HAVE I LEFT MY HOME JUST TO WHINE IN THIS MICROPHONE?

Stopped reading The radiant way. I liked it but wasn't in the mood for it so now I don't have anything to read which sucks. Honestly, I always feel so lost when I'm inbetween books. Could read Dracula I suppose, but I don't feel like it. The vampire-thing, it's fairly interesting but no. Although the "vampire-hype" is really getting out of hand with the whole Twilight deal. I saw the movie a few months ago and honestly, I don't get it. It was really rather bad. I haven't read the books (and I never will), but the fact that everyone I know who never reads loves them, sort of makes me think they are probably as bad I think they are. But then people tend to read fucking awful books by fucking awful authors. Paolo Coelho anyone? Dan Brown? Liza Marklund? There are too many bad writers out there.

Anyway, I need to read something. I do still have those Margaret Drabble books at home, but I think I'll go for something else. Shouldn't force it. Right now I mostly read old issues of NME which is really boring because I can't really stand NME. And I hate not having anything "real" to read.

NAIV.SUPER.

”Vi pratade om ditt och datt. Plötsligt överraskade jag mig själv med att förebrå mina föräldrar för att de aldrig tvingat mig att hålla på med sport på hög nivå. Det var alldeles orimligt. Jag sa idiotiska saker. Att jag kunde varit proffs idag. Kunde haft en formkurva. Och pengar. Varit på resande fot för jämnan. Olyckligtvis sa jag att det var deras fel att jag inte hade lyckats bli något och att mitt liv är oengagerande och tråkigt.
Jag sa förlåt efteråt.”

Naiv. Super. - Erlend Loe

Haha, the "kunde haft en formkurva" is brilliant, so clever.

Stopped reading Dracula because, for some reason, I don't like reading two books at the same time.

I'm currently reading Bram Stoker's Dracula. And also, The radiant way by Margaret Drabble.

DON'T SPEAK; I CAN HEAR YOU OR: I'VE SEEN THOSE ENGLISH DRAMAS TOO, THEY'RE CRUEL

My writing, again from The creativity of the mess we make. I haven't really edited it, but anyway, whatever, I don't have time:

"For all intents and purposes, we are who we are at the end of the day, when we turn the lights off and put ourselves to bed; two complicated, possibly fraught, human beings, splendid in our originality but incompatible in a supposed companionship. Oh, there was common ground, but it would not have been easy to find; it would have been a compromise and that compromise would always have been mine. Perhaps because of my gender, the society or simply because of my nature, I would always have been the one who would have to go to him; I would have passed the “meet halfway” sign and walked all the way by myself; perhaps cursing under my breath, perhaps despairing, definitely with my eyes open to what this would do to me, the toll it would take on me, but we wouldn’t have questioned it; not openly at least. My desire to not fight, to not disagree, to let things pass, to let it go, would have won oh so many victories over my real self-perseverance and the screaming need to say fuck you rather than fuck me (in order to make it all better, to make it go away). But eventually, my reluctance to do this, to walk that distance, would have caused an ever bigger rift between us than the fact that I had walked it alone all along would. And that rift, that gap, the resentment and contempt it holds, would have broken my heart more severely that just tagging along would ever do. And that is why I can never see myself in a relationship: as long as I am not in one, I don’t lose myself.

The funniest, in the “saddest”, “weirdest” sense of the word, is that I could be talking about any boy I have ever thought I loved."

- The creativity of the mess we make, Julia Melin

I'm moving to Cambridge in three weeks and I've been thinking a lot about which books I should bring, because I can't take too many with me as I'd rather make rooms for clothes (yes, clothes!) than a crazy amount of books. Anyway, I have finally decided to bring these:

John Steinbeck - The winter of our discontent
Evelyn Waugh - Brideshead revisited
Iris Murdoch - The bell
Doris Lessing - Under my skin
Donna Tartt - The secret history
Douglas Coupland - Microserfs
Junot Díaz - The brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao

Might leave the last one home, but will definitely take the rest of them with me. Actually, I should bring Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep as I fucking love that book, or something by Chuck Klosterman as I suspect I might get serious Klosterman withdrawal if I don't. I'll probably skip the Junot Díaz book, and bring Prep instead. Have to remember to take it back from my friend Pauline before the weekeend is over though (note to self), as she's moving to London to study at London College of Fashion this Tuesday.

