somewhere in middle America

I have this vague sense that I smell like plasticine. Surely this is not normal. But I can't shake it, which indicates I do, indeed, smell like plasticine. How bizarre.

Anyway. Before I go on, I'm contractually obliged to mention The Awakening - Keble O'Reilly, £5 for students, original by Kate Chopin, directed and adapted by Helen (my friend with no LJ), marketed by Pat (flatmate), website design by yours truly. Go and see it.

Ahem. Yes. I'm in a strange mood tonight. Basically, I really, really want to go home - normally I skip back up north on Saturday of eighth week, because much as I do love the place I get claustrophobic and antsy if I'm here too long in one stretch, but this time round, when I want to go home more than usual, I'm not going until Tuesday of ninth. Pedar is in India for a wedding and doesn't get back until Monday, and while I said I didn't mind staying longer, that was months ago and right now I really, really wish I hadn't agreed. I also really wish I hadn't agreed to a tute in ninth week. Urgh. Still having an essay to do when absolutely everyone else has either finished or is frantically revising is, frankly, driving me mad. I don't know what to do.

Last night I was feeling completely rubbish about the whole thing, and then got a series of excitedly drunken messages from jacinthsong, sebastienne and foulds, demanding I come to the OULES cast party. I did initially say I'm not a member of the cast, but that hasn't stopped me from going to two other OULES cast parties, so I looked around my dull, messy, horrible room, clearly and distinctly thought "fuck this" and went. And I'm glad I did. I got drunk with frightening rapidity - in retrospect, it's because I forgot to eat dinner last night - and did, I think, end up pouring a lot of my woes on to a wonderfully patient jacinthsong, who is marvellous, because I don't say that enough. And also, also, I was asked by several people I'm sure I knew already but couldn't quite recall just at that moment what I wanted, what I wanted most in the world that would make me happy and stop me crying.

I said, "A flamingo on a stick."

wadiekin got me one. It's bright pink and inflatable and duct-taped to a big stick, left over from Alice. I clung to it for the rest of the night and only let people take it away to coo over or fence with if they promised to bring it back. Which they all did, and while I don't remember much of the night that followed I do remember having it safely home with me and waking up with a start at nine am to see it peering at me.

So I'm antsy because I have an essay and I'm antsy because I have claustrophobia and I'm antsy because I am a wee bit mad. But really, it's only a wee bit now. I had my Tutors' Handshaking this afternoon - with the PPE tradition of being sat in the middle of a circle of five armchairs filled with all my tutors - and it went astonishingly, surprisingly well. They think I'm a good philosopher! More specifically, they think I'm a first-class clear thinker, and a decent political scientist, who veers into first material when I get a topic I really like. (Apparently the week I spent banging on about Samuel Huntington was the one week when I stood out from the crowd.) And more relevant than this at the present^[1] moment, they think my standard held up even through my bits of mentalness.

So, concerning the wee bit mad - it's okay. I need to do this essay. I've done the reading and I'm giving up now. I'll write the essay at the House of Joy on Sunday with lizziwig and jacinthsong to keep me company. (And also, I will bring food. I keep eating your food and I do apologise.) And then I need to leave here before I can stop being claustrophobic and weird. My immediate reaction to said claustrophobia is that omg, I want to go home, I want to go home and be looked after, but realistically speaking that isn't a possibility. Pedar's away and my mum is in a place where she needs me to look after her, rather than vice versa, so perhaps it's better for me that I'm not going back for long.

Speaking of which, the Job of Joy and Wonder has been confirmed finally, and I now feel like I can talk about it without jinxing it. Basically, back in December I spent a very long time filling out internship after application form after internship form, and had been duly rejected from all of them. Until Monday of this week, when I got a call from a very nice lady offering me a job if I could only start this week. I said no, I couldn't, I was still at university, hence some swift negotiation and I'm starting Thursday of next week. The job is with BBC Current Affairs at White City, and it's for two and a half weeks, until March 31st. I am very excited, even though I don't know what I'm doing yet - if it's making tea, I honestly wouldn't mind - and neither am I getting paid! (Well, I'm getting paid enough to cover travel and food, but nothing else.) I don't care. It's the BBC. Hee.

