22nd February

I have listened to the first act of Siegfried this morning. I like Wagner, though many people don't. I mean his music. Flibbertigibbet. Bang! Brobdingnag. Cello. Architrave. Consciousnessstream. Inverness-shire. Crash bang wallop what a picture. Not photogenic. Gibberish.

Lector, I am half inclined to apologize for not updating for a week. But this has been owing to a combination of adventures and sickness. I hope that you, benevole Lector, will tolerate this tempowawy inconwenience.
I am tired now (I know it is only 9.45; but I have been up since 3.30 - over eighteen and a half hours). I shall write again tomorrow.

Je suis un peu fatigué

Today has been a good day, if I am now quite tired at the end of it. I managed to get up at 8, after going to bed some time after midnight. This gave me enough time to say morning prayer and get to 9.15 Mass at St Cuthbert's. I then said mid-morning prayer, after which I went to Palace Green library. Unfortunately it took several minutes for the library to open; I suspect that the people in the library might possibly perhaps maybe not have been able to find the keys to the main door. Anyway I left very shortly and went back to St Cuthbert's to say the Rosary - there were only sanabituranima, Sophie Caldecott, and myself, there. Then sanabituranima and I had breakfast in Brown Sugar or whatever it calls itself now; only we were there for so long that I decided to have lunch there as well. Then we needed to go; and I went to the library a little before two o'clock, trying to make arrangements for today, for which I have planned an Adventure. The Adventure will require an early night for me. I shall describe tomorrow after it has happened. Now I have found my itinerary for tomorrow. I was in the library trying to work out the times for various stages of a journey until 3.15 - it took at least an hour and a quarter. I must do some things before I go to bed - my alarm shall go off at six o'clock, and up, and (which is the same thing) out of bed, shall I get.

Today seems to have been rather busy. I set my alarm for 2 but did not get up until nearly 8.30; I said morning prayer, and then had breakfast at 9. I left Collingwood immediately after breakfast in time to get to Mass at St Godric's. After that, I said mid-morning prayer from my fairly new copy of the first volume of the Divine Office. I have said all of today's office now, except Night Prayer. I am intending to say all of it during Lent, and since Lent is nearly upon us, I am trying to get into the habit of it now. I would not at all recommend starting with the entire Office. I would recommend the following:

BEGINNERS

Say Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer, and Night Prayer.

INTERMEDIATE

Add Office of Readings so:

Office of Readings, Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer, Night Prayer.

[The Office of Readings can be said at any time, or even the evening of the night before. I said today's Office of Readings at midnight, which I think is a good time for it.]

ADVANCED

Say the entire Office:

Office of Readings, Morning Prayer, Mid-morning Prayer, Midday Prayer, Mid-afternoon Prayer, Evening Prayer, Night Prayer (Septies in die, &c.)


What I mean is that you should work gradually up to saying the whole thing; you won't be able to sustain it - probably - if you go from 0 to 100 instantaneously. It can hardly be done. Perhaps it cannot be done. Anyway, so much for that.

I saw a doctor today about my Brain Being Mean To Me (thank you sanabituranima): apparently I need a Yellow Form. Also I have a new campus card, although I have also found the old one. Life is not bad.

King David was a sorrowful man

King David was a sorrowful man:
No cause for his sorrow had he;
And he called for the music of a hundred harps
To ease his melancholy.

They played till they all fell silent:
Played and play sweet did they;
But the sorrow that haunted the heart of King David
They could not charm away.

He rose; and in his garden
Walked by the moon alone,
A nightingale hidden in a cypress tree,
Jargoned on and on.

King David lifted his sad eyes
Into the dark-boughed tree
"Tell me, thou little bird that singest,
Who taught my grief to thee?"

But the bird in nowise heeded;
And the king in the cool of the moon
Hearkened to the nightingale's sorrowfulness
Till all his own was gone.

I thought that my formative essay on this song was due in today; but it is actually due in tomorrow. Nevertheless, I have already handed it in. Hooray for citalopram!

I went to a mind-numbing concert of avant-garde music today. One of the pieces consisted of one note - in tune, slightly flat, and slightly sharp, for about ten minutes. Another was called "This Is Why People O.D. On Pills," and was, I am told, about an aesthetic of skateboarding. Another, by Miriam Rezaei, was good, if a little, or rather a lot, strange.

Today is the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. Happy feast of Our Lady of Lourdes!

Remember your medication.

An Eventful Morning

I woke up several times this morning, but not properly until 8.35. I was seven minutes late for my 9 a.m. lecture. Our 10 a.m. lecture was on Skriabin, and was much more interesting. Skriabin was very strange, into theosophy and all sorts of odd things; he thought he was in communication with Martians. He began to write a piece - a special temple was to be constructed in India for the sole purpose of performing this piece, naturally - and when his piece was performed there, the world would come to an end. But Skriabin never finished it, so the world is still here. Incidentally the beginning of something he set begins "I am God."
Then I had a meeting with Patrick Zuk; it was supposed to be about postgraduate study, but we rather discussed my depression, which was a very depressing conversation, and my music therapy essay. I have been offered two weeks for me to submit a new version of the essay as a first attempt. It was a rather dispiriting meeting, simply by virtue of the subject matter and the heavy emotion.
But hey ho, away we go, kill the dragon, kill the dragon, hey ho, away we go, kill the nasty dragon.

