in Life's name and for Life's sake

Back when I still thought I was going to be moving out of current apartment, my mom and aunt (her sister) planned a trip to New York to help with that move; since I ended up staying here, their trip was spent mostly (finally) transforming this apartment into a home. LOTS of cleaning, organizing, and buying of things has somehow done just that. They left this morning and left me feeling like I'm living in an entirely new apartment. It probably doesn't hurt that the roommate is gone until mid-August and the girl she's sub-letting to is very kind and also very clean! At some point later I may actually finally post pictures of my room because it actually finally looks like a place I'm planning on living in for a while...something it never really managed to do during most of the past nine months.

It was great to have Mom and my aunt here to visit -- I love them to pieces and they're two of the most kind and caring people I know, and I really do miss them now that they're gone -- but it was also good to spend most of today being incredibly lazy and watching cartoons on my new TV. (Yes, that's right, I now have a TV! No cable, but really, who needs that when you have the internet and can connect your laptop to the TV?) I'm justifying the laziness because for no reason I can discern, my voice has almost vanished. My throat doesn't hurt or anything, I just can't produce speech that sounds even vaguely human. I suspect it's from all the dust and cleaning chemicals kicked up around here over the past few days (it started two days ago) but whatever the cause, it's starting to bug me, even though I don't even have anyone around now to talk to!

That last bit will be changing tomorrow afternoon, though, when octavius_x and her awesome friend show up! They're crashing here for a few nights on their way elsewhere and I'm looking forward to gallivanting about the city with them and eating and drinking and SHOPPING. I am just hoping that my voice returns before they arrive because I plan on doing a great deal of talking and it would be a shame if my body got in the way of that.

Then as soon as they leave, pre-travel packing and panicking will commence! I leave New York for London June 11, I leave London for Norway June 20, and I leave Norway to come back home on June 29. Summer school French will commence almost immediately thereafter (July 2 or thereabouts) and I will actually start looking over that scholarly list of "things to do this summer" which I've basically been neglecting in my current academic detox. 

BUT before all that happens I will be back in London -- for the first time in two years! -- where I will be staying with lazyclaire and apotropaios and seeing all kinds of other awesome London people (including hopefully carawj , cosmic_llin , jenepel , ladyvivien , mini_hannah , and silly_cleo -- if any of you are reading this you should tell me your work schedules so I can figure out when we can hang out!), with special guest appearance by non-Londoner but equally awesome oliviacirce ! I am dreadfully afraid already about having to leave this place I haven't even gotten back to yet, but I'm trying not to let that do me in. And it's probably good for me that I won't be going straight home from London, but rather onward to Norway, where I'll be reuniting with friends I made in Berkeley and haven't seen in over a year (one of whom is actually Norwegian and with whom I'll be staying, the other of whom is also American and just visiting), and where I'll get to fall in love with a new set of places and leave my heart behind me all over again. This is the curse and the privilege of travel, you can't have one without the other, and despite the pain it's always worth it.

And to be fair -- although I'll always long for those places I'm not, New York isn't exactly a shabby spot to be coming home to! I realize more and more every day how much I love this city, and how deeply I care for some of the people I've met here, and how excited I am at the prospect of all of the people I'll get to meet, and all the exploring I'll get to do, and even just those lazy summer days I'll get to spend reading in the park in the shade or having impassioned conversations about young adult fantasy novels, because I have found people to do these things with! I mean. I spent two consecutive days last week doing almost nothing but encountering awesome fictions (ranging from The Avengers to Young Wizards) and then talking about them with wonderful people, shoving aside that niggling feeling that there was something more "productive" I ought to have been doing, because this is summer and there is sun outside and grass was made for lying in.

So here's to summer and to travel and to coming home again (and maybe coming home at last). 

It's that time of year again...novel-writing time! This year's novel -- presently titled Chasing Ghosts, though we all know these things are subject to change -- is managing to combine lots of things I find totally fascinating (18th century London, woman writers, the French Revolution, cross-dressing, modern academia, etc.) and I am actually very excited about it, but because of the novel's structure I sort of need to flesh out at least some of what's going to happen.

