Why, why, why do I SUCK SO MUCH? I have been writing this essay since half past nine. It is now almost five in the morning and I have only written 1,993 words, and every single one of those is terrible and awful. I can't write tonight. Nothing fits together, though it should, and my ghastly tute-partner wrote something stupid like four thousand words. I apparently just suck beyond the telling of it.
Claire is writing about Domitian, and Ben about optics, and the three of us are sinking into a weird twilight zone all together in a sort of co-dependent gestalt mess. Funny how exhaustion makes you psychic, or at least puts you in the comfortable, vaguely terrifying place where you can communicate without speech, because when you do talk the conversation goes around in ever-decreasing circles.
Also. Also, sleep would be, you know. Good. Quite good, anyway. It's not like I've been fantasising about a whole night's sleep for a week now. Also I have the vicious spitting rage that comes with no sleep in, like, ever. Everything makes me very angry. (Sort of like omg-I-will-not-be-reasonable-I-will-break-all-your-fingers hopping furious.) Mostly I make me angry, because OH MY GOD HOW IS THIS ESSAY NOT FINISHED YET I AM GOING MAD. Claire has been reading me Nero-to-Hadrian Roman poetry, which is worse than Vogon poetry. A Roman poet called Statius wrote some quite horrific Odes to Vespasian and to Roman Roads and to Giant Equestrian Statues, and they are all awful. My favourite is the Ode to Marcellus, which begins something like "curre per Euboicos, epistula" and features Statius addressing a letter. No, addressing it. As in, "O, Letter!"
Several stanzas later, they had to scrape me off the floor.
Several hours later, I was sufficiently crazy to be eating sugar straight out of the jar again, and Claire was chewing absent-mindedly on a ciabatta - why do essays always engender the eating of everything in sight? - and Sky came in and talked about Tony Blair for a while, and about his essay for a while, and we all talked about when Tony Blair got into office. (I remember. I was ten. Pedar picked me up and danced around the room with me.) He's ill - Sky, not Tony Blair - and has given flu to Claire, and now to Ben, who is reacting by demanding sugar on toast at every possible opportunity.
Perhaps we are all going mad. Sky noticed the sugar and the ciabatta, and Ben rooting for linctus, and remarked, "This is such a bizarre household," before sauntering off out again.
"But at least we've got a household," I muttered, with the petulant spitting rage, to a general consensus.
ALSO. There is a man whose articles I am trying to read, and he wrote something about Indian politics, something about, "this also includes minority groups, including Dalits and women."
OMG. I am not a minority. WE ARE NOT A MINORITY. There are five hundred million of us. Of all the people on earth, one in twelve is an Indian woman. So you can fuck off, you self-satisfied little patriarch.
ARGH. It is now actually five am. I think to finish this in time, I should get up at eight. That brings me to a grand total of three hours of sleep! Awesome.
Claire is writing about Domitian, and Ben about optics, and the three of us are sinking into a weird twilight zone all together in a sort of co-dependent gestalt mess. Funny how exhaustion makes you psychic, or at least puts you in the comfortable, vaguely terrifying place where you can communicate without speech, because when you do talk the conversation goes around in ever-decreasing circles.
Also. Also, sleep would be, you know. Good. Quite good, anyway. It's not like I've been fantasising about a whole night's sleep for a week now. Also I have the vicious spitting rage that comes with no sleep in, like, ever. Everything makes me very angry. (Sort of like omg-I-will-not-be-reasonable-I-will-break-all-your-fingers hopping furious.) Mostly I make me angry, because OH MY GOD HOW IS THIS ESSAY NOT FINISHED YET I AM GOING MAD. Claire has been reading me Nero-to-Hadrian Roman poetry, which is worse than Vogon poetry. A Roman poet called Statius wrote some quite horrific Odes to Vespasian and to Roman Roads and to Giant Equestrian Statues, and they are all awful. My favourite is the Ode to Marcellus, which begins something like "curre per Euboicos, epistula" and features Statius addressing a letter. No, addressing it. As in, "O, Letter!"
Several stanzas later, they had to scrape me off the floor.
Several hours later, I was sufficiently crazy to be eating sugar straight out of the jar again, and Claire was chewing absent-mindedly on a ciabatta - why do essays always engender the eating of everything in sight? - and Sky came in and talked about Tony Blair for a while, and about his essay for a while, and we all talked about when Tony Blair got into office. (I remember. I was ten. Pedar picked me up and danced around the room with me.) He's ill - Sky, not Tony Blair - and has given flu to Claire, and now to Ben, who is reacting by demanding sugar on toast at every possible opportunity.
Perhaps we are all going mad. Sky noticed the sugar and the ciabatta, and Ben rooting for linctus, and remarked, "This is such a bizarre household," before sauntering off out again.
"But at least we've got a household," I muttered, with the petulant spitting rage, to a general consensus.
ALSO. There is a man whose articles I am trying to read, and he wrote something about Indian politics, something about, "this also includes minority groups, including Dalits and women."
OMG. I am not a minority. WE ARE NOT A MINORITY. There are five hundred million of us. Of all the people on earth, one in twelve is an Indian woman. So you can fuck off, you self-satisfied little patriarch.
ARGH. It is now actually five am. I think to finish this in time, I should get up at eight. That brings me to a grand total of three hours of sleep! Awesome.