CIVILIZED BEHAVIOUR IS SICK, ISN'T IT?

I just finished reading A summer-bird cage and yet again, here are some lovely Margaret Drabble quotes that can basically be read as excerpts from my mind:

"The human mind is not a delicate plant, I thought: on the contrary, it will survive almost anything..."

"I now find myself compelled to relate a piece of information which I decided to withhold, on the grounds that it was irrelevant, but I realize increasingly that nothing is irrelevant. I meant to keep myself out of this story, which is a laugh, really, I agree: I see however that in failing to disclose certain facts I make myself out be some sort of voyeuse, and I am too vain to leave anyone with the impression that the lives of others interest me more than my own."

"I had been making difficulties to him, and I always hate myself for that, and at the same time feel an ominous horror because it is always a sign that I am about to have a crisis of malice, weeping and exhaustion. I had felt it coming for days: I had been crouching inside the walls of my consciousness terrified to move too far or too violently in case they collapsed and left me looking at the wild beasts. In the pre-crisis days I feel like someone living in a paper house surrounded by predatory creatures. They believe the house is solid so they don't attack, but if I were to move they would the walls flutter and collapse and they would be on to me in no time."

"Odd that one doesn't mind being called insensitive, selfish, and so on, provided that one can entirely understand the grounds for the accusation. It should be the other way round; one should not mind only when one knows that one is innocent. But it isn't like that. Perhaps the rare and simple pleasure of being seen for what one is compensates for the misery of being it."

"It wasn't just that they kept the bread loose on the windowsill among the ashtrays, without a suggestion of a breadboard, and cooked in unwashed pans, and left stale Martini in the only teapot: I could have thought these habits endearing, if it hadn't been for the phoneyness of the whole setup. And these were such phoneys that I couldn't even pride myself on detecting them. I felt as though I were watching them all through the civil pages of one of Stephen's short stories about Bohemia. I hated the way they all felt it their duty to be rude, frank and blunt. I felt in relation to them as my probation officer friend no doubt felt in relation to me. Squalor has its degrees, like crime."

"Sunday is one of those days on which I expect to do typical, characteristic things - characteristic of myself, that is - yet usually end up doing things I don't want to do at all, going to places I loathe, and so on. This was a particularly bad patch: I seemed to spend my time seeing people I didn't care about, and talking about things that interested me only in mild journalistic way. I never saw anyone who could arouse a flutter of apprehension and excitement, and who would turn out unexpectedly, and I couldn't think of anyone that I really wanted to see more than anyone else."

"Immaturity is no good, and they made me feel immature, all those people, even those I could see through: they caught undertones I couldn't, though they didn't even know they were doing it. The thing is that I couldn't start to feel them in my terms because I couldn't really feel them in theirs, and one needs the double background. (...) Perhaps it is only me that takes refuge in things like chance, unchartered encounters, cars in the night, roads going anywhere so long as it's not somewhere that other people know better. You can't judge or despise or even really get at something that you don't know and haven't thoroughly got, because of the fear of despising it because it's not yours. The sour grapes principle, in fact. It applies to everything. Only when one has got everything in this life, when one is eaten up with physical joy and the extreme, extending marvel of existing, can one trust oneself one the subject of the soul."

"I would so like people to be free, and bound together not by need but by love. But it isn't so, it can't be so."

"I remembered the first and only other time when I had seen them all three together. It had seemed significant even at the time, but I had thought it was significant only as itself, for what it was to me, then, in my life."

"It was so sad, that a girl like Gill should be beaten simply because she had taken a gamble on love. Because that did seem to be the reason. She had jumped in with her eyes shut, and she had got nowhere."

""It wasn't that he suddenly changed, or anything like that, it was just that I saw too much of him and too little of anyone else. It was being abroad that did it, because all the people we ever saw were his friends (...) and I had to spend hour after hour, meal after meal being civil to people in order to get them to do obscure things for him.""

