between the rock and the cold, cold sea

Book meme. The fifth sentence on the fifty-second page of the book nearest to me.

To the left: "We came across the greatest Zeus sanctuary and one of the most venerable temples of Hera at Olympia."

To the right: "Reluctantly concluded."

In front: "I know you, Lady."

---

I believe they were all reasonably equidistant, and thus I have comported myself in all thoroughness.

2011:

I am 24.75 years old. I live in a town an hour by train from Dublin city on the northernmost coast of Dublin county, with my mother and Vladimir the cat. I am reading for a research degree, trying not to self-sabotage too much, and not to let intermittent shitty depressive moods affect my behaviour. On the whole, I'm succeeding rather less well than I'd prefer.

I have a degree in ancient history and too much imagination. I write poetry. I try to be mindful. I try to fail better - or at least, fail differently.

Oh. And from this vantage, the progress of the global handcart service (destination: the hell of your choice) seems to have speeded up.


2001:

I am 14.75 years old. I have not yet been diagnosed with hypothyroidism. I have been living in this house for more than a year, in this area for almost a year and a half. (With my mother, and with Conch the cat, who is shortly to abandon us for the pleasures of living wild. Back then, there were still rabbits behind the back wall.) It is approximately seven months since I cut my hair from a long braid into the short crop I've had ever since. I attend a Catholic girls' school, where I will in four and a half more years continue not to succeed in making any particularly close friends. I shout at my grandmother a lot, because I haven't yet figured out how to deal with her peculiar views of the world. I am lonely in ways I do not know how to express. Field hockey, reading, and writing juvenile attempts at epic fantasy are my solace. Intermittently, I have black terrible moods, which in retrospect look to me a lot like the shitty depressive moods I still have now, except with more fury and screaming.


1991:

I am 4.75 years old. I live a set of steps away from Claremont Strand, in Howth, Co. Dublin, in a low bungalow that catches sea-spray on its windows when the wind gusts high and from the right quarter. My mother and my grandmother are co-resident. Our immediate neighbour and landlady is a retired doctor of elderly vintage with a passion for gardening. She does not like small children. We do not have a cat, but there are several in the neighbourhood, the vast majority made of evil. They, also, do not like small children. I attend a Montessori preschool in a - Portakabin? I think it was - on the grounds of St Mary's Anglican church, adjacent to Deer Park, the desmesne land attached to Howth Castle (I don't know if the hotel and golf course was there back then: probably), from where I retain a strong memory of learning to read and form simple words like "jug" and "cat", and finding them insufficiently challenging. If it were not for this particular memory, I would not recall a time before I read with reasonable fluency. My grandmother takes me walking beside Howth harbour, and in summer - I'm nearly sure it started that summer - we lie down on the grass beside the sailing club and find pictures in the sky.

I am utterly self-centred and, mostly, blissfully happy.


1981: I do not exist.

The books I am reading: The Qur'an, trans. M.A. Abdul Haleem, Aelius Aristides and the Sacred Tales, C.E. Behr, Reading Material Culture, C. Tilley (ed). And a bunch of other things in uncoordinated piles.

Last book read: Kameron Hurley, God's War.

The book I am writing: Apart from the thesis? Some things. I will not admit to them in public, because when I talk about them they shrivel up and roll away, like very embarrassed dust devils in an Old West film.

The book I love most: Hard question. Toss up between matociquala's Dust, the Steerswoman books, or PC Hodgell's Godstalk and To Ride a Rathorn.

Ask me tomorrow, and I might have a different answer.

The last book I received as a gift: Jordan/Sanderson, The Tower of Midnight, around Christmastime. Before that, probably Bear's Bone and Jewel Creatures, in the summer. (People give me gift-books seldom.)

The last book I gave as a gift: Chill, Elizabeth Bear; Idylls, Theocritus.

The nearest book on my desk: Reading Greek Text and Vocabulary Second Edition. Underneath my elbow while I do my homework.


Tag, you're it?

Since you asked, Kat.

SIX NAMES YOU GO BY.

1. Liz
2. Elizabeth
3. "Hey you!"
4. Bourke
5. hawkwing_lb, but only on the internets.
6. And to the greataunt I never broke of the habit, Lizzy. Anyone else calls me that, they die.


THREE THINGS YOU ARE WEARING RIGHT NOW.
1. glasses
2. SU t-shirt which I changed into after climbing.
3. black combats

THREE THINGS YOU WANT VERY BADLY AT THE MOMENT.
1. time
2. more time
3. to have my exams over and passed.

THREE PEOPLE WHOM YOU HOPE WILL DO THIS MEME.

If you wish.

THREE THINGS YOU DID LAST NIGHT.
1. slept
2. read halfway through Busman's Honeymoon
3. worried.

THREE PEOPLE YOU LAST TALKED TO ON THE PHONE.
1. Local pizza place.
2. The parent.
3. The grandparent.

THREE THINGS YOU ARE GOING TO DO TOMORROW.
1. Study.
2. Go to a bookshop.
3. Go to the gym and run. I hope.

THREE OF YOUR FAVORITE DRINKS.
1. Chai latte.
2. Orange juice.
3. Tea!

