I've been thinking. After watching What Is Beauty? on the BBC it's finally dawned on me the pointlessness of art and the actual beauty of real life. A lot of the time I prefer art to life, but art fails completely when it comes to trying to create life. We can't write people because we are people. So then art only succeeds when we're trying to get away from life, but can't truly achieve that either. We are us. We are here. We are all I and no matter what we're reading or what we're staring at that never changes.

Hands of the Priestess (Part One)

I've been meaning to write here for a while. Now I am here but I don't really have anything to say. I suppose today I should apply for more jobs because it looks like we'll lose our nightshift tomorrow. I want to do lots of press ups and sit ups and listen to music loud. I want to finish reading Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. I want to edit my poem. I want to sit next to my bookcase and gaze up at the top shelf which is full of poetry. I have a dissertation idea: Nabokov, Fowles and Dahl. Odd. I want to read some Walt Whitman. I feel like going Christmas shopping because I have given myself some money to play with. This year I have it all. There is no confusion in my family. No ambiguity over whether to buy for certain people. Mainly because we despise them for certain and they completely feel the same. I want to buy a present for little Mary. I have a beautiful girlfriend to buy for. I have people who aren't greedy.

Purple People

Tonight is one of those nights I wish I could write about but can never justify using words. I have never felt so loved and encouraged in so many ways. I feel engaged with my work and capable. Just capable. I am listening to Midwinter Graces on my headphones. I love it. I can't explain how much I love it. I feel up. These words don't know what I mean.

This year.

1. Lolly Willowes- Sylvia Townsend Warner

2. A Handful of Dust- Evelyn Waugh

3. A Scots Quair- Lewis Grassic Gibbon (A trilogy)

4. The Unbearable Lightness of Being- Milan Kundera

5. Coming Up For Air- George Orwell

6. The Hours- Michael Cunningham

7. Life is Elsewhere- Milan Kundera

8. The Collector- John Fowles

9. Lanark- Alasdair Gray

10. Wilderness Tips- Margaret Atwood

11. Boy Meets Girl- Ali Smith

12. Oryx and Crake- Margaret Atwood

13. A Million Little Pieces- James Frey

14. Speak of the Mearns- Lewis Grassic Gibbon

15. Lolita- Vladimir Nabokov

16. A History of the World in 10½ Chapters- Julian Barnes

17. Switch Bitch- Roald Dahl

18. Possession- A. S. Byatt

19. The Buddha of Suburbia- Hanif Kureishi

20. The Road Home- Rose Tremain

21. Blood on the Dining-Room Floor- Gertrude Stein

I just want him to sing me to sleep.

Things are very different these days.
I have nothing to do today but pack a few things for Italy. I think I know what I want to wear, so it shouldn't take long to get ready. So I have the whole day empty. I don't know what to do. I don't think there is anyone I can see. I don't know if I want to see anyone anyway.
I just want the day to fly by so I can eat dinner and go to bed. Then tomorrow I get up, go back to my parents' and go to Italy in the morning.
This is going to be amazing :)

I've spent most of tonight on the phone to my mum, dad and gran :) It's made me feel really happy after a horrible and painful day. My mum is at my gran's house and my dad's in a hotel in Aberdeen. He's flying to Norway tomorrow morning. My football team have realised they still know how to score :)

3. Painting

I live in a box of paints.

It's fascinating that how you live your life depends on the place you were born. I know that's a bit of a stupid thing to say because it's so obvious, but thinking about it convinces me again and again how diverse this world is. I was watching Rick Stein earlier today. Despite being a little bit creepy he's a really passionate and interesting man. Anyway, he was in Bali and was describing the Balinese lifestyle. Obviously any attempt to summarise anything about any country or group of people is completely generalised and simplified, but he told how the people there do not worry. They just don't. They see positives in everything. They accept foreigners and are excited to introduce their culture to them. They never move from the community they were born in. They have a respect for each other and a positivity which is almost alien to this side of the planet. We are so demanding and self obsessed, but maybe that isn't such a bad thing. For me life is about surrounding yourself with the things that make you happy. In another life I would possibly have made a modest living from grinding coffee beans or peppercorns, but in this life I spend my afternoons listening to Pink Floyd, drinking sugar free fizz and writing uninteresting pieces of rubbish.

2. Painting

1. Painting.

I bought a new bookcase from work. I paid £8 for it, but on the website the RRP is £87. I'm going to paint it myself using tester pots of all my favourite colours. I'm also going to post photos here of its progress.

Such a lovely tree.

:)

The first issue of the zine is finally done. Actually, we have one piece and three dots to add, but that's it. Twenty pages of things and stuff written and drawn by people in places. I'm glad it has finally happened. The process of putting it together has taught me a lot about the people around me and the different ways people care and the ways they choose to use their ambition. In all honesty I have felt a bit disappointed in the lack of... well, just the lack. Lack describes it well. But that doesn't matter because we have still managed to put something together. I am proud of it. Now to figure out double-sided photocopying.

Edwin Morgan

It isn't in the mirror
It isn't on the page
It's a red hearted vibration
Pushing through the walls
Of dark imagination
Finding no equation
There's a Red Road rage,
But it's not road rage
It's asylum seekers engulfed by a grudge
Scottish friction
Scottish fiction


It isn't in the castles,
It isn't in the mist
It's a calling of the waters
As they break to show
The new black death
With reactors aglow
Do you think your security
Can keep you in purity
You can not shake us off above or below
Scottish friction
Scottish fiction