how weary, stale, flat and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of the world

I am back in Oxford, still failing at life but in the usual, conventional way. Read: I have an essay crisis, it involves the Cold War, you really don't want to know about it. (I added up the reading, and it comes to over a thousand pages, which makes me want to laugh wryly and throw books out of the window.) The weekend was calm and lovely, and made me think about things a little, and it resolves as this: I don't want to think any more. I can't retake the LSAT in February (sigh at Americans) nor in June (it falls right in the middle of PPE Finals, and I cannot take the LSAT and my Finals at the same time, I value my mind), so it will be September again. In the meantime, I will be here, I will take my Finals, I will wander out of this city with an honours degree, and then I think I'll ask AIESEC to let me go to Delhi for a year, maybe, perhaps, and go barefoot and teach English and think about things.

It's something like a plan. Thank you all for your comments, they were appreciated. And that you were willing to commit federal crimes for me? I am honoured to be your friend. I mean that.

In the meantime, I am still made of fail, but it's not the epic sort. This is a list I should make more often, and meant to as part of life_yay, but I missed it. Here it is, anyway.

Things I am grateful for:

-My family. My parents, who get on my nerves and make my life difficult and have never done anything but unconditionally love and support me. My dad, who is incapable of writing informally or indeed with contractions, who nevertheless added "Everything will be FINE!" as a postscript to one of his terribly antiquated screeds today. My mum, whom I have such trouble communicating with - I begin to think it's language: my Hindi splutters and dies and English is so harsh, has too many jagged edges to talk to your mum in - and yet, we get along these days.

-My friends. My flatmates, who came rolling merrily along two years ago and proceeded to fill my life with chaos, alcohol and affection. I have five flatmates. One of them has bright red hair and makes you grateful she's on your side, and epically miserable if she isn't; another hangs out of fourth-floor windows trying to see the stars; another peels boiled eggs with a peeler; one of them feeds me with tofu whilst challenging everything I've ever thought; and and yet another declaims Shakespeare mournfully at her scrambled eggs in the morning, and doesn't notice she's doing it.

And my fannish friends, who feed me pancakes and tea and say "o rly?" and "EPIC FAIL" in casual conversation and make me laugh and laugh, and my LJ friends, because you guys are awesome and I have been so many places and done so many things just because you are that awesome.

-Fandom. yuletide is giving me joy, and so is ds_match, and how much joy has stuff like this given me over the last six years? So much. So, so much. I lose track of what fandom, as an entity and as an activity, has done for me.

-Philosophy. I love that I can ask these questions, think through these answers, it's my degree and it's not even work, it's a part of who we are. And it's the biggest subject there is, and you can do it in your head; books are good, they're great, but you can walk somewhere with your iPod in and do philosophy.

-Writing. It's perhaps the only thing I do only for myself, the only thing that's entirely mine, and ironically enough, I can never express what writing is for me. It's more than a hobby; it defines my every thought, it shapes my interaction with the world, and when it's good, it's the closest I've ever experienced to perfection.

-Oxford. I have never loved a place as much as I've loved this one, and I don't think I ever will again. Both the university, in all its archaic, ancient glory, the way it's done things to my mind, made me so much more of a person than I was before, and the city, its flowers, its beauty, its stones.

-Dumbledore is gay!

-Stephen Colbert is running for president! (And So Can You!)

-Belief. I am a Hindu. I am a liberal. I am a feminist. And me - Indian, mixed-caste, woman - and I grew up so incredibly priveleged that I can claim all these things. The other me, the one who never left India; I don't know about her.

-Glitter. Nail varnish. Music. Honey on toast with coffee. Travel. Sundried tomato paste. A window large enough to sit in. Sweets. The sea. The colour red.

-The postcard I got from the Haus am Checkpoint Charlie, in Berlin. "You are now leaving the American sector..." - and I've pinned it to my door. Welcome to the Cold War.

-And my bed. And now I get to sleep.

I suppose in some ways it's sentimental, making a list like this; but then, I want to have a list like this. It's important.