The novel alternates between a present and a past timeline, as a modern PhD candidate and an armchair historian-cum-medium (as in “talks to ghosts” medium—yes, it’s that kind of story) work together to discover new information about a (totally made-up) late-eighteenth-century writer and radical intellectual figure, Dorian Bell. He lived in London from ~1780-1790, starting as a publisher’s apprentice but eventually writing essays, poems, and a novel or two, while circulating at the edges of the group that contained Mary Wollstonecraft, William Blake, Thomas Paine, etc. And as it turns out, “he” was also not actually a man, but a woman by the name of Dorothea who ran away from home in north Yorkshire and ended up spending the next ten years of her life cross-dressing in London. But this fact remains unknown to 21st century scholars…until Ellie’s dissertation advisor tells her she has no choice but to consult a medium (Ben) before submitting her finished dissertation and completing her PhD requirements. Together, Ellie and Ben slowly unearth clues to Dorian/Dorothea’s past, culminating with the discovery that she was in fact a woman.

The problem is, since Ellie and Ben will be finding out about Dorian/Dorothea’s life out of order, I need to know the entire progression of her story before I start writing if I’m going to appropriately pace the clues! I have a basic outline of what happens to her, but I haven’t made a lot of decisions yet as to background motivation or reasoning.

( Now here's where you come in: some questions for my dear readers )

It's a long post so I won't make it any longer, except to mention that this is cross-posted on the NaNo forums in case you wanted to reply there instead, and to say thanks in advance for ANYTHING you have to suggest!

...as articulated in a medieval manuscript fragment of Tristran and Isolt:

"London is a very noble city; there is none better in Christendom or of any higher worth, of greater renown, or better furnished with well-to-do people. For they much love honour and munificence and bear themselves very gaily. London is the mainstay of England -- there is no need to seek beyond it. At the foot of its wall there flows the Thames, by which merchandise comes from every land where Christian merchants go. Its men are very clever."

I'm willing to support about 90% of this as incontrovertible fact.

Applications to Masters programs at Queen Mary and Sussex University officially submitted. I'll find out about acceptances to those in a month or so, but I'm not too worried about that end -- my former professor from Queen Mary basically told me I'd get in, and he's part of the teaching staff for the MA I'm applying to. No, the only real worry (if that's the right word, which I mostly think it isn't) is about Fulbright, which I might not hear back about until graduation anyway. Because getting into QMUL or Sussex doesn't matter if I don't also get the Fulbright.

On another related note, apparently I'll start hearing back about PhD acceptances in the end of February instead of the end of March as I'd originally assumed. On the one hand, this is good, because it means I'll know whether I'm accepted when I go to visit schools on the east coast in March. On the other hand, GAH. The end of February is so soon. And now I can't stop thinking about it.

But at least it's all over now -- all of the applying at any rate -- and I get to just sit back and wait on the results.

Oh god, just got hit with the travel bug, and BAD. May have to forbid myself from looking at the photos jayintheclouds is posting of his round-the-world trip, at least for a while -- just looking at some shots of Marseilles and knowing that someone I know is there and that I'm not only not there but also not even close to there is really depressing. I want to have a trip to plan for but the next place I'm going (aside from hopefully hopefully hopefully London to do my MA) will be Ireland with my family and we don't actually have a set YEAR for that, yet. Probably it will be after my sister graduates from college, at this rate. But that means that it's three years I have to wait through.

Of course, if I manage to get the scholarship funding I need to study in London, I could conceivably do more traveling, but both of the scholarships I'm applying for stress the fact that these scholarship programs are meant to foster US-UK communication and are not just a chance for awardees to run around Europe. At least one of them (probably both of them) restricts travel for participants, but even if it weren't in the rules that I can't spend more than a weekend out of country per month, I feel like the level of academic work I'll be engaging in will be enough to keep me primarily London-bound.

And of course this isn't a bad thing, because I have so many friends there and there are so many things to see and to do there that I haven't yet; and of course there are so many things I want to see in the United Kingdom and there are no travel restrictions on that and I would definitely be doing some serious exploring (Wales! Scotland! the west Yorkshire moors!).