""(...) God, what a fool I was, what fools women are, what fools middle-class girls are to expect other people to respect the same gods as themselves...""

"I saw for her what I could never see for myself - that this impulse to seize on one moment as the whole, one aspect as the total view, one attitude as a revelation, is the impulse that confounds both her and me, that confounds and impels us. To force a unity from a quarrel, a high continuum from a sequence of defeats and petty disasters, to live on the level of the heart rather than the level of the slipping petticoat, this is what we spend our life on, and this is what wears us out. My attitude to the petticoat is firmer than hers, but I am exhausted nevertheless."

"I suppose it was possible that she wanted Stephen. It occured to me as the train began to slown down that perhaps she was in love with Stephen, and then it occured a second afterwards that since this was such an obvious explanation it would certainly have occured earlier if true. So I discounted the concept of love."

"As I went to bed that night, I wondered why social events are for me such a sea of blood, sweat and tears, from which I salvage perhaps two floating words, set afloat by a providence which will not let me drown with empty hands."

"(..) I do admire as well as love her, though I have always believed love preferable to and exclusive of admiration."

""Whatever happens," she went on, "you can't buy the past. You can't buy an ancestry and a history. You have your own past, and the free will to deal with it, and that's all. It can't be bought with money.""

I DISCOUNTED THE CONCEPT OF LOVE

I stopped reading Net oj jewels for two reasons: 1) Because I simply don't like the main character. Well, I guess I don't nessecarily dislike her, but I don't care for her and I don't want to waste my time reading something I couldn't care less about. 2) Because I've got five books by Margaret Drabble at home and I can't wait to read them; I can hardly contain my excitement. I swear, whenever I open a book by Drabble, it's like opening a door (window? what is it?) to my own mind. Reading A summer bird-cage now.

Finished Revolutionary road yesterday, reading Net of jewels by Ellen Gilchrist now.

I am currently reading Revolutionary road by Richard Yates. After that I really will read Blonde. I have no idea why I keep putting it off because I'll probably like it. I mean, for all I know I could die tomorrow from some unforeseen event; I could get hit by a bus, fall down on my head while walking (actually seems possible when it comes to me), collide with a bird when bicycling (again, possible) etc. And dying without having read Blonde? Really? I’d totally regret it when lying on my deathbed. When the person who will be watching over me on my deathbed (a priest? But no, I live in Sweden, we probably don’t get priests. Mom? Dad? Stina? Oh, definitely Stina, she would probably sing something like “You’re nearly dead! You’re nearly dead! Everybody look at you ‘cause you are nearly dead!” (you know the song I’m on a boat?) which would be awesome. Note to Stina, if you read this: sing that at my funeral (although by then, I would hopefully really be dead, so you'd have to change the lyrics.). Also, to all of you who will be at my funeral although I plan to outlive you all: I will be playing We used to be friends by The Dandy Warhols. Please recognize the absolute brilliance in playing this song at a funeral. It goes "A long time ago we used to be friends but I haven’t thought of you lately at all". Like obviously, because I’m dead! I’m so funny it is actually starting to become a bit of a burden, but I cope! I cope! Right, so this parenthesis turned out to be so long you probably don’t remember what even started it. It’s OK; I don’t either, which probably means that what comes after the parenthesis will be a) lame or b) short or both. But c´est la vie eh?) asks if I have any regrets, I won't say "that I said to a girl when I was seven that I hated her skirt, thus making her wear jeans the rest of the semester" or "that I talked about an old friend's back and referred to her as "a complete waste of space" or "that I used to think it was fun to tell people I was from Canada". (As you can see, I'm very innocent. I mean, if those are the worst things I've done, I'm practically an angel, which I am. I'm perfect. Just soak in the awesomeness that is your friend Julia. Just do it! *celebrates myself by having a drink*). No, I'll say "that I didn't read Blonde". So, to prevent this agony on my deathbed, I will read Blonde after I've finished reading Revolutionary road. Although I imagine that, if I collided with a bird when bicycling, the agony over not having read that book wouldn't be the only pain I was in. And actually, if I did collide with a bird when bicycling, that would probably be my biggest regret. I mean, can you imagine dying in a more undignified way? I do want people to laugh at my funeral, but for the rights reasons (the main one being that I've chosen great and funny songs to play). Conclusion: just fucking read Blonde Julia. If you don't, you'll probably die tomorrow and people will throw rocks at you in heaven assuming you don't get caught in limbo which, all things considered, might not be so bad. It would be like spending ages at a train station and I like waiting at train stations. So maybe I'll take my chances. Yes, I will probably read Moll Flanders after this. I'm such a daredevil.

