i've wanted to write about going to Paris before Christmas. about Liza's enourmous empty flat which has no lights in it (including in the toilet). wanted to write about seeing Anne-Claire for a day and barely recognising her at St.Germain-de-Pres because she's not about to die anymore. write about the ceiling in Le Train Bleu.
Liza had to go to work some of the days i was with her but in the mornings we would have porridge oats and coffee sweetened with honey. sometimes i went back to sleep in the half-light.
we listened to 'Heartbeats' and 'Under my thumb' a lot, and danced to the latter in a bar. i wanted to write about the ambrosial profiteroles we had in Julien and i wanted to write also about the evening spent with David, during which I got very annoyed, and how we looked for the Rue Carmen in the dead streets near the Borse. there was a party where i couldn't speak French to anyone but took lots of photos and there was an embroidered jacket i bought in Les Halles which made me very happy for a very brief time. i wanted also to write about not being happy, about trying to read in Place de Vosges and not having enough money. about the question mark that seemed to hang over everything, the curved edge of which seemed like the blade of a scythe.

i've wanted to write about coming home and watching 'Edward Scissorhands' at Sadler's Wells and feeling like i couldn't even sit still because i hated men for not loving women and i hated women for loving men all the same.

i've wanted to write about Christmas itself being not unpleasent at all, at having gifts i really liked and Aunty Ivy being medicated and then falling ill soon afterwards, just managing to see Guy and Sophie in Soho, and Lindsey and Michael D. in Balham, but not making it through to the New Year and spending the evening on and off the sofa. trying to read W.G. Sebald and wanting constantly to sleep and drink coke. Mummy and Pa went to a party thrown by a Lithuanian up the road and had to eat a plate of black beans, because every bean left over was a tear they would shed in the coming year.

i've wanted to write about Guy coming down to stay, about the bop and the gay night and drinking all of Dickie's whisky and trying (and failing) to start a paper journal. also the fondue and the "parlour games" and waking everyone up with 'Speedway' and attempts to steal fags.

i've wanted to write about being devastated by 'Brokeback Mountain', not just for its tragedy, its plotted demise, but the vast cosmic unfairness that underpinned it. that Jake is not mine, that i worry i'll never experience that sustained kind of joy, that affection; and then that it's disgusting of me to think like this, as if the scarcest good in the world, that ruthless beauty, is wasted just because i don't get to own it.

i've wanted to write all these things, the words for which have now vanished.

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it's threatening to snow tomorrow and the sky should be full of its cold promise. i didn't notice whether it was today. there was some snow, that fell but did not settle, this evening. in the street lamp light especially, it reminded me of the grey flakes of newspaper ash from the fire at home. this term has been all about limbo and about obfuscation, about surviving in that limbo simply by denying the fact of my Finals and only coming to realise yesterday that the 70 hours of work per paper i intend to do is not - is not even close to being - enough. i'm looking forward to working hard, of course, simply because it will make me feel better, feel that i'm doing the right thing. but my propspects - these could be better. exams are so dehumanised: there's just so much that could go wrong and so little way of knowing you'll be alright. or more than alright.
i organised a visit and a talk by Rowan Williams, which ate up a lot of time, and i've been doing stupid things like smoking and taking money out of my savings to pay for lunches. at the weekend i went to London to celebrate Sarah's impending birthday and that helped things, that made me feel better. she does, a compliment does, 'Love is a battlefield' does.
still i've been using the 'take it easy on yourself' principle liberally - too liberally, 'cos nothing's going to be easy when you're living your actual, one-shot life, and not some approximation of it. and it's especially wasteful to self-indulge when my problems are so foolish and so undeserved.

but they hurt; things hurt me so easily. yesterday i had the night fears. was the first time in...ages, when a single event seems like Apocalypse; the unveiling of a new and terrible truth.
only one thought of suicide, however, of late. just one afternoon when i could find no house to live in, no essay to scrawl down and no-one to look after me. one of those ridicolous moments when you find yourself suddenly sitting down and you can't reason why because you literally, simply, don't know what to do.

or why. why?

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i need to go and read: 'A new look at federalism: the import of institutions'. institutional everything soon needs to become. i can't risk missing friends, or worrying, or taking tea like today and walking with the boy down the street and wanting to grab him by the legs and stop him still. i need to do 70 hours for 8 weeks, at least.
no security. no surrender. i saw Laura for bread and ciggarettes the other evening and she, fretting about being "less than au fait" with her thesis material, just blurted out:

"I'm going to scrape a 2:1, go home and look for a job, and it will be fine".

she didn't seem to mean it. why would she?