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

I have felt this happening for a little while, but I'm trying not to let it get hold of me. It all happened about five years ago and I'm still irresponsible sometimes. I feel close to messing up and I just want someone to help me.

Being in someone's house without the someone is a bit strange. I drove to Kat's about an hour ago because I could hear noises in my room. I've been living alone for a week or so and I think it's getting to me a bit. But it's not too bad because I have Kat's keys so I can stay here even though she's away. I think I'm going to stay up for a while and read stuff on newspaper websites because I don't bother to read them when I'm online using my phone.

I can't wait to live in somewhere I'm proud of. One year :)

I feel horrible. I feel like I am horrible.

I managed to book some more Tori tickets today without giving myself a headache or breaking my phone. That's all seven gigs booked now. I can relax.

Now that I'v finished uni I have been reading and writing more. Chris and I have decided to work on putting the zine together seeing as the last attempt just faded out and never went anywhere. Hopefully this time will be different.

Lately, I seem to be writing about childhood. I noticed when I was writing my dissertation that Margaret Atwood does this a lot in her work, so maybe I'm stealing ideas from her. But maybe because I'm young it's the only period of my life I've had time to look back and think about. I mean, I'm 21 soon but I still don't feel like I can look back to my teenage self and criticise her because I probably still feel some of the same things and I'm still prepared to admit how difficult a time I had. The most prominent part of those years doesn't need to be written about. Well, maybe it does. I have tried but nobody can feel what I feel. Does that matter? Anyway, right now I'm writing about the time I hallucinated because of the giant M&M I had in my room.

After today (hopefully) I won't have to worry about Tori Amos tickets because I will have bought all the ones I need. I am one gig away from being relieved; if only they would go on sale somewhere in the awful world of the internet.

Anyway, at work last night I listened to the Manic Street Preachers live from London. On the phone. As it happened. It gave me butterflies because James Dean Bradfield sounded so bloody good. Apparently they had strings on some of the songs, which I can only imagine would sound wonderful. The quality down the phone was dreadful and it took a little while to make out each song, but I really really enjoyed hearing it. It was happening, just like I was happening. I was standing outside in the B&Q car park watching the water and the sky get darker.

So now I've finished university and I have nothing to do for the summer. I couldn't be happier even though I'm looking forward to starting my MA. It will be nice to have time to think, read and write the things I want to think, read and write.

There is something about me that I really do not like.

I like desk photos. I won't have this desk for much longer. That mess happened on my floor a few months ago.

Anyway, I've been meaning to write here for a while but I haven't found the time. Although, I don't really have the time right now. I'm listening to the new Tori and MSP albums side by side and drinking a soya milkshake. I'm dying to spend an hour or two reading Alice Oswald and Anne Sexton, but I need to finish writing about three women and their poems.

I can't write anything worth reading.
Oh, but I realised the other day that I have an opinion. Hurrah.

I don't even think I can write about Tori here. I've felt something since Friday that I can't quite understand, but it feels amazing.

The new Manic Street Preachers album is definitely one of my favourite albums of all time. Thank you Mr Richey James Edwards.


Also, I got 10 choc ices for just over £1.

Tori Amos at the Savoy tomorrow will also be one of the best experiences of my life. I know it. I wish you were coming with me.

Today I feel more optimistic than usual. I applied for something and I'm currently writing my CV for another thing. Maybe I could get both and maybe money wouldn't be a problem. Then we can move to London and feel like real people instead of students. We'll be like fish in water.

Up.

It's 5:33am and I have only slept for one hour. My alarm is set for 8:30. I don't know whether to stay awake or to try and get a little bit more sleep. Maybe I should sleep because I have a busy day and I'm at work for the next two nights.

Something was crawling in my room, so I crawled away. Simple. I went into Jerry's room because I knew he was still up writing his dissertation. I lay in his bed and listened to him work, then I fell asleep. But it wasn't real sleep because I could still hear everything, I could feel pain in my back and I could tell the light was on. But it was something. Now the birds are singing outside and it's light. I'm surprised at how light it is.

I feel good today, but my priorities seem to change so quickly. For the past few days I've been trying to do my work and do it well, but today I just want to pack a bag and go somewhere. I am ready for another Tori tour. I can't explain how good it feels to sit on the floor outside a venue and talk to people you only see every couple of years. The feeling of standing in the middle of a street in Florence listening to Tori soundcheck a song you first heard when you were three.
Gladly, we'll have a tour this year and I get to see her in ten days.It's looking likely that we'll go to Germany to see her this year as well as the UK shows. I would go anywhere in the world.

I searched for 'push up' and this came up, so I'll keep it. Anyway press ups, push ups, whatever. I like the feeling of pushing myself away from the floor or the bed and easing myself back down again. Never touching. There's a control I savour because nobody gets hurt. But it's the blood I don't like. Nothing bleeds, but my head becomes red and I forget to breathe. I am scared of my own heartbeat and the feeling of my head filling up and turning red.

I like the feeling of fitting into a new routine. There’s the initial dislike of change, then the toleration of it and then, finally, it clicks and it doesn’t feel new or different anymore.
Right now I am working my way through a list of fourteen things. Some of the things are small. In the past couple of hours I have ticked off five of them and I am less than a hundred pages away from finishing the sixth. I am wearing a yellow top, yellow socks and my girlfriend’s yellow slippers. I can’t wear yellow. Yellow is a colour I cannot wear. I am listening to old Tori bootlegs and reading George Orwell. This morning I counted £30 in change. I will read this http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/mar/18/british-library-lost-books when I think I’ve done enough work.

I am excited for a lot of things. Some big things and some little things. The big things are going to Scotland, going to the football, getting another tattoo, the new Tori album and the amazing/ mad excitement of a tour. The little things are just for me.

I don't know what the temperature is outside, but it is too high. I feel like I'm ready for winter again. The nights are getting lighter, but the change seems unsettling to me. I enjoy eating dinner in the dark and driving with my lights on at 4pm of earlier depending on the weather. I like jumpers and horrible weather, warm puddings and the feeling of settling down for the night. But now the days are feeling longer and the dark is disappearing. Through the days I close my curtains and read with my lamp on. I want to make the night happen because everything feels safer then. I don't like it when everyone is up and about. Too much can happen.
Reading is more fun at night. Music sounds better when it's quiet, but then again there is often nothing better than listening to punk loudly in the summer. Some books are written for summer, but I don't mean 'summer reads'. I mean books like Wuthering Heights- books I associate with summer. I first read it lying in my garden on a tartan blanket with my old white ipod and my glasses lying next to me. I got a tan that summer.

I have talked myself round.

Lewis Grassic Gibbon

This picture is the reason I'm writing this entry. I was in the middle of drying my hair and reading A Scots Quair and I realised that I had to see a picture of this man who writes like nobody else. In this novel, which is a trilogy, I feel Scotland. I am not familiar with the places it describes, nor am I familiar with the Scotland and its people who felt the Great War, but the words capture my country in a way I never thought possible. The prose is realist, but it is far richer and has more dimensions than any other realist writing I have read. It makes me feel like modernist writing is meant to make its reader feel. It is completely alive. 'Only the land endures.'

Incredible.