (Sorry – couldn’t resist that one…!) --

I have been thinking a lot lately about past friendships. When I left secondary school at 16 someone I considered a very good friend wrote a poem in my “leaver’s book” about the importance of keeping old friends. New friends are like silver, it said, but the old ones are gold. Back then, I understood this to mean simply that old friendships are worth more because they last longer.

But gold is more precious because it is more rare, not because it is more beautiful. Old friendships have to weather strong storms to last; they have to make it through the separations of different life paths and changing attitudes. New friends are much easier to come by, but are easily let go. The friend who wrote that poem in my leaver’s book was perhaps trying to warn me of something. A couple of years later I would lose contact with her. Perhaps that was for the best, but there are some lost friendships that I wonder if I should, or could, have held onto for longer.

Recently I joined Friends Reunited. It was a move prompted by a conversation with a new friend about past friends. I had fun telling stories about past adventures with friends I hadn’t talked to for years, and I felt a pang of regret at that loss. Particularly for one. So I sent her an email and received an unexpected reply. It was like reaching a hand back into the past and grasping hold of something. I hope it will continue.

In a fit of looking back, I emailed school friends to find out what they were doing now. It was a lesson in time, and I learnt a lot. I find myself hoping that broken friendships can be fixed.

A couple of years ago one was resurrected from near-death. A friendship that had been strong and had ended badly was haunting me, so I decided to do something about it. I sent an email. I got a reply. Things needed patching up, and perhaps the bandaids are still visible. But we talk, and remember the good times, and that is worth a lot.

To read this you would think I go around breaking every friendship I make, which is not the case. The best friendships are the old ones, when you are able to keep them. They come in two types. There are those that are long-standing and strong, but which can easily weather the silences that become inevitable over time. I have friends I haven’t spoken to for months, even years, but whom I could call up tonight for a chat. I should do that more.

And then there are the ones that stay strong over the years.

Eight years ago last week I met a friend on the other side of the world. Seven years ago today we met for the first time. I remember the excitement of that day, of knowing someone so well in words but not in images. It’s a friendship that has had to weather stronger storms than most, not least national boundaries. That makes it rare. Real gold.

That’s as soppy as I get for today.

There is a place in my mind that is like a large open room and, against the wall, a wide and solid bed draped in copious sheets, soft and warm but barely ruffled. The windows reach down almost to the floor, patterns of small glass panes intertwined with white lines. They open outwards and have twisted black iron handles. Sometimes one is half open, billowing pale curtains. They hiss across the floor in the breeze. Sometimes the windows are shut tight against pelting rain and the curtains are still sentinels, flashing lightning.

At night there are candles and jazz, but I don’t remember ever striking a match or selecting the song.

The ceiling is high and the walls are off-white. I can smell the sawdust of a parquet floor and hear birds in the morning in unseen trees. I am always alone in the room, sometimes unaware of my own presence. There are two doors, but I don’t know where they lead. It doesn't matter. To my left, a desk – ivory coloured wood – with a single notebook, open, and a black fountain pen resting on an empty page. And a small single bookshelf, tucked into a corner, with books that have been carefully selected from an unseen library, by me. I don’t know what they are, but they belong together in the way of books that have sat side by side long enough to form friendships through cardboard covers.

In this room I am completely happy. I once dreamed of becoming rich and building a house with that same room. But then I would have to get out of the bed and latch the window when it rained, and I would inevitably disturb a book from a friendly conversation.

Finally, it is raining. The sky has been heavy with rain all week. I could smell it in the air through the open windows, and now it is pit-patting the stones outside from rolling grey clouds. The air is cold and damp and blissful.

I read a sentence today in a writer’s notebook – an image of a man smiling as if rain were falling on his face.

The fireworks yesterday were rather pathetic. That’s all that can be said about that.

Saturday. A good day. We woke early and pulled on clothes, half awake, to drink in the cool morning air and buy a newspaper from the general store on the other side of the hill. After a luxurious shower (the kind you can only have at the weekend when there is no rush), I put my feet up and read the paper while listening to Brian Sibley’s Ain’t No Mickey Mouse Music online (repeat of the BBC Radio 2 programme from last night). It was delightful – I’ve had Whistle While You Work, Never Smile at a Crocodile (did you know the song was never actually in the movie?), and the entire musical score of Beauty and the Beast and my very favorite, The Little Mermaid, in my head all day. (Better by far than the usual trash that sticks in your mind).