But dammit if I don't just want to be on some far-off seashore, with my feet in the sand and the wind in my hair and my gaze turned to the horizon and the setting sun, listening to the way that the passersby talk in foreign tongues and the sounds slip away beneath the pulsing of the waves.

This post serves three rather scanty purposes:

1. To exude glee over my finally having figured out what I'm going to write about for the first of my final essays (which is due in a week), and on top of that having figured out that it is something I am actually really interested in.

2. To make legitimate use of the (rather amazing) Doctor Who quote that titles it, because yes, I feel that smart today.

3. To make (somewhat) legitimate use of my new icon, which, while it is technically also a quote from Doctor Who (though not from the Doctor), is also a decent expression of my attitude toward life as a whole, and could probably be used retroactively as an icon for many of my past posts to great effect.

4. I lied, there is a fourth purpose: procrastination! (And to tell you that now I feel the need to possess an icon with a Dalek saying "Procrastinaaaaaate!" Oh, the unnecessary things I would do with unlimited icons...)

ETA:

5. To comment on how adorable it is that British people end texts/messages with x's on a regular basis -- even if they are your lecturers. xx

New Doctor Who. As I've only seen one episode it's totally possible that I will have to revoke this sentiment but something makes me doubt that, so here goes: Matt Smith has what it takes to make it. He's not David Tennant but he knows it and he's not trying to be. He's just being his own kind of Doctor and obviously having good fun with it. EDIT: Just watched second ep and while it doesn't make me like Matt Smith any more or less than I previously liked him, it does make me like Karen Gillan lots and lotses. I like that she's feisty and that it seems like, unlike previous companions, she's going to actually challenge the Doctor and argue with him and stuff. Not just sit there with puppy eyes when he's about to destroy the world and tell him to stop. I read an interview where Karen said Matt was like her annoying older brother, and I think that sort of shows in this ep, in a good way. Why do I have to be out of the country for the next one??

Torchwood. I have heard it is not on par with Doctor Who but seriously, John Barrowman. Need I say more? Also, awesome Welsh accents. I am seriously in love with the breadth and variety of British accents, and not just with that singular concept of "the British accent" (which almost always means the Oxford accent to Americans, including me before I lived here).

Changes by Jim Butcher. The most recent Dresden Files book, which just appeared in my mailbox and promises to be completely game-changing. I'm almost afraid to read it because I know I'll breeze through it in six hours and then be left waiting another year for the next one.

A Wizard of Mars by Diane Duane. The most recent Young Wizards book, which also just appeared in my mailbox in the same shipment from Amazon and is only the book I have been waiting for ALL MY LIFE. Seriously. It's been FIVE YEARS since the last YW release and I've waited oh so patiently. This is worse than waiting for Harry Potter because a) there are no movies and b) the fandom is much smaller, so there are fewer people to understand your pain (however, the small-but-dedicated fandom is generally one of the things I love about YW, so I shouldn't complain). I'm definitely afraid to read this one because I have no idea how long it'll be until the next one appears, and I do not know what I will do with myself in the meantime and with the waiting. This isn't like Jim Butcher where I know he'll pop out a book a year, no sweat (which allows me to read them so quickly when they come out). Diane Duane is meant to be savored, in slow but intense portions. I would almost say it has to be read casually, except there's nothing casual about it. In fact, I don't even remember what it's like to read one of her books for the first time anymore. The last time I had that experience, I had only just gotten a livejournal and certainly didn't blog about it. I just emphatically don't want it to be gone.

Preparation for spring break trip will probably take more time/effort/energy than I give it credit for. I mean, I'm gone for 16 days which I'm spending in 5 cities in 4 countries in 2 time zones (though only one continent this time). By the end of the month I'll have seen where the Thirty Years' War started, the Cold War (symbolically) ended, the great temple to Athena was built to command an entire city, a man named Freud revolutionized our perception of selfhood, and the small Greek island immortalized courtesy of Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. It will be AMAZING. But try packing enough stuff for all of that in a small suitcase and you run into some issues (or at least I will...when I finally start packing the night before I leave).

Finally, it's sunny outside. Why in the world would I want to get things done when I could sit outside in the sunshine and just revel in the world being such a beautiful place?

