today is stupendously beautiful, and i dreamt it would be. this had something, i'm sure, to do with the fact that i was so battered last night that i went to sleep with all the lights - every single one - in my room left on. my t-shirt on neck and one arm and my jeans round my knees. not good.

at a party of populated largely by twats the night before. my (acquaintance? friend? i know her, anyway) Lindsey's 20th. a New College Lane house party - but one with printed invitations, and invitations written in French at that.
it's not that i can't stand the people at these parties, but i don't enjoy being around them. that last statement is not entirely true - it is quite fun to completely undercut all their expectations and pretension ("i take it you like Egon Schiele?") in conversations, like when the bloke who runs Narcissists asks what you're listening to at the moment you tell them Peter, Paul and Mary (even if it's a lie).

at the end of the evening there were noise complaints and we were shunted into a house next door, into the underground suite of shower rooms. this felt a bit too much like a fashionista war camp and i left not long after. resurgent thoughts of suicide. why? not sure. not the same ol' feeling of exclusion, or lack of self-worth, or at least not that under its usual and obvious guise. something to do with the general meanness inside everyone who was there. admittedly, i am, or can be, impolite when drunk, but it's just a stab at honestly, usually. i try to be honest about my crapness, my silliness - the silliness of it all. it seems that these people almost force themselves into some faux-indifference to everything that isn't glaringly cool and obviously worth their while.
i am bored of all the pretensions of being a student. what's the point of having a poem printed if everything else in the issue is crap about 'wizened leaves' and rosary beads and dodgy extended metaphors involving crows? i am bored of having reviews printed in the paper when, in reality, a blind eleven year old could write just as succint a review of 'Mating rituals of the urban duck' (shown as part of the university's New Writing Festival, which epitomises nearly all that is bad here).

looking at the finals papers in the library on Saturday night was not a good idea at all. thought it would help me determine which optional papers i should do next two terms, but in fact they just put the willies right up me.

i feel sad, really, in a not very earth-shattering way, and even though most of this sounds ranty. last Wednesday there was a formal dinner with place settings and speeches to mark out in ugly capitals the fact that me and my year have now gone through half of our degrees. it was quite jolly, but i was very nervy beforehand. because i don't know what else i want to do, even though i know that this is clearly not ideal, and inertia is bound to win out.
things are not all bad. i am getting on with my life and, though i don't think about it too much, i am actually happy here. there is still potential for dissapointment, of course; i took the symbolism of Half-Way Hall quite seriously and sent an email to James, the Classicist mentioned for quite some time in this here diary, asking what was going on between us. perhaps drafting it with Guy and Beth, when we were all pissed, was not a good move.

on Valentine's day i went to a double bill of Before Sunrise/Before Sunset with aforementioned Lindsey. i love the first film, particularly the closing shots of all the places where the couple went on their walks, and seeing the sun come up and the city come to life again, completely unaware of everything they'd done and felt there. it's just wicked.

---

headache now, exhaustion, whatever. i spent the day since writing that (or writing it in my head) at a Peer Support conference. this was a very wanky affair in which counsellors talked lots about 'fear' and 'trust' and 'sensitivity' and 'loveliness' - and how we couldn't really separate these things, could we? - each of them dressed in ethno/National Trust style scarfs and dangly earrings. there were free sandwiches, and an issues board - on which we were meant to post post-it notes with issues that distressed our peers written on them. one of them, a neon pink one, i think, simply read 'the unbearable lightness of being'.

that was funny and touching, i thought, even though it was surely a pisstake. nothing is real enough, nothing good is honest and nothing honest is every really very interesting. too many wankers, and not enough people, friends aside, unlike myself enough for me to care much about. but today was stupendously beautiful, i should remember that. should spend the day out of the city, walk somewhere to do it justice. clean, cold air. folk music.

trying to be and not to worry about it.