This afternoon we had a cup of tea in Effings, the most delightful delicatessen/restaurant in Exeter (described best by their own tagline, “Fine Foods for Fun”), and then spent the afternoon in Waterstones. Oh, what bliss to sit on the floor beneath shelves of books thumbing through everything from photography guides to philosophy tomes to poetry and writer’s notebooks. My purchase of the day was Christopher Meyer’s DC Confidential, which I’ve had my eye on for some time. And to make myself feel better about the lack of other purchases I came home and added a couple to my Amazon Wish List.

Feeling inspired, we went to dinner at Prezzo and ate mounds of pasta.

A good day.


And here’s a poem from my bookstore browsing:

Matins ~ Louise Gluck (from Wild Iris)

Not the sun merely but the earth
itself shines, white fire
leaping from the showy mountains
and the flat road
shimmering in early morning: is this
for us only, to induce
response, or are you
stirred also, helpless
to control yourself
in earth's presence -- I am ashamed
at what I thought you were,
distant from us, regarding us
as an experiment: it is
a bitter thing to be
the disposable animal,
a bitter thing. Dear friend,
dear trembling partner, what
surprises you most in what you feel,
earth's radiance or your own delight?
For me, always
the delight is the surprise.

Need I say more?

Meet Tate, the bluetack creature:

It strikes me that we expend so much thought each day on the little, mundane things in life. And yet, when it comes to writing something on a blog, we reach for the grand ideas, the concepts that lend our fingers a little poetry on the keys. We write to make our existence appear more profound than our tiny daily obsessions would suggest.

But perhaps our little thoughts are what make us more human.

Here are some of mine:

It seems my conditioner is running out faster than my shampoo. I bought them at the same time. They are the same size. I always thought I used roughly the same amount of both. Maddening.

The dishwasher is a wonderful instrument. I wish it loaded itself.

And why can’t we fit a bigger bin in the tiny cupboard under the sink? It seems I have only just come inside again after throwing one bag away when the next is full. Whoever designed the apartment didn’t think about the placement of trash cans.

I have this strange pain in my arm. Perhaps from typing too much. Stabbing, twitching pain.

Why do I always call my parents just as I sit down with a cup of tea and a handful of Rich Tea biscuits? I need to learn that they don’t want to listen to me munching and slurping my way through a conversation.

Preoccupation with finding some way to keep the windows open at night without threat of spiders entering. (Lori more concerned with humans entering. Sensible).

(This type of writing seems to remove my verbs and replace them with an overabundance of parentheses.)

When did I stop saying brackets and rubbish and start saying parentheses and trash?

Gilmore Girls is more amusing than I thought it would be. We just started the first season.

Delight at having tricked the TIME magazine subscription system by not entering credit card details online but managing to get free trial anyway. Reading TIME magazine made more enjoyable by this fact. Wonder if trick will work on the Economist…

Why do all coffee shops over here close before 6? What about those of us who only crave a mocha after dinner?

Clippit was putting me to sleep earlier. There I am, struggling through the first page of my dissertation introduction, and his little sleepy half-closed eyes taunt me with their “I can daydream. You can’t” expression. And just when I can’t take it anymore, he raises his silly little eyebrows and glances down at my (lack of) typing, blinks, tilts his head to one side and looks me straight in the eye, as if to say “You’re not really working very efficiently today, are you?” He then pretends to ignore me (eyes diverted) and occasionally scratches his head in mock confusion.

But I get lonely when I turn him off.

Just don’t press the animate button. Addiction. (My favourite: the tornado, complete with spinning eyeballs).

Finished Freakonomics tonight; combing brain for children’s names.

Did you notice my new blog layout? (Who am I talking to?) I didn’t design it, but I did tweak it, which meant learning a little about CSS scripting (surprisingly fun). I’m rather impressed with it, to tell the truth. But it’s really just another way to not write my dissertation.