So my sister is coming to visit (yay yay yay!) in almost exactly two weeks and it is going to be absolutely the most epic and awesome week of our collective young lives. There will be theatre. There will be walks in parks. There will probably be bad weather for at least four days but that's a small price to pay for living in London. There will be lots of walking, lots of use of public transportation, lots of hanging out with large groups of friendly people, and of course, there will be dancing.

However, this means that my goal is to have finished with ALL schoolwork for the remainder of March before she arrives, seeing as how I do not intend to do anything while she is here other than gallivant around London (and perhaps even further afield -- I love you, National Rail) being awesome.

Of course, this also means that the only things I actually want to do are:

1) Watch Doctor Who. How have I been obsessed with most things British and lived in London for upwards of five months without seeing this show? I have heard so much about it that even without having watched it I was capable of picking up on references and jokes made by British people about the show. This is how culturally pervasive it is. (Also, how did I not go out and watch it immediately after I discovered that the strange man who saves Dairine in the Crossings during High Wizardry is actually meant to be the Doctor? Srsly, self, keep up!)

2) Return to Epic Novel of my Past. After getting back from reading week trip I had this sudden urge to reacquaint myself with the epic fantasy trilogy that I started writing way back when I was in fifth grade and haven't actively worked on since ninth grade. I looked back at it and liked a lot of what I saw and had about a week-long burst of energy in which I realized that I need more of Azuria in my life.

3) Write my first legitimately crossover fanfic? Oh dear god yes. I place blame upon a discussion over at myriadwords about crossovers, and more specifically upon araine and odette_river for having linked me to fic that is, I kid you not, Artemis Fowl/Young Wizards. More specifically said fics involve shipping of two characters who are so obviously well matched that I am being drawn into severe violations of canon, something which I usually abhor in fic and ficcing. (Let's not even talk about the part where I rarely write fic anymore and never write anything over 1000 words or that takes more than one sitting to complete. Because apparently now I do?)

I think we'll just say that my next two weeks are going to be...quite interesting...and leave it at that.

Not much to say, other than that I've returned to my third home (first being Mission Viejo, second being Berkeley) and class starts up tomorrow. I've actually got a Monday class this semester (last semester made me lazy without them) but still nothing on Fridays, so still weekend travel! I'm looking forward to resuming my two year-long classes and starting up my two new courses for this semester, but I wish that I had just a few more days before everything got going...my jet lag is worse than it usually is and I've been procrastinating for a while on a paper that's due on Thursday. I know that it will get done, I just can't bring myself to focus on it. Also, everyone is now back in my flat, which is great because I love hanging out with them, but also not so great because aforementioned hanging out takes up a lot of my free time, which is inconvenient when I have aforementioned essay to complete. I'm probably just going to go to sleep now (assuming this is possible, over the noise of my flatmates) and most likely wake up too early again in the morning to get to work on some of this stuff before my 10AM class.

If my Representing London walking journal (also known as my mock-mock-Georgic, written entirely in heroic couplets) could contain all of the things that I have discovered while getting pleasantly lost on Wikipedia and related sites, it would have to include:

--Norse mythology, particularly the "World Serpent"
--popular art created in response to the London Underground map
--discussion of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's book Good Omens
--discussion of Neil Gaiman's book Neverwhere
--G. K. Chesterton
--the ouroborous
--Mornington Crescent
--Circle Line parties
--chocolate-covered almonds from Trader Joe's (I'm eating one right now!)
--the dangers of copyright infringement

And that's before I throw in the French theorists who are actually relevant to what I'm writing about! (Note to self: Try understanding French critical theory next time I have been drinking. Perhaps it will make more sense.)

In the meantime, I still don't have 1000 words done out of the 2000 words that I need, AND I HAVE SPENT ALL DAY ON THIS, with only slight diversions for shopping for (and consuming) foodstuffs, and watching the newest episode of Bones. And writing about this project self-reflexively on this journal.

I just need to get this done now.

ETA: Jormungandr (aforementioned World-Serpent) has been footnoted! Gaiman and Pratchett to follow. :)