Now I really have to start preparing myself for the evening (you know, take a shower, put on make-up, eat waffles, whatnot), because tonight I'm planning on getting buzzed, drunk and fucked-up (in a literary way though; I'll quote Alex Garland tonight, don't you worry!) (*needed to bring this back to books*). So see ya, wouldn't wanna be ya!

I BELIEVE IN INSTINCT, ON PRINCIPLE

I just finished reading The Millstone; such a short book but it feels like it took me ages to finish it, mostly because I've been pretty sick these last couple of days. Anyway, I thought it was really good. The protagonist of the story, Rosamund Stacey, was a lot like me; she went on about things the same way I do, her thoughts are in my head too etc. It's nice, that, when a book reminds you of yourself. I'll put up some excerpts/quotes that I liked (the first one, and actually all of them, being things I've probably said to people when talking about myself, though in a less poetic and clear way. Anyway, you really should take the time to read these quotes, because they are quite lovely):

"I suddenly thought that perhaps I could take it and survive. I had thought this before when drunk but never when sober; up till that moment I had been inwardly convinced that too much worry would rot my nature beyond any hope of fruit or even of flower. But then, however fleetingly, I felt that I could take what I had been given to take. (...) I knew something now of the quality of life, and anything in the way of happiness that I should hereafter recieve would be based on fact and not on hope."

"I thought how unnerving it is, suddenly to see oneself for a moment as others see one, like a glimpse of unexpected profile in an umfamiliar combination of mirrors. I think I know myself better that anyone can know me, and I think this even in cold blood, for too much knowing is my vice; and yet one cannot account for the angles of others."

"I really cannot look back upon that week. I had thought myself unhappy as a child, obsessed by unreal terrors, guilts and alarms, and as an adolescent, obsessed by myself, and as a woman, obsessed by the fear that my whole life and career were to be thrown into endless gloom by an evening's affection. But now for the first time I felt dread on another's behalf, and I found it insupportable. From time to time (...) I thought I would drop dead from the strain on my spirits."

"I had never, however, managed to get over the fact that we had once known and loved each other so thoroughly (...) I would suddenly be assailed by sharp memories of his lips and teeth and naked flesh. They were not memories of desire, for I no longer desired him; rather they were shocking, anti-social disruptive memories, something akin to those impulses to strip oneself in crowded Tube trains, to throw oneself from theatre balconies. Images of fear, not desire. Other people do not feel this way about old lovers, I know. It must just be another instance of my total maladjustment with regard to sex."

"Silence feel between us; I drank another mouthful of whisky and wondered what to do. There seemed to be some deadlock between us that could never be broken, for neither of us was given to breaking such things, so we might well sit there, forever enstranged, forever connected. I would not have minded if it could have been there that we could have stayed, but I knew that a connexion so tenuous could not last, could not remain frozen and entranced forever, but must melt if so left, from the mere mortal warmth of continuing life. If one of us did not move towards the other, then we could only move apart."

""I can't help worrying", I said. "It's my nature. There's nothing I can do about my nature, is there?"
"No,", said George, his hand upon the door. "No, nothing.""

I'll probably go for Blonde now, or perhaps Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates (well, obviously).

Finished I am Charlotte Simmons today. Will probably read Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates now (I know, long overdue!) Update: Went for Margaret Drabble's The Millstone instead.

ALL I KNOW IS WHAT I READ IN THE PAPERS

”As of the writing this particular book, I have 43”close friends”,[1] 196 “good friends”,[2] and 2,200 “affable acquaintances”[3]”

[1] These are people I would phone immediately if I was diagnosed with lung cancer.
[2] These are people whose death from lung cancer would make me profoundly sad.
[3] These are people I would generally hope could recover from lung cancer.