... how exciting our 4th July party was?

We couldn't find stars and stripes anywhere, so I got busy with the printer and some string:

And then, of course, there was the culinary experience. Dona made spinach dip, which was gorgeous. Then we made BBQ chicken (KC Masterpiece imported via suitcase) on a makeshift barbeque grill outside, Lori made hamburgers, and we had rosemary potatoes, roasted Mediterranean vegetables, and salad.

Dessert was Betty Crocker chocolate cake (just oozing with chocolate icing) and this cake:

We didn't quite get the proportion of blueberries-strawberries right, but it's still pretty impressive!

For fireworks we have to wait until tomorrow, when Exeter city council are organising a Party on the Quay. Unrelated, but fun.

The sky is a luminous blue tonight. The colour is bouncing off the walls. The air smells cool and musty, like the evening is sweating after a hot day. We went for a walk at 9 p.m., up the hill on Farm Road to where you can see the cathedral and the university across the river valley and you can hear the occasional hooting of the trains below. There were no shadows, since the sun had gone down, but there was a type of haziness in the air that made the cathedral stone, in the distance, over rooftops and trees, look grey-blue in the evening light. All the cats were prowling around front gardens at sun-down, so the walk took twice as long (I’m a little obsessed…) The houses on the hillsides are built haphazardly to cope with the slopes, like spilled orange-red building blocks. People were clearing up dinner plates with windows open or moving barbeques back into sheds. The air smelled of honeysuckle.

I have the window open in the study, letting all the mosquitoes in along with the evening smell and the cool air. Lori is taking a shower before our movie night, which we rescheduled due to a delicious and copious Mexican meal last night (enchiladas and quesadillas and refried beans and rice left little room for dips and chips). We’re going to move our mattresses in the living room and crash on the floor with food all around us, which means we will undoubtedly be complaining about the light at 4:30 a.m. There was a storm last night – real thunder, which is strange and eerie in England. It rumbles more than it does in Mississippi, where thunder is less of a rumble than a repeated cracking, like a giant whip on the clouds. Last night I woke up just as the light was coming up, wondering why I had dreamt of thunder. Then I heard it, and the rain started. I lay awake smiling for a while, missing America.

Missing America has been the theme of today, by the way. I started another internet job search, which always ends disappointingly. That’s enough about that.

I have been thinking about doing something drastic this week. I have been so angry with myself for not getting up early and keeping my sleeping patterns in hand, so I’ve been contemplating a (quite literal) wake-up call: up at 7 a.m. for a run, shower, and work. Bed by 11. It’s doubtful that it will work, but I might just try. To be honest, getting up at 8 would be an improvement right now. I was so angry with myself for staying in bed until 9:45 yesterday morning that I am almost ready to try anything, and a run always puts me in an optimistic and idealistic mood.

Time to prepare dips!

I have been thinking a lot lately about identity, or perhaps I should say I have become more aware lately of a forming, shifting, tugging of identity that tends to cascade questions with answers. Life is a constant formation of identity and opinions. Sometimes I have the slight notion of being behind myself in some way, of feeling questions about life and my identity rearing up quicker than I can answer them, so that I am overtly aware of the whole machinery of identity and life. Perhaps these questions themselves, and the philosophy that they engender, is part of the process of forming identity itself.

I know that as a child I fell in line with the opinions of my parents and teachers. Part of the process of growing up is learning to question those assumed ideas and to decide for yourself: is this really my opinion, or is it something I have been taught to believe? Some people never get around to questioning those things, and I think that is a failing, in part, of education. Inquisitiveness is invaluable. I know that as a child I cared very little for reading the newspaper or watching the news. My religious beliefs were formed from a vague notion of a God who watched over church services as I squirmed on the cold wooden pew and counted the words left on the service sheet, waiting to begin the measured walk home to a roast lunch. I’m not sure I can point my finger on the exact moment that all changed. I think the shift began to happen in college, when the pressure of university placement decisions and the occasional political opinions voiced by older friends made me realise that there was more to the world than textbooks and exams. I didn’t have my own mind made up, and I became tired of trying to gauge the opinions of others before voicing my own because of my ignorance and my fear of being wrong.

