about 11.30 pm, listening to Rent

have a Starbucks napkin from Borders on Saturday (when the waiter took my chair away from under me when I stood up) that says: Vir virtutis sum. English translation: I am a manly man. Shawne tells me 'vir' means 'man' in Italian (Latin?) -- and therefore 'virtue', that which a man does. Isn't that cool? In a bad, sexist way of course.

Shawne and I looked up 'ethnic' in the dictionary today: it comes (through ecclesiastical Latin) from ethnos, meaning 'nation', and ethnikos, meaning 'heathen'. I think we should put forward a new formulation of the civic/ethnic nationalism distinction: civic for godly nations, and ethnic for pagan, heathen ones.

just before 9 pm

and i'm home! eating! having cooked dinner! instead of in the bod. amazing. and amazingly, yknow, sad.

almost 9 pm

if you stand at the windows of the ppe reading room -- there's a liquid gold sunset over trinity lawns, behind and through the trees, shading up into a deepening pink/purple -- and rows of students bent over their books reflected in the window, over the lawns -- the white flowers look like snow, beneath the sun -- kinda puts things in perspective. :)

and, and -- someone came up to the window to look at the sunset too, someone i didn't know, and we agreed that the sunset was very beautiful.

11 something at night

and i just had mushroom soup and the world is good. :)

afternoon, radcliffe science library (cos open on sundays. don't say it.)

i just wrote, quite seriously, on my finals notes: is the tree ontologically independent of God?

i think it's time to quit.

about 1.30 a.m.

why do countries matter, anyway? the things we care about tend to be precisely those things not chosen -- family, country -- i'd say love, too --

hell does this all matter. we go home, we do our jobs, and forces larger than us will determine the direction of our country -- of the country we call ours -- it doesn't take much does it. our parents were the first generation born in singapore, and they call it home, cos they've known no other. some of our grandparents do, some think of china/wherever as home. people adapt quickly, don't they? one's tempted to make facile psychological/pathological assumptions, that people need homes/some place to call a home, that they form attachments quickly, and all the rest of it. and then we say that this is how it has always been; that we have always called this home; that there is some bond deeper than -- oh hell. didn't heidegger say that what was specifically human wasn't our ability to reason but our ability to turn instinct into art? all animals have to eat but we have gourmet cuisine. all animals live somewhere; we love our homes.

somewhere somehow i give a damn about all this. or i did.

i wrote to you that this has been a year of letting go. things, people, dreams, ambitions, memories, loves, ideals, principles -- cos i betrayed them or realized i didn't care enough for them or both. strange how one only realizes how much one actually cares after betrayal. like winterson says: why is the measure of love loss? or, less poetically, wtf is wrong with people? -- or perhaps one shouldn't generalize one's sins. wtf is wrong with me. -- do you remember the sandman toast? to old gods, absent friends, lost loves, and the season of mists. and may each of us always give the devil his due. -- either you didn't like the last bit as much, or, more accurately i think, thought it would upset people if i proposed it as a toast. but why not, after all? if one sells one's soul (we don't really believe in souls anymore, do we, in this cynical age?), i suppose one should know the price. geez talk about a cheap metaphor.

almost 9 pm

yesterday i saw bend it like beckham with shawne and it was excellent and today i took a detour along the river on the way back from lwc to look at houseboats (the artemis is for sale; 29 500 quid; narrow, 47ft; purple and green but i guess that can be repainted; call 01865 749363. or maybe 794363. can't remember). times like those i remember why i love oxford. and as for the other times -- peace is too easily shattered, isn't it? by the least violence. i am accused of being an ignorant and tyrannical liberal -- i stand guilty of the first, not sure about the second, and i guess i am probably liberal? i believe in love and truth and justice and freedom; but i'm not sure i believe in people -- myself first of all. *shrug* peter wimsey: the first thing a principle does is to kill someone. i think that's right; if you believe strongly enough, then everything goes down before it, including your welfare, and that of those around you. and if you don't care that much, then i guess that's human enough. tout ca comprendre...or rather, plus ca change...

If I can let you go as trees let go
Their leaves, so casually, one by one;
If I can come to know what they do know,
That fall is the release, the consummation;
Then fear of time and the uncertain fruit
Would not distemper the great lucid skies
This strangest autumn, mellow and acute.
If I can take the dark with open eyes
And call it seasonal, not harsh or strange
(For love itself may need a time of sleep),
And, treelike, stand unmoved before the change,
Lose what I can to keep what I can keep,
The strong root still alive under the snow,
Love will endure -- if I can let you go.

May Sarton, Autumn Sonnets II

almost 2 a.m.

shawne and adrian and i went for dinner after the bod at the new lebanese/kebab place where haagen daz used to be (where 'selection of six starters' apparently means that the waiter selects six at seeming randomness for you') and then shawne and i went to new college garden and sat on a bench and looked at the stars -- and it was a clear night and i think we saw the big dipper and loads of other stars except can't tell which is which -- and we just hung out for a bit and it was really good and helped me get a perspective on things. so i get a 2:2. fuck it lah. i've been doing work -- it's not enough and it's not very good but i have been working and i have been trying and if i get a 2:2 there wasn't much else i could have done, short of stay in the library every day since 2nd year...i'm fairly good at this. not very good, and it kinda depends which paper, but reasonably good. the exams are not a measure of my worth. i'm going to write it down here so i remember. and i've learnt a lot from oxford and i'm so glad i came here just because and whatever else, i'm going to keep that. and of course i'll probably be really crushed when the results come out and i get a 2:2 but like shawne says maybe it's just god/the universe :) trying to tell you something. this sounds like a bad self-help book or a bad beatles rip-off but -- let it go already. exams don't count for very much in the grand scheme of things -- the grand scheme of happiness and love and life, that is. as opposed to psc-world. :) -- earlier, standing outside blackwell's art shop, we saw two guys in black tie and a bottle of wine skip down the pavement singing 'we're going to see the wizard' -- and then later there were stars on a clear night over new college garden, and a friend to talk too -- that's oxford, just like that.

past a bedtime i can't afford

ok. tired. i give up. vade in pacem. i'm going to earth for a bit.

harriet: it would hurt like hell.
peter: what would that matter, as long as it made a good book?

hell it's not like you read the damn thing anyway.

(and then i remembered that i had a card and it has the sweetest dolphins on the cover and i'm happy now. :) doesn't take much does it?)