- Sex, drugs and cocoa puffs, Chuck Klosterman

I MADE IT THROUGH THE WILDERNESS, SOMEHOW I MADE IT THROUGH

OK, so I was going to put up another paragraph from the same chapter the last entry was from, but fuck that. I want to put this up instead, it's still from CotMWM, wrote it a couple of days ago:

"Sometimes, the idea of not knowing him, of not being able to turn to him not for advice but for company, of not being able to tell him about my day, my choices, my actions, frightens me to death. Shaking I sit staring at the computer screen, or by the telephone, or I’ll drive past his house; all these means of communicating with him that are simply not available to me anymore. But it doesn’t scare me now; I don’t need him now. Right now everything is fine; I get along fine without even missing him. I worry about the future. Come September, will I miss him then? Or when October arrives, won’t it be hard without him around, won’t it be a struggle if (when) he is not in my life? I can’t imagine being without him, but then, in June, I couldn’t imagine an Oliver-less life in July either. But that month passed, we’re now in August and I wasn’t afraid then and I’m not now; it’s not hard. Sometimes I feel pangs of sorrow, but not loss, at least not that crazy senseless loss that it is to lose love. It’s there, but not in everything I do, and I don’t miss the specific person, Oliver or what really happened (altered in my mind or otherwise); I miss what could have been.

August is almost over, the end of summer is nearing with September; people work, they move, schools are starting, families go home from their summer houses; normal life has yet again returned and all is well; now I fear October and the month after that (and the month after that) and will continue to fear them until the day I wake up and realise there is no longer anything, no sorrow, no regrets, no what-if’s. There is just me and the life I’m leading (whatever that might be, something grand (possibly) or something ordinary (probably)). And in a way, isn’t that sadder than all the rest? Sure, it is fantastic that we can move on, that life can re-establish itself as something normal, without veering between the extremes all the time (when in love, I’m always exhausted from all the mood swings; I sleep like a baby), but the fact that someone who used to be so dear to you no longer is, that something that used to be so important to you no longer matters, what does that say about us as human beings? Is it that our survival mode kicks in, or is it simply laziness or do we really forget? But the dire need to not let everything get to you, to accept and let go (see any and all self-help books), is in itself important. But I can’t help but feel certain sadness at the thought of how little my past love(r)s mean to me now. Soon Oliver will join them and for my sanity, that is good; for my heart as well. But for the memories that need to be respected, if not revisited…I don’t know. They will for every year I no longer have him in my bed, become foggier and foggier. They already feel distant, but soon they’ll be pretty much gone altogether; they will really become just memories. But I guess I don’t need them to be alive; I don’t need to cherish them; I just wish they could always feel close. "

- The creativity of the mess we make, Julia Melin

THE CREATIVITY OF THE MESS WE MAKE

My writing yet again (another part of the same chapter will be up in two-three days or something). I should add though, that while some of CotMWM is autobiographical (which of course is unavoidable and some of it so obviously is), this story is not about me.

"I have never been my able to picture myself in a relationship, a real one, with everything it entails and contains. The complete embrace of the other human being as a person, as the person I am with, the faults, the virtues, the bad sides, the good ones, the full acceptance of someone as that particular person, as an entity if you will, has never been something I can see myself do. Or: yes I can. I can see myself do it, but it would be a struggle, it would be me having to constantly suppress myself and most of all, my needs. Maybe this is because I’m 20 years old; I’m too young to have ever been with someone where you can exist as equals; maybe it will never come to me. Or perhaps I am not making sense at all; clarity is not for me. Confusion, contradiction is. This could maybe also be because of my age; maybe I will always be this way."

- The creativity of the mess we make, Julia Melin

Just finished Curtis Sittenfeld's American wife. Look, if I didn't love that woman so much I'd probably hate her. God, what a writer she is! She is so fucking amazing. Anyway. Disregard this post and read the previous one instead. I just felt the need to get some Curtis Sittenfeld love out there.