The Ninth of February

I strongly dislike the 9th of February. On the 9th of February, 2003, when I was fourteen and on the 9th of February, 2006, when I was seventeen, bad things happened in my life. I could stretch it to say that today, the 9th of February, 2010, when I am twenty-one, I got a low mark on an essay I got back; but that would, I think, be a stretch of the imagination. I am worried about some things also. I am going to read now for the next three hours or so. I want to get to the end of Natasha's Dance. That book has made me fall in love with Russia.
Also, Fr Tony has given - well, lent - me a CD of Victor Borge, which I shall listen to either this evening or tomorrow afternoon.
The two bad things that happened on the 9th of February, in case you were wondering, were a Domestic Incident and the breaking of my heart.

*Grrrr...* Why do I waste so much time?

Why do I waste so much time? I have done NOTHING this afternoon; almost nothing useful, that is. I should not be doing nothing now that I have reached the Grand Climacteric!

The Grand Climacteric

At six minutes past last midnight by my clock - that is, at approximately four minutes past midnight G. M. T. -, I reached the Grand Climacteric.

- What is the grand climacteric? I hear you cry.

To answer your question - and I have to say, I admire the fact that you have the courage to ask questions, rather than sitting there like a lemon afraid that if you ask a question people will think that you are stupid -
To answer your question, I say, I shall quote this passage from The Path to Rome:

LECTOR. What is the Grand Climacteric?
AUCTOR. I have no time to tell you, for it would lead us into a discussion on Astrology, and then perhaps to a question of physical science, and then you would find I was not orthodox, and perhaps denounce me to the authorities.
I will tell you this much; it is the moment (not the year or the month, mind you, nor even the hour, but the very second) when a man is grown up, when he sees things as they are (that is, backwards), and feels solidly himself. Do I make myself clear? No matter, it is the Shock of Maturity, and that must suffice for you.
But perhaps you have been reading little brown books on Evolution, and you don't believe in Catastrophes, or Climaxes, or Definitions? Eh? Tell me, do you believe in the peak of the Matterhorn, and have you doubts on the points of needles? Can the sun be said truly to rise or set, and is there any exact meaning in the phrase 'Done to a turn' as applied to omelettes? You know there is; and so also you must believe in Categories, and you must admit differences of kind as well as of degree, and you must accept exact definition and believe in all that your fathers did, that were wiser men than you, as is easily proved if you will but imagine yourself for one moment introduced into the presence of your ancestors, and ask yourself which would look the fool. Especially must you believe in moments and their importance, and avoid with the utmost care the Comparative Method and the argument of the Slowly Accumulating Heap. I hear that some scientists are already beginning to admit the reality of Birth and Death - let some brave few make an act of Faith in the Grand Climacteric and all shall yet be well.


Now, some Pedant will come along and tell me some old rot about climacterics being the critical years in a person's life, and that the first is 7, and the others are all multiples of 7 - and the grand climacteric is usually 63, but can also be 49 or 81. (Because 81 is 9 times 9 - 9 being, of course, the forgotten multiple of 7.)

But I reached the REAL Grand Climacteric this very day. So mote it be. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

St Paul Miki & Companions

Today (Saturday) is, in the new calendar, the Memoria of St Paul Miki and Companions - twenty-six sixteenth-century Japanese martyrs. On the old calendar it is the Feast of St Titus, and a commemoration of St Dorothea. However, since this is Saturday evening, that makes it "Evening Prayer I" or "First Vespers" of Sunday; so it is liturgically speaking the Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, or the Fifth Sunday of the Year, in the new calendar, but in the traditional calendar tomorrow is Sexagesima Sunday and we are currently upon the Eve of Sexagesima Sunday; we are counting down to Lent, which is not very far away.
I heard another slightly odd sermon from the same priest who gave the previous slightly odd sermon. I remember it began with advertisements and deodorant. This beginning seemed strangely irrelevant to the main point of the sermon. Perhaps it was not what the priest said as the way he said it that struck me as odd.

I wish I could get up earlier. I am setting my alarm for 8.30 tomorrow, and I am jolly well getting up at 8.30, and not a minute later. I don't like wasting my whole morning.

Mission accomplished

I have finally handed in a summative assignment that I started writing last night; just after ten to six, and I finished it at two o'clock this morning. I took a short break of four hours at one point, and another of forty minutes. It is not the best piece of work I have ever done - naturally it was something of an improvisation in such a short time-frame; but I am glad I have done it, and also relieved.

I take that back

I have lots to say now, after my visit to an old people's home full of people with dementia. A rather depressing and initially shocking scene. I am very tired, so I shall not discuss it now; but perhaps tomorrow or another day I shall tell you all about it.

One of the difficulties of having a blog, I find, is that you can't think of anything to say.

Today is Candlemas day. I went to Mass and got a candle.