I do have somewhere to stay now, but thank you all for your links, info and offers of help. I really appreciated them, especially at this short notice. But I have found a way, thankfully, of not imposing on anyone. My mum's got an old family friend who owes her a favour, and she lives in London and has agreed to put up with me for a while. I'm really and honestly grateful for this. I don't know what I mean exactly, but I think it will be nice to just... I don't know, escape. I have friends in London - shipperkitten and balthaser, and some transplanted Oxonians, and other LJ friends, and Sky and Ben, and as well as that Claire and other various and sundry will still be in Oxford, only a short distance away - but at the same time, I don't. At home my parents are there; here in Oxford, which is more my home, I live with five of my friends and am in walking distance of lots more. It won't be like that. I'm finding it oddly comforting that the family I'll be staying with don't know me, are unfamiliar, but are still a Hindi-speaking Indian family so are familiar enough. It'll be something new, and a really exciting job, and no one will want or need anything from me, and in this place where I know no-one and no-one knows me, I can be quiet and anonymous and just... disappear. It won't even matter that there's no one at home up north, because I won't be there.

And if I get short of company, I'll come to Oxford. Or I'll just come up and see Ben. During this term he's taken me to G&D's for ice-cream at least one night a week, just before midnight so we have to hurry, and he doesn't care when I don't talk and he doesn't try and get me to solve problems or be productive in any way; he just talks about physics, and travel, and nights of smoky jazz, and failing that, sings to me in the dark all the way across to Jericho.

On March 31st, I finish up in London. On April 1st, I'm leaving the country! I'm flying out of Heathrow into JFK - same day arrival, I think - where my favourite cousin, Munna, is going to come and get me, take me home with her to Connecticut and we are going to eat pizza and marshmallows for three days straight. Oh, yeah. She and her sister, Shweta, are some of my favourite people, and when I said, back in January, that I might be coming along to visit, they were gloriously excited and made a long list of stuff to do. (One of which is to take a picture of me here.)

Most excitingly, though, we're going to see Rent! Despite the fact they grew up in the Bronx, neither of them has seen a show on Broadway, and I've wanted to see Rent for years. There is much mass excitement about this whole trip, but that particularly. I'm going to be in Connecticut a few days, and in New York City for a few more, doing the Visit of OMG (Redux) with likethesun2 and, hopefully, if circumstances allow it, the_acrobat. (By the way, I know I have a few LJ friends in NYC, and so does likethesun2 - anyone wants to meet up with us, I'm really all for it! We're definitely going to meet tobiascharity, who is seriously old-school, but there must be others. Let me know.

After that, another day or two in London - a law firm's open day, some time with Claire and Ben, who are fetching me from Heathrow - and then I'm going home for precisely three days before I need to be back in Oxford. So I'm fine. I'm really fine. I have nothing to complain about, lots of lovely things happening to me all at once, but I'm a little frazzled right now and in the mood to cease to function, which is of course the one thing I can't do. I kind of want it to like it was back when I was at school, you know? When sometimes you could go home again? Which I can't seem to do, and being rootless is never good.

But yes. I'm okay, just a wee bit mad, with this strange and morbid fear that secretly no-one, not even my own mother, loves me - oh, the emo, and I think I was drunkenly miserable all over jacinthsong last night for precisely this reason - and a tiredness inside my bones. One of the nights walking to Jericho, Ben was telling me about New York, where he was for most of the summer. "One of my favourite things," he said, "is all the little churches you get even on the busy city streets. You know, there's so many people, sometimes you get tense and flustered, you know?"

I did know.

"So I used to go into one of these little churches, and pick up leaflets and look at the candles and admire the beautiful architecture, and it calmed me right down."

After that he went back to singing quietly to himself, and I was thinking about the future and getting quietly excited about seeing old people in new places. I'm looking forward to it. I got a postcard from New York this week - from the_acrobat, thank you so much, it was lovely and cheered me up a lot - which took less than six days to get here. In less than six days from now, I'll be somewhere new.

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[1] Freudian slip that made me smile: I originally wrote "pleasant".