THREE THINGS THAT MADE YOU SMILE TODAY.

1. Climbing! I led a 6A I'd never tried before, and a bunch of other routes, including a good attempt at a 6B on the roof, and the Best Climbing Mate was his usual charming self.

2. Tea! Met the parent this evening and went to the Tea Gardens on the quays, where there was masala and tuareg tea and biscuits and Japanese rice crackers and tea!

3. Last class of undergraduate career ever, in which we cracked each other (and the lecturer) up with our hysteria and inability to be serious, and our ability to sprint off on tangents utterly unrelated to the task at hand. Gigglefits.

...In the hopes this might aid my concentration, so to speak.

More like the First Paragraph Meme, but still.

( Short stories )

So, if I was to pick a short story to work on finishing betwen now and the new year, which should it be? I ask you, because I'm incapable of choosing, myself. *indecisive*

( Novels )

---

I know which novel I'm working on finishing. It might take me another year or more, but duellist will succumb. (I have too many other ideas I want to work on for it not to.)

(My major fault is being slow.)

But short stories? Please. Help me pick one! Because otherwise I'll just tap about picking at all of them, and getting none much closer to finished.

Meme: Take a picture of yourself right now. Don't change your clothes, don’t fix your hair...just take a picture. Post that picture with NO editing. Post these instructions with your picture.



Me, after climbing, with dried sweat making my hair all lank and manky. (And itchy. The non-marking unchalk I use itches.)

And hey, there's my living space in all its glory, too.

The unfinished/potential novels list.

Well, for me, everything I have so far remains unfinished. This will change. Theoretically, this year. That's the plan.

( The List )

Considering how slowly I write, this is probably a life's worth of bookage. (In case you weren't counting, that's above 30 books I'd like to write. More than half of them walked up with at least the beginnings of plot, character and setting attached.)

...I'm a little worried, now.

Performing triage on my bookshelves. Out go thrillers I will never (ever) read again; in goes room for the college book collection that is expanding more rapidly than I ever could have imagined.

I'm donating all the Never Agains to my old secondary school. But I'm beginning to feel a bit dubious. Should I really send them some Karin Slaughter and Janet Evanovich (don't ask)? What about Jeanne C. Stein's The Becoming? Does a Catholic girls' school library and vampire!sex really mix?

Reading broadens the mind. Much like travel, but less expensive. So on the whole I incline to yes. My only regret is that the only YAs I still own are immensely re-readable, so I won't be parting with any actually 'age-appropriate' reading.

(You know how appallingly under-stocked that library was when I was there? The encyclopedias were many decades old, I don't remember ever seeing any non-fic younger than twenty years old, and the fiction was... Well. Limited is the word that comes to mind. And it only opened every other lunchtime. These things combined to make it of excessively limited utility. I feel goddamn obligated to attempt to rectify that, to the utmost of my limited power.)

So. Here's a question. (Answers solicited.) Or even a meme, if you like.

1. What one [1] novel do you think ought to be part of every school library (ages 12-18)? Pick three, if you can't narrow it down any farther.

2. What one [1] novel were you most startled to find in your school library?

3. What one [1] novel (if any) do you think should never form part of a curriculum/school library?

( Read more... )

Back at college as of yesterday, with the oh-so-wonderful oxygen-deprived hour-each-way commute (egads I hate all the people, so many people, all crammed in at once so you just can't breathe [and no I'm not claustrophobic - except with lots of people in a very small space]).

College. Yep. Expect limited coherence from me in the near future (not that I was all that coherent before).

Have broadband now, which is kind of cool.

Oh, and the seven quirks meme caught my eye. Can't remember where I saw it first (did warn you. University eats brains), but here goes:

Seven quirks (you really don't need to know) of mine:

1. Unless I have a very good reason to be dressy, I wear track trousers and t-shirt. Jeans and t-shirt if I'm feeling like a little bit more effort.

2. I do not wear skirts. Not ever. When I had to wear skirts as part of a school uniform, I dealt with it, but. Not. Ever. Voluntarily. Never.

3. I read books in the bathroom. While I'm cleaning my teeth, as well. In fact, that's where the majority of my not-for-college non-fiction gets read.

4. Books. Boooooks. I will go without food and sleep to finish reading a book I enjoy.

5. At home, I have a tendency to walk away from conversations and go do something (get a drink, whatever) in the next room without saying anything. When I come back in, I'll expect take up the conversation where it left off. Improperly socialised, who me?

6. I have to restrain the urge to correct the improper use of apostrophes in public media loudly and with diagrams.*

7. I am inclined to putting my metaphorical foot in my mouth in public converse.

*#6 also applies to homonyms. Which reminds me. In last weekend's Sunday Indo, one of our politicians, writing about the state of the hospital services outside Dublin, said that the depravation was unbelieveable. He used this word several times, speaking about depraved rural areas.

Now, if he was using it sarcastically, I wouldn't mind. But I think the bloke confused himself between deprave and deprive, and forgot that spellcheck is Evil. He's a deprived fellow, truly, to never have met anyone truly depraved.

Via truepenny and matociquala, a very shiny thing:

Who else is love?

pseudomonas me scripsit anno 2005