It was a few months into sixth-form college that I began to read The Times every now and then, just because it was lying around and I wanted something to do while drinking a cup of tea after arriving home from college. It was a way to kill time before dinner, and I would pick and choose articles to fit my limited attention span. I paid a little more attention in the build up to the 2000 election in the States, and this was a turning point. Trying to trace the reason for this, I know now that it was based on a sudden realisation of conflict. I suppose I had always had an “us and them” attitude to opinions. Us – my parents, friends, etc. – would believe one way (the right way) while other people disagreed. But suddenly the opinions voiced by my father, who had, in my world, always been right, were opposed to those expressed by my best friend who, living in the United States, was surely able to give a valid opinion, one that I respected as something I would probably agree with, since we agreed on almost everything else. It wasn’t enough to vaguely skirt the subject and hope that I didn’t appear to be too committed to either side. I needed my own opinion.

That was the beginning, but something has happened since then, slowly over the last five years, to make me question again and again who I am and what I believe. It’s about more than religion and politics, although it encompasses those things, too. I’m gradually aware of a push-pull happening as I become more aware of the world, and along with that is a resistance to what I tend to see as “narrow-mindedness” and “uneducated opinions” and the inability to change one’s view when presented with better information (hard-headedness). I am so much more educated about the world now, and so vastly more interested. I have travelled and seen things from a variety of perspectives. The benefit, I feel, is that those perspectives are poles apart. But that is also a difficulty.

At eighteen my opinions about the world started to form, and it was while I was living in America. I think it was perhaps bound to happen anyway, but being over there certainly worked as a form of acceleration, propelling me into a world that was so different. I began to realise not only that it was completely contrary to what I had know before, but that I hadn’t really known a lot before. I felt like my opinions were changing, when really they were actually just beginning to form themselves. In a way, part of me grew up in the rural South, in the Bible-Belt of this foreign land that felt like home. I felt at once a part of this world – aligned to it – but at the same time an outsider. I was observing from the inside, participating but with a step backwards, watching, gaining information.

It could be said that I formed my ideas about the world in a hot-house of religious conservatism, but I don’t think that is necessarily true or that my views on the world are therefore skewed. On the contrary, I feel that my ability to one day be immersed in the religious heart of the South and then, on the other side of the world, read articles in a British newspaper heralding the fundamentalist Right as the destroyers of culture and freedom, created a push-pull that took a measure of assimilation, but which has ultimately given me the ability and the necessity to ask my own questions and to form opinions that I know are mine.

There have been people I have encountered in both worlds whose opinions are formed by their environment – like all of us – but in a way that has clouded their vision so much that they are unable to see the world objectively. I have met staunch Republicans who believe in their religion, first and foremost, and who believe in their right to own a gun, who believe in the death-penalty as the surest means of criminal justice, and whose views are skewed by a deep-rooted idea of the difference between black and white, Christian and non-Christian, American and foreign. And then, on the other side, I have met people who believe that anyone who has not been to an enlightened and expensive school is somehow inferior; who believe Christianity (and most other forms of religion) is a poisonous force in society; who believe in partial-birth abortion; who believe that the area south of the Mason-Dixon line is full of stupid, uneducated, uncultured, prejudiced people. I have met people who think George W. Bush is God’s gift to humanity and those who believe he is the scum of the earth. I have met white people who look down on black people and black people who look down on white people. I have met Americans who dislike “foreigners” and foreigners who dislike Americans. I have met people who think I’m inferior in some way because I wasn’t born in the United States and I have met people who think I am inferior for having lived in the United States at all. I don’t want to imply that my experience has all been about negativity and hatred – for the most part the people and cultures I have experienced have held open arms to me and to anyone else, whether they are the same or different, and whose opinion of the world is open and optimistic. What I mean is that my experience has opened my eyes to the contradictions of the world, to the stereotypes that lie deep down in people’s hearts, to the narrow-mindedness that so many of us, whether we know it or not, display towards others.

If my experience so far in life has taught me anything, it is a profound belief in open-mindedness, and a constant personal need to question my opinions, views, judgements, and to ask myself, “Am I being judgemental or prejudiced here? Am I forming an educated opinion or one based on emotion or defensiveness? Am I giving the benefit of the doubt?”

Perhaps this is why I have a certain amount of discomfit lately in my awareness of the push-pull of my opinions. On the one hand, I feel like I am coming to a truth, and yet on the other hand I feel a hand of caution coming up and warning me that I must be careful. Perhaps my caution stems from the fact that my opinions are settling much more on the liberal side of things while, at the same time, I am living in a culture that fosters specifically those liberal ideas. I have to ask myself: are my opinions being influenced by the media or the popular idea of the world? And then I find myself battling with a gut-reaction to defend the other side in the face of judgement. This particularly happens when someone is stereotyping or judging other countries or national values without fairly balancing their arguments or questioning stereotypes. I find myself defending an administration I don’t particularly agree with, for example, just because an attack on the President is so often clothed in terms that attack the country or the people. The more educated your view of the world, the more confident your opinions, but also the more need to become even more educated – to hear both sides of the story, to defend the other side when it is attacked from a biased standpoint.

It has made me hate narrow-mindedness but defend those who have not had the education that allows you to develop open-mindedness.

My religious beliefs have also shifted into place a little more, lately. My faith has become stronger, perhaps, but less full of questions. Fire-and-brimstone gives way to forgiveness-and-mercy. Condemnation gives way to conviction. Protection from the outside gives way to more of an outward embrace. Conviction of sin to conviction of love. I’m not suggesting I have it all right, but I am getting closer to what is right for me.

The air smells of summer today, of picnics and barbeques and popsicles.  I can hear children playing outside and, again, the click-clicking of the blinds in the breeze.  This morning, after strawberry muffins in the bay window and a discussion about our planned 4th July party, we drove to Sainsbury’s with the windows down, singing to “Waiting in Canada” and “Mend” and laughing at the careless happiness of things.  Grocery-shopping trips are rarely carefree events, but this one was especially to fuel our movie-night tonight.  We bought dips and red pepper, chips and Mexican food.  It’s just the two of us, but we figured that shouldn’t mean we can’t have a little Saturday-night party.  

Various sections of the newspaper are strewn about my feet in the living room and jazz is playing on the iPod.  The road outside is finally quiet now that the football is on – England v. Portugal, I have been told – which for us is a welcome break from the sunny Saturday bustle in the courtyard outside.  

I am becoming more and more frustrated with my country now that Wimbledon is the only viable alternative to the World Cup, the Times is criticising Pixar and Disney in one edition, and you can’t get a good meal out without a hassle.  Those are just three instances of a larger issue, a longing to pack my bags and move back to the States to somewhere relatively unknown.  Lori and I had a long discussion yesterday at dinnertime, sitting in the sunshine by the river Exe eating pub chips and chicken, about the relative wonders of working for Disney.  We are dreamers at the moment, and we are trying to stay optimistic.

I’ve been brainstorming ways to “theme” Tuesday with Americana.  Of course, being in England presents its own challenges.  There’s no Wal-Mart aisle full of red, white, and blue (which may seem ironic in a country whose flag is also red, white and blue, but everything is World-Cup themed at the moment), so we will have to improvise. I’m going to head for a fabric store in town either tomorrow or Monday to see if I can find anything with stars and stripes.  Failing that, I’ll buy some string and we’ll print out flags to make bunting.  I found a recipe online for a stars and stripes cake (blueberries for the stars; strawberries for the stripes; whipped cream for the white background).  Showers are predicted so we probably won’t barbeque outside (which would involve buying a barbeque), but we filled our suitcase with barbeque sauces from the States so we can still marinade.  Do I sound a little over-enthusiastic?  I think Lori thought I was serious when I insisted on at least five renditions of “O say can you see….”, but she managed to bring me down to just one with hand on heart ;-)

I’m trying to write myself out of a slump I have been in all day that has its roots in my inability to decide what to do with my life.  The jazz helps.

Oh, and never, never, play “Lucky Balls” on addictinggames.com.